From: "Swisher, Bob" <bswisher@ou.edu>
To: "'it-fyi@listserv.ou.edu'" <it-fyi@lists.ou.edu>
Subject: it-fyi: Research Libraries Plan Facility for Little-Used Books (C
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1999 17:40:29 -0500
3 Research Libraries Plan Vast New Facility to Store Little-Used Books
By JEFFREY R. YOUNG
Three major research libraries have agreed to store their least-used
books and journals in a vast new shared storage facility. The
institutions involved in the project - Columbia University, the New
York Public Library, and Princeton University -- say the arrangement is
an unprecedented collaboration between libraries that once competed
over which had the largest holdings.
The new storage library, expected to open in 2001, will be located on
Princeton's James Forrestal Campus, in Plainsboro, N.J. The building
will hold about seven million volumes when its first phase is
completed, and planned expansions will eventually bring the capacity
to about 30 million volumes.
Researchers at any of the institutions will be able to request books or
journals from the storage library, regardless of which institution owns
the materials. Shuttle vans will deliver the materials to the
researchers within 24 hours.
Jeremiah P. Ostriker, Princeton's provost, says the shared library
represents a change in mindset for university libraries, noting that
universities have traditionally bragged about the number of volumes in
their libraries. "In the past, it's been an area where many
universities sought to compete, rather than cooperate with each other
to provide the very best service for their faculty and students," he
says.
No one's stopped counting yet: Princeton has about six million printed
volumes; Columbia owns about seven million; and the New York Public
Library boasts 13.3 million.
But, says Mr. Ostriker, "I think that's an insane way to measure
library strength." Now that libraries have developed an efficient
interlibrary-loan system and the Internet allows some materials to be
delivered electronically, he says, universities should leave behind
their obsessions with how many printed volumes they own. "What you want
to be able to do is get the information on the faculty or student's
desk as fast as possible."
Officials at Columbia and the New York Public Library began discussing
such a joint storage library years ago, but they were unable to find a
suitable location for it in the New York area, says Carol A. Mandel,
deputy university librarian at Columbia. Informal discussions with
Princeton officials eventually led the three institutions to agree to
work together and to build the library near Princeton.
"The fact that it's three independent institutions coming together at
this level of cooperation, I think that's new," says Curtis L.
Kendrick, director of access services for Columbia University libraries.
Columbia's libraries are so cramped for space that officials even
considered packing books into commercial mini-storage units, Ms. Mandel
says. The university decided to work with a more-specialized storage
vendor in the Bronx instead, and officials have already moved about
200,000 volumes into a private facility there.
But the university looks forward to moving its books out of rented
space. "It will be more cost-effective for us to have our own
facility," notes Ms. Mandel. The new library will also provide better
climate control to preserve the materials, she adds.
The joint storage library will be a kind of high-tech book warehouse,
where books and journals will be arranged by size and shape -- rather
than by subject matter -- to take advantage of every cubic inch of
space. Each item will get a bar code as well as a call number, and
computers will keep track of where every book is located.
Such high-density storage techniques are becoming more and more common
for off-campus university libraries, says Ms. Mandel.
Only the least-requested library materials, or duplicates of
more-popular works, are banished to storage libraries. If an item in
storage is requested frequently enough, however, it can be moved back
to a campus library.
Moving a few hundred thousand books off campus makes room for user
services in campus libraries, says Mr. Ostriker. "In the main
libraries, books have crowded out people," he says. "That's not the
optimal situation."
In the future, the three libraries hope to cooperate on other projects,
such as digitizing materials that are moved to the storage library.
Background story from The Chronicle:
"In the New Model of the Research Library, Unused Books Are Out,
Computers Are In," 10/17/97
Copyright © 1999 by The Chronicle of Higher Education