Director's Reflections... Room to Grow: New Off-site Storage Facility
The removal of temporary construction walls in Falk Library reveals new group study rooms on the upper floor, and a state-of-the-art classroom and office suites near the library entrance. In coming months, you will see a comfortable new seating area on the main floor in space formerly occupied by shelving for unbound journal issues. Since the number of print journals received has decreased by about 80 percent in the past five years, the spaceneeded to display recently received issues has shrunk as well.
But one of the most important improvements in HSLS space management isn’t visible to users: after more than a year of planning, we occupied a new storage facility at the Lexington Technology Park (LTP)in the Point Breeze area of the city in June 2006. The LTP facility has the capacity to house more than 200,000 volumes (about 40 percent of our total current collection) on high-density compact shelving, though it currently holds about half that number. Items are stored by size in acid-free boxes, and bar-coded for easy location. The 12-foot-high movable ranges run on tracks to maximize the storage capacity.
Currently, LTP houses materials published prior to 1966, and journals prior to 1975. Over the next year, we will transfer additional older books and journals that are seldom used, and print journal volumes that are already accessible to HSLS users in electronic format. While these older materials are not used as frequently as current resources, it is essential for a major research library such as ours to maintain a legacy collection, so clinicians and academics will have access to information about past practices and research. Daily courier service and state-of-the-art scanning equipment will allow for on-demand delivery of books and electronic copies of articles from LTP to users, making access to the stored materials as convenient as for those on-site.
The availability of stable and accessible permanent storage space for our collection solves a long-standing problem of overcrowded shelves, and offers expanded possibilities for space planning in all HSLS libraries. Removal of collection items to off-site storage frees up space that is needed for library study areas, technology support, instructional activities, offices and meeting rooms, and current collections.
--Barbara Epstein
