Items not borrowed for five years would be targeted but nothing would be moved to storage or discarded without consultation with academics.
As much as 58 per cent of monographs had not been used in five years and talks were under way to find a storage site, he said.
Angry staff and students said the university had failed to consider alternatives, such as adding floors. It was a ''false equation'' to say books that were not borrowed were unused, one woman said. Many were read in the library and not taken out. Mr Shipp said that was true of only 2 per cent of unborrowed books. Pressed on how he could know, he replied: ''We do the dust test.''
