Princeton Weekly Bulletin March 29, 1999
Princeton to share book bank with Columbia, N.Y Library
The three institutions with the largest book collections in the greater New York Metropolitan and surrounding area -- Princeton and Columbia universities and the New York Public Library -- have agreed to build and share a high-tech, automated book storage facility.
The high-density facility, which will be for storage of infrequently used volumes, is to be located on the University's Forrestal Campus. It will consist of 15 build-as-needed modules, each capable of storing 2 million volumes (approximately 225,000 gross square feet of construction). "We at Princeton are delighted to have the opportunity to host this new multi-institutional consortium," said Provost Jeremiah Ostriker.
Collections of books and scholarly journals of all three institutions will be moved to the new off-site storage facility, alleviating overcrowding of library shelves. The volumes stored off-site will be held in common and will ultimately be accessible to users of all three institutions, available within 24 hours of a reader request.
"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," said Columbia Provost Jonathan Cole. "In this era of technological revolutions, great libraries will be determined more on the quality of the collections and the ease with which materials can be accessed and used than by the sheer number of journals and books they possess."
Princeton's libraries currently house some 6 million printed volumes, Columbia University 7 million printed volumes and the New York Public Library 13.3 million "book-like materials."
Modules cost $5 million
The initial phase of construction is to include a joint processing facility and three modules, each costing $5 million to construct, to be shared by consortium members. In the case of duplicate copies, the consortium will 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.
Books and journals slated for off-site 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 and online digital reproductions). Most materials will consist of older issues of journals, outdated monographs in fields such as business and finance, and volumes retained for specialized research. The objective is for the materials in off-site storage to have an overall circulation rate of less than five percent per year, according to Carol Mandel, deputy librarian at Columbia.
Not a warehouse
The off-site storage facility will have consistent environmental conditions -- the control of temperature and humidity and filtering of air particulates that improve the long-term preservation of collections. "This storage facility should be thought of as a very efficient, very large library, not a warehouse," said Princeton librarian Karin Trainer.
All three consortium members have agreed to move toward digitizing back issues of stored journals (60 percent of all stored materials), which are valued by users purely for their content. The digital project would allow institution users to instantly search, cross-reference, download and print out articles contained in the combined collections.
"We're very interested in finding ways to deliver the contents of some of our stored works electronically," said Trainer. "The chances of developing an excellent electronic delivery system are better if we have partners than if we try to go it alone."