Volume 33 Nº 1 - February 1997

Forum: to keep or discard the vertical file

Judy Wilkes

Is it possible to provide students with up-to-date information without a vertical file? Is the effort expended in maintaining one justified?

I knew that even where schools subscribed to a national press clippings service such as Current Social/Environmental Issues or were fortunate enough to have access to past newspapers on CD-ROM, a delay of between a few weeks and several months occurred before 'current' material was available for students.

To help me decide whether to keep, discard or amend the operation of the vertical file, I posed a series of questions to teacher-librarians around Australia. The majority of people who responded through the OZTL_NET electronic mailing list were from schools which still had vertical files, although some were considering discontinuing them. The following is a summary of their responses interspersed with some of my own ideas.

Comments from libraries who have retained the vertical file...

Access to VF materials

• Heavy usage where resources scarce, e.g. no computer network.
• Students find it easy to use and often use VF as first place to search for current information.
• Articles may be borrowed using barcoded plastic pockets.
• Some libraries make the VF a semi-closed access collection available only on completion of a 'Resource Request Slip'.

Organisation of VF

• Most VFs were arranged in alphabetical order using SCIS headings - a small minority being maintained in Dewey Decimal order.
• VF used more when catalogue's subject headings pointed to its contents as well as to print materials.
• For safekeeping, many libraries stapled clippings to folders.

Contents of VF

• Most libraries used VF to store pamphlets and other ephemeral materials as well as news clippings.
• Some libraries included information downloaded from the Internet in VF.
• Photocopies of periodical articles and photocopies or originals of Current Environmental/Social Issues.

Currency of Materials

• Contents varied from articles dating back 10 years to only last 2 years with frequent culling.

Comments from those who have discarded the vertical file...

Management Concerns

• Very time-consuming - both to create its content and to cull it.
• Missing articles, culling required, lack of space, ugliness and untidiness of bits of paper

Information Literacy

• Not having a VF frees up a staff member to help students with information skills acquisition.
• Does not teach students true information skills - there are other more efficient methods, e.g. newspaper indexes.
• Hardly ever used and not missed when it was discarded!
• Considered a waste of time to try to read the minds of students and staff in advance hoping that the information will be used in the future!

Alternatives to keeping a vertical file...

• There are other methods of providing access to current information including...
  • pamphlet boxes for ephemeral material, appropriately catalogued
  • CSI/CEI articles in special folders
  • offprint file of photocopied articles catalogued in a separate folder
  • booklets of photocopied clippings
• Keep copies of newspapers for up to 12 months - 1 copy on closed access and the other for up to one month on open access to students, but in close proximity to circulation desk. If open access papers are damaged, there are still backup copies.
• Above method does require a lot of storage, much tidying and sorting of papers, but heavy usage of papers justifies work involved.
• Put CSI/CEI articles in plastic pockets in special folders, labelled according to SCIS headings, and held in Reserve at circulation desk. Other 'hot' topics and the 'Issue of the Week' may be added. Multiple copies made of subjects in demand. Kept for 12 months and then discarded.
• Past copies of newspapers, including the Sydney Morning Herald , the Herald Sun and the Melbourne Age , are available on CD-ROM - although students will have to wait for as long as 3 months for the CD.
• Subscribe to newspaper indexes - e.g. Media Scan , Extra , Newscan , Echo.
• Internet or Nexus access to newspapers and AAP News.
• Many schools subscribe to Current Social Issues and Current Environmental Issues (CSI/CEI) - press clippings from Australian newspapers classified according to SCIS headings and supplied every fortnight. They are excellent and are heavily used by students in whatever storage format chosen by libraries.
• Scanning - optical character recognition (OCR) - does not seem to be an option. Those who have tried it suggest that it is as time-consuming as maintaining a vertical file. Articles still need to be clipped, organised and culled!

As a result of the responses to my OZTL_NET enquiry, I have decided to discard the VF at my present school, an idea I had been thinking about for some time. Next year I am going to a school where there is no VF - it was discarded some years ago due to lack of staff - so I am going to trial some of the alternative ideas suggested here.

Judy Wilkes
Curriculum resources co-ordinator
Swan Hill Secondary College