As the Regional Depository in Kentucky, the University of Kentucky's Federal Depository Unit in Young Library is responsible for managing the disposal of unwanted Federal Depository publications in our state. Therefore, we have created two options for the other 19 Selective Depositories to make use of as they weed their collections:

1. the offers list (formerly called "exchange" lists) process described in the rest of this document, and
2. a Needs List of titles that we know we are missing.

However, both options now make use of the ASERL Documents Disposition Database developed at the Univ. of Florida.

UK's needs list has been entered into the ASERL Documents Disposition Database.

If any titles offered by a depository via the ASERL database appear on our needs list, UK will be notified of the match by the database. At that point, we will claim the item using the database. This claim will be sent to the Selective from the database with instructions on where to send the material.

Please insert a note in each box of needs list material that you send indicating that these materials were on our needs list, include your depository's name on the note, and write "Needs List" on the outside of the box/envelope. The offering library is responsible for all shipping expenses.

A. Guidelines for Using the ASERL Documents Disposition Database:

Each Federal Selective Depository in Kentucky may submit up to 150 titles that they wish to discard to the database over the course of a month. This will allow us to give all depositories a chance to do some weeding on a regular basis and to turn lists around quickly. It would be preferable to submit only a single format on any given day, e.g., submit only paper items on Tuesday and then submit your CD items on Thursday. Since your offers are processed overnight each day, these submissions will come to us as separate lists.

Your offers will remain in the database for 45 days, but your colleagues in Kentucky will not be able to see your offers in the database until day 31. UK can see your offers as soon as you post them, but we will wait for the database to send us a list of what you have posted the following day.

Once we receive the list from the database, we will let you know that we have been notified of your offers and will get started on your list. Since all ASERL Regionals and Centers of Excellence (COEs) will be seeing your offers at the same time that we do, please do not fill any claims from anyone else until you hear from us. We have developed a streamlined process that should allow us to respond to your offers in six working days, so you should not have to hold those claims for very long.

Also, given the need for rapid turn-around times here at UK, we will have to ask you not to submit offers to the database from Dec. 5-Jan. 10 each year. There will be no students available to process your offers during this time period, so we will not be able to respond to offers submitted to the database after Dec. 5 of each year.

Please be sure to follow the guidelines in B. below when deciding what to offer..

B. Items Eligible for Offer:

You must retain all depository publications for five years from the date of receipt, not from the date of publication, so please do not list materials that do not meet this criteria. To make this easier at both ends, please do not list any materials received in a given year, e.g., 2008, until November of the fifth year after receipt. In the case of 2008, this would be Nov., 2013. This will ensure that all publications received in 2008 have been held for the full five years.

You should also think carefully about your Congressional district to make sure you are not discarding a title that is critical to your users, or any title that is included in the FDLP Basic Collection.

The only materials that are exceptions to the 5-year retention rule are gifts, electronic substitutions, or duplicates. If you are replacing a tangible copy with the electronic version, you only need to retain the tangible piece for one year before listing. If you are listing an item for this reason, you will need to indicate that in database.

You are not required to keep or list gifts or duplicates at all, but we would be happy to check for duplicates or unselected titles that you do not want so that we can fill gaps in our collection. However, if you list such material, please include a comment in your offer to reflect their non-depository status so that we will not evaluate those titles for disposal permission> (Are all publications over five years old? Are they titles we feel can be discarded without compromising access to information in your Congressional district? Is there a valid electronic equivalent? Is the title on the Basic Collection list?).

You should list superseded material since the ASERL plan requests that you do so. This is because COEs will be trying to replace superseded material that they may have discarded in the past.

Please read the ASERL plan and the LibGuide that the University of Florida has created carefully before creating your offers list. Keep in mind that implementation of the database has resulted in some changes to this process that are not reflected in this plan from April, 2011. The LibGuide has the most up-to-date information. There is also a link to this guide in the lower left corner of the ASERL database's login screen.

Although the plan does not require you to offer fiche, we do need for you to use this database to offer any fiche you want to discard, especially if the fiche is being collected by an ASERL COE.

C. Creating/Submitting Offers or a List

ASERL is asking for your cooperation in submitting your offers/lists in a uniform format that can be loaded into the database easily. The LibGuide mentioned above gives you very specific instructions on how to complete its title-by-title forms or an Excel CSV-formatted file for upload. Here are some highlights from that guide:

1) You must create a gmail account and register it in the database by sending e-mail to dispositiondb@uflib.ufl.edu.

We created a departmental address that everyone at UK can use and to which all notifications from the database will be sent. We highly recommend this strategy! You may also send questions/suggestions regarding the database to this e-mail address.

2) If you opt to create on Excel CSV-formatted file, you MUST use their offers template from the LibGuide. You should download an empty copy of this template to re-use for each list you create. Click on the "import items" button in the section of the screen called "My submitted items" to get to the template. Each time you save that file you MUST answer ÒyesÓ to the Òreplace fileÓ question. If you don't, the file will convert to a regular Excel file, and it will NOT upload to database. (Can you tell we've had this problem (;-) ?!?). Here are a few other things we learned about the spreadsheet method:

a) For monographs, repeat the date of publication in both date columns.

b) When offering a serial, list the earliest and latest dates being offered. If you are offering a bound volume, please indicate in the comment column/box that a volume is bound--it may affect our request.

c) If your lists are currently in Microsoft Word, we can send you instructions on how to convert that format to an Excel CSV-formatted document.

d) If some items won't load, the database gives you an error report, but you have to look for it lower on the screen. This error report goes away once you leave this screen and cannot be retrieved later by you or by the Florida staff.


