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PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Office of Communications
Stanhope Hall
Princeton, New Jersey 08544-5264
Telephone 609-258-3601; Fax 609-258-1301Contacts:
Justin Harmon, Communications, (609) 258-5732
Lauren Marshall, Columbia University, Public Affairs, (212) 854-6595
Herb Scher, New York Public Library, Public Relations, (212) 221-7676Date: March 25, 1999
Princeton, Columbia, New York Public Library to Build High-Tech, Off-Site Facility Housing 2 to 30 Million Books
Unique collaboration creates shared storage site, enlarging all three collections and providing books to users within 24-hours
The three institutions with the largest book collections in the greater New York Metropolitan and surrounding area -- the New York Public Library (13.3 million book-like materials), Princeton University (6 million printed volumes) and Columbia University (7 million printed volumes) -- have agreed to build and share a high-tech, automated book storage facility to house millions of their infrequently-used volumes.
The high density facility, expected to be located at Princeton University's James Forrestal Campus, Plainsboro, New Jersey, will consist of 15 build-as-needed modules (approximately 225,000 gross square feet of construction), each capable of storing 2 million volumes. "We at Princeton are delighted to have the opportunity to host this new multi-institutional consortium," said Princeton Provost, Jeremiah Ostriker.
Infrequently-used collections of books and scholarly journals of all three institutions will be moved to remote storage and will be available within 24-hours of a reader request, thereby alleviating the overcrowding of libraries shelves and significant storage problems faced by all three partner institutions -- a problem common to large libraries across the country.
The collaboration has the additional advantage of expanding each of the three collections, as the volumes stored off-site will potentially be accessible to users of all three institutions. It is also expected to accelerate each institution's effort to create digital libraries.
"This consortium marks a moment of triumph of collaboration and cooperation over competition. This group of marvelous libraries will produce high quality access to more materials at a lower cost than any of the institutions could do separately," Columbia Provost Jonathan Cole said. "Great libraries in this era of technological revolutions will be determined more on the quality of the collections and the ease with which materials can be accessed and used by faculty, students, and the public than by the sheer number of journals and books they possess."
"For more than 100 years, it has been the mission of The New York Public Library to use our available resources in a balanced program of collecting, cataloging, and conserving books and other materials, while providing free and open access directly to users," said William D. Walker, Senior Vice President and Andrew W. Mellon Director of The Research Libraries at The New York Public Library. "This facility provides an extraordinary opportunity for us, not only to store, but to extend the life of our growing collections - employing all the technological advances that have occurred in preservation - and to continue to make original materials available to our patrons in a timely fashion."
The initial phase of construction will include a joint processing facility and three modules, each costing $5 million to construct, to be shared by consortium members. Columbia anticipates the move of 1 million volumes by 2001, the first year of operation, and will add to the stored collection at a rate of 110,000 books and journal collections per year. The Public Library will deposit 1.3 million volumes and estimates to increase deposits to 150,000 volumes per year. In the case of duplicate copies, the consortium may be able to maximize space by reducing the copies saved. Costs of storage maintenance and operations will be divided according to each institution's use of the facility.
Upon operation, as books and journals are requested, a shuttle will depart with selections by 9 p.m. daily and will be delivered to each location by morning, delivering items within 24 hours of request.
Books and journals slated for storage are carefully selected by librarians at each institution primarily on the basis of infrequency of use and the availability of materials in an alternate format (such as video, microfilm, online digital reproductions). The majority of materials will include older issues of journals, outdated monographs in fields such as business and finance, and volumes retained for specialized research. According to
Columbia's Deputy University Librarian, Carol Mandel, "The objective is that the collection of materials in off-site storage will have an overall circulation rate of less than 5% per year."
"Sometimes, even in the case of an infrequently circulated book, faculty ask that we not send the item off site because they, in fact, refer to it often. For this reason, our process of selection includes extensive faculty involvement," said Mandel.
Because proper storage conditions are difficult to maintain when volumes are housed in public stacks, the off-site storage has the added benefit of consistent environmental conditions -- the careful control of temperature, humidity, and filtering of particulates in the air -- which in the long-term improve the preservation of collections. As Princeton librarian, Karin Trainer noted, "The storage facility should be thought of as a very efficient, very large library, not a warehouse."
As the first institutional collaboration of its kind, the consortium has, according to partnership leaders, a greater vision for the future -- to assume a collaborative position of leadership in the evolving age of information systems. Princeton and Columbia have agreed to move toward digitizing back issues of stored journals, 60% of all stored materials, which are valued by users purely for their content. Similar to Jstor2, The Mellon Foundation's online digital collection of the back issues of leading scientific journals, the digital project would allow institution users to instantly search, cross-reference, download, and print out articles contained in the combined collections.
According to Princeton Librarian Trainer, "We are very interested in finding ways to deliver the contents of some of our stored works electronically. The chances of developing an excellent electronic delivery system are better if we have partners than if we try to go it alone."
"This consortium is taking a leadership position by moving into a digital age when materials will be made available to people all over the world," said Columbia Provost Cole.