Against the Grain

Volume 24 | Issue 3 Article 10

June 2012 Forward Into the Past-Offsite Book Depositories: The uturF e of Libraries John D. Riley BUSCA, Inc., [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Riley, John D. (2012) "Forward Into the Past-Offsite Book Depositories: The uturF e of Libraries," Against the Grain: Vol. 24: Iss. 3, Article 10. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7771/2380-176X.6269

This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. SAGE’s White Paper ... from page 20 Forward into the Past: Offsite Book

In concluding, the OCLC report notes that Depositories, The Future of Libraries? the network of organisms within an ecosystem contributes to its growth and expansion by by John D. Riley (Eastern Regional Sales Manager, BUSCA, Inc.) facilitating adaption, change, and contribution. www.buscainc.com A critical balance between cooperation and competition generates energy and motivates pen stacks are a fairly recent develop- In fact, my interest in the subject of archival the evolution of the ecosystem toward higher ment that can be traced back to nine- storage came about from a talk I attended given function, nourishing the entire community. In a Oteenth-century English and American by Matthew Sheehy, Head of Access Services Web-scale world, collaborations must both pro- public libraries when their library collections of the Harvard University Libraries, where mote sharing and drive innovation.6 As dem- began to exceed the size of the reading room. he gave a detailed history and tour of the facili- onstrated in the NISO and NFAIS instance, Book stacks quickly evolved into a fairly ty using slides and pictures. The size and scope this will require establishment of shared values standard form in which the cast iron and steel of this project so amazed me that I later asked and principles that can support cooperation and frameworks supporting the bookshelves also Matthew for a personal tour. He turned me commerce through partnerships that co-create supported the floors, which often were built over to the capable hands of Patrick O’Brien, a vision of the future with content publishers of translucent blocks to permit the passage of Systems and Special Projects manager of the and their platform providers, libraries and light (but were not transparent, for reasons of Depository. Lee Anne Hooley, Dark Archive their service providers, library consortia, and modesty).1 Project and Document Delivery Librarian, was national and international standards initiatives. Previous to open stacks, archival storage a great resource for details about the journal “A Web-scale world makes this conversation was the norm. The current practice of offsite archiving function of the Depository. urgent — and exciting.”7 storage can just as easily be thought of as ar- I visited the Harvard Depository on a cool chival storage. Books and other materials are March afternoon, and it was a good preparation Endnotes kept in a secure, climate-controlled environ- for entering the temperature and humidity- ment with access limited to individual requests controlled warehouse that is kept at a constant 1. Somerville, M. M., Schader, B. J., & Sack, J. R. Improving the Discoverability of filled by librarians or other library personnel. fifty degrees and thirty-five percent humidity. Scholarly Content in the Twenty-First Cen- Archives have been a major component of The Depository is also pressurized from inside tury: Collaboration Opportunities for Librar- libraries since their inception, and offsite to create an outgoing breeze when doors are ians, Publishers, and Vendors. A White Paper storage has been used ever since the opened to keep out unwanted intruders such commissioned by SAGE. Thousand, Oaks, first libraries were created. Most as flying insects. So a cool gust of air CA: SAGE, 2012. http://surveys.sagepubli- libraries in Europe still keep greeted us as we entered the towering cations.com/Survey.aspx?surveyid=3431 books in storage with access stack area. Summer is the hardest time 2. Walker, Jenny. NISO launches new only allowed by request after for the Depository with the infamous Open Discovery Initiative to develop stan- searching a catalogue of their New England humidity forcing the dards and recommended practices for library discovery services based on indexed search. available materials. Perhaps air conditioners and dehumidifiers NISO Press Release, October 25, 2011. their holdings of incunabula and to run twenty-four hours a day. http://www.niso.org/news/pr/view?item_k other rare books or simply the On this day the Depository was ey=21d5364c586575fd5d4dd408f17c5dc scarcity of many books encouraged handling its usual hundreds of requests 062b1ef5f the practice. from the Harvard Libraries and 3. Lawlor, B. email to list.niso.org, Febru- We have reached a similar situa- many from its Borrow Direct partners: ary 1, 2012. For full text, see: http://info. tion today with an explosion of infor- Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dart- nfais.org/info/codedraftintroduction.pdf. mation and an inability to house all of it mouth, New York Public, University 4. Libraries at Webscale: A Discussion comfortably within reach. In addition, mass , , and . The Document. Dublin, Ohio: OCLC, 2011, p. of Pennsylvania Princeton Yale 31. http://www.oclc.org/ca/en/reports/web- digitization has quickly converted tens of mil- partners have access to each others’ catalogues, scale/default.htm lions of books to electronic format resulting in and patrons can “borrow direct” from par- 5. Ibid., p. 32-33. less demand for the printed versions. Between ticipating libraries simply by requesting items 6. Ibid., p. 33. these two irresistible forces libraries now find from their catalogue screens. The books in the 7. Ibid. that returning to the archival model for stor- Depository are all in the library’s catalogue and age, not just of little used items, but current can be delivered anywhere on campus within a materials as well, is a viable way to continue day. Books ordered by 6:00 p.m. are delivered growing the collection while re-purposing first thing in the morning. Same-day delivery precious space in the heart of their campuses is also available if ordered early enough in the or in urban settings. day. The Depository circulates about 2.5% of Rumors I am one of those people who initially was its holdings annually, around 215,000 items. from page 16 horrified at the idea of storing most library The Depository also acts as a “Dark Ar- books offsite or in compact shelving. Roam- chive,” not unlike a “Seed Bank” which stores of his wonderful Celtic music out. I listen to ing the stacks was a pleasure I relished in my seeds against the possibility of some future them frequently when I get stressed. college years, but it is not something I do very calamity. By storing runs of journals for JS- Speaking of stressed, I see that someone often nowadays. It has become a rarefied TOR and others, the Depository provides a on my Facebook page noted that Stressed pleasure that has possibly been outweighed by physical backup to online journals. In spite of is Desserts spelled backwards! I love the benefits of “archival” storage: secure and the mass digitization of journals, workers at the palindromes, don’t you? safe storage, climate-controlled atmosphere, Depository deliver many articles electronically And there was even more music involved and easy location of needed items. Some li- after scanning the appropriate journal. in the Penthouse Interviews