Once you have created an Excel file, follow the instructions in the LibGuide describing the upload process. Click on the "import items" button in the section of the screen called "My submitted items" to see these instructions.


3) If you opt to use the title-by-title forms, be sure to use the correct form for monographs vs. serials. The forms are different and will make listing easier and more accurate. Click on the "add items" button in the section of the screen called "My submitted items" to see these instructions and get to the form. Your offers are sent to the database immediately once you click your final "OK."

4) Regardless of whether you are creating a spreadsheet or using the title-by-title form, please use the Superintendent of Documents classification number as it appears in either GPO's online catalog or the printed Monthly Catalog of U. S. Government Publications, i.e., corrected and consistent with the time period in which it was classified. For example, HEW serials that went through several class changes should be listed with the class number that applies to the issues being offered, not the earliest or most current number. Be sure to check for incorrect SuDoc numbers in "z" subfields of the 086 fieldÑuse the corrected SuDoc number that is in the "a" subfield.

5) SuDoc number MUST include a colon in order for matches to occur in database! The only exception to this is when you are offering a run of a serial. This only requires the SuDoc stem, and the matches (searches and needs) will work with or without the colon.

6) Annotate duplicates, electronic substitutions, or gifts clearly in comments column/box.

7) Be sure to include superseded status on forms and in Excel files.

8) Be sure to include the format on forms and in Excel files.

If you have problems with either of these processes, please let us know. If we cannot help you, we will refer you to the staff at Florida.

D. How Our New Process Works:

We will send you an e-mail within one day confirming that the database has notified us that you have submitted offers or a list. We will indicate if you have offered any non-compliant titles that will need to be removed from the database. As indicated above, we will do our best to initiate claims within six working days after receipt of your offers list from the database.

As in the past, we will be managing several lists at the same time, so please be patient! If you have an extenuating circumstance that you would like for us to consider when checking your list, please let us know. Otherwise, the lists will be checked in the same order that the database notifies us of offers.

Please do NOT fill any other claims until you hear from us. If another institution has already claimed an item that we need, we will not be able to claim that item via the database. Any item that is claimed immediately disappears from the database. Therefore, we may have to claim some items via an e-mail message listing those items we need that are no longer listed in the database.

Once we have submitted our claims in the database, the claim will be sent to the Selective from the database with instructions on where to send the material. You should then pull this material and mail it to us at your expense. Please remember to write "Offers List" on the outside of the envelope/box, and be sure to include a copy of the claims list with the materials you are sending to us.

We will acknowledge receipt of your shipment via e-mail. If you have not received an acknowledgement from us within one week, please call/send an e-mail to make sure we received your material. You will still need to hold on to all pieces until you get our final confirmation that we got what we requested.

Once we have cleared your list via e-mail, you may fill any other claims you have received, either in-state (see next paragraph) or out-of-state. As the offering library, you will be responsible for all shipping expenses unless you make other arrangements with the requesting library which you are free to do.

In order to allow the rest of you to see these in-state offers early in the process, we will also forward each list to KySelect. You will NOT be able to claim these materials via the database until day 31, but they might be gone by then. So, if you really need any of the materials on the list, you should contact the person listed above the offers list in that e-mail within five working days. If a claim is filled for a Kentucky Selective via an e-mail request, the offering institution will have to remove that item from the database manually.

You may not discard remaining material you have listed in the database for 45 days. That is how long your offers will be visible in the database. Your colleagues in the state will be able to claim your materials via the database starting on day 31, so it is important for you to hold these items. You will receive a notification from the database when your items have expired. You may discard or recycle them at that point.

Once all materials have been requested by other depositories or have expired in database, please report to the Regional Depository Librarian via e-mail the number of pieces you redistributed or recycled. Remember, you may not sell any unwanted federal depository material. Depository material remains the property of the U.S. Government and may not be sold.

To reiterate, please remember that you may not discard or re-distribute anything until we have responded to your offers and acknowledged receipt of the material we requested. We will send you an e-mail message confirming that we received the pieces that we requested and give you permission to re-distribute the rest. You may not discard or re-distribute anything on your list until you have received this communication from us.

E. Brief synopsis of a fictional depository's procedure for submitting offers to the database:

1) After verifying that pieces that we want to discard are all at least five years old, are not needed in our Congressional district, and are not in FDLP Basic Collection; submit offers to ASERL database per instructions from ASERL and our Regional (see above). Let the Regional know if we have not received confirmation of receipt of offers within one day.

2) If you have any problems or questions about submitting our offers lists to the ASERL database, please review the LibGuide created by Univ. of Florida before contacting the Regional (see 6) below).

3) If the Regional claims items from our offers list via either the database or e-mail, send pieces and a copy of the claims list/e-mail to the Regional as soon as possible in a box/envelope labeled "Offers List" on the outside. Do not fill any other claims until we have heard from the Regional at UK. If we have not had an acknowledgement of receipt of items within one week, notify the Regional via e-mail that the materials were mailed.

4) After the Regional confirms receipt of their claims, fill any other claims we have received. If the claims are received from a Kentucky Selective via e-mail, be sure to remove that item from the ASERL Documents Disposition Database.

5) Once our offers have expired in the database, and all materials have been requested or recycled, report the number of pieces redistributed or recycled to the Regional Depository Librarian via e-mail (see 6) below). 6) If we have questions, please call Sandra McAninch, the Regional Depository Librarian, at (859) 257-0500, ext. 2141, or send an e-mail to mcaninch@uky.edu.