Hi, All:

A very interesting discussion. 

I oversaw the collection management function at my previous job in Hong Kong. Shelf space was super-tight when many books were shelved horizontally on top of the others. The library was built to house 600,000 v. but after 20 years, it collects closed to 1.2 million v. So, the library began to implement several measures before I joined the library to address the space issue. 

One measure to downsize the collection was to discard bound journals that the library found the same contents were also available electronically and perpetually via back files (JSTOR, Wiley, etc.) that it purchased. Another measure was to discard those bound journals that the library only kept a few volumes of the entire run. Of course, we also looked at the year and in-house usage of these candidates. Some of the journals were gifts that might have ceased publishing or stopped receiving for some time. 

We also compared with the collection of our consortial member libraries to see what they got. Subject liaisons and affected faculty members were also consulted about the value (especially the intrinsic value) of the candidates before the titles/volumes were finally removed from the shelves. 

So, the retention decision was made case by case. Of course, removing from the shelves inside the library could mean either discarding/recycling the items or moving them to the off-site storage. Items in storage would be re-evaluated after a certain period of time and may be discarded to make room for incoming materials. 

The last point I want to make is that the set retention schedule is not that relevant in my decision making because my experience tells me that we must consider the office politics factor as well. 

My 2 cents. Good luck.