Charlotte, NC -- October 1, 2021. Baker & Taylor, the world's largest supplier to libraries of print books and digital content and services, today announced results from the first year of their popular weeding service, Sustainable Shelves. After evaluating more than 15,000 lists of discarded titles through its user-friendly portal, Baker & Taylor has processed 1.8 million discards and weeded books.

"The dashboard makes uploading weeded titles so easy," said Galadriel Lackey, electronic services coordinator at Oklahoma State University. "Sustainable Shelves takes the guesswork out of used book repurposing and the process is very efficient for the library. Our library will receive tangible credits to use for new purchases, without having to wait for the materials to get sold."

A major player in the academic and public library space for more than 190 years, Baker & Taylor has welcomed over 800 U.S. libraries to Sustainable Shelves. The new print book recycling and re-homing service is attractive to academic and college libraries as they weed their collections to make room for more current books, displays, and study areas for students. Credits for future purchases of ebooks and print materials land in users' accounts within 30 days of shipped books arriving at Sustainable Shelves' facilities.

Kirk Russell, library chair at Bakersfield College in California, said, "Sustainable Shelves has been easy and painless – a great solution for our discarded titles. The software is some of the most user-friendly, well-designed, intuitive software I've ever used."

Credits earned using Sustainable Shelves can be used to fund the purchase of both print books and ebooks. Title Source 360, the industry's leading tool for library collection development, book ordering, invoicing, and fulfillment, is available to academic and college libraries. Users can identify alternate formats for titles, share ordering carts and convert print carts to digital to maximize outreach to remote users. Axis 360 now offers ebook content from more than 1,000 publishers, covering two million titles.

Amandeep Kochar, executive vice president and general manager of Baker & Taylor, said, "As we renew our partnership with academic libraries, Sustainable Shelves is an example of the kind of new and unique service we are providing to libraries to assist with today's needs and challenges, after so much change and re-alignment in the last few years."

About Baker & Taylor

Baker & Taylor, a business unit of education content and technology provider Follett Corporation, offers the most extensive selection of products and services for public and academic libraries, and is the only vendor that can truly offer a one-stop shopping experience for all formats, including print, movies and music, and digital downloadable ebooks and audio content. Visit Baker & Taylor's online selection and acquisitions website, Title Source 360.

About Follett Corporation

Follett Corporation is the world's largest single source of books, entertainment products, digital content and multi-media for libraries and schools. Headquartered in Westchester, Illinois, Follett provides education technology, services, and physical and digital content to millions of students at 70,000 schools and more than 2,850 physical and virtual campus stores in North America. Through Baker & Taylor, Follett's reach also extends to the public and academic libraries.