Friday, July 18, 2008
To allow for reallocation of space during the $108 million renovation of its main library, OSU decided to move 700,000 books that had come to “clutter the collection.” This, according to an article in Chronicle of Higher Education, will result in larger study areas and more room for "social spaces" that were unable to accommodate the large number of students.
The original reading room, reduced decades ago to provide more shelf space, will be restored to its original purpose. The freeing up of space will result in areas with movable furniture and small, private study spaces that are more “inviting.” While this renovation reduces the size of the collection by nearly a third, walls of glass will allow patrons to be reminded of the "central role books play in a library."
The books will be moved to a storage facility off-site, freeing up "primary real estate on campus," according to Joseph Branin, the university's director of libraries. "I think we will see most libraries moving in this direction."
3 comments:
Well done, Patrick. Very thorough research and presentation.
I'm so glad that they are reverting back to a nice reading room. I love the reading room at my university! That was one of the inviting things about the library - it allows students to get away from their classes and have a quiet, comfortable place to study, or nap, or read a good novel.
It's too bad they decided to use off-site storage, instead of an on-site compact storage system. UNLV's Lied Library uses an Automated Storage & Retrieval unit (LASR) that has worked very well. Patrons only have to wait a few minutes to get volumes from storage, instead of waiting days for them to be delivered from off-site.
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