Is Age an Appropriate Criterion for Moving Journals to Storage?

One solution to accommodating a growing journal collection is to move lesser-used journals to storage. Past studies have found that scientists tend to use the older, rather than the newer, literature of related disciplines to support their research. If literature is shared between disciplines with different usage patterns, should age be used to select journals for storage? A synchronous citation study was used to examine literature use in physical chemistry. Analysis of the data concluded that use and age are not related and that storage decisions about physics journals need not be contingent on the secondary needs of chemists.