A public academic library collaborates with a private academic library to plan for and share resources in a newly built Harvard-style, high density storage facility

Abstract

Many academic libraries are challenged with providing space in their buildings for research, teachiing, and learning for their campus communities. Off-site storage facilities are now widely used to store aging collecions that have low circulation. This presentation will describe the challenges of a high profile collaboration between two academic libraries with disparate needs, to plan, build and operate a Harvard-style, high density storage facility to store and preserve retrospective paper, print, microforms, and archival collections. The goal of this joint venture is to free up valuable campus space and provide facutly and students access to a shared collection of resources for scholarly research. Not only will the facility be used for storage but it will also operate as a library service center. Circulation, interlibrary loan, and universal borrowing services will be provided from the service center.

The presentation will describe how this project is being managed and give some insight into the process of developing a collaborative work schedule to guide teams from both institutions to plan and prepare for ingesting millions of volumes into and operating a high density storage facility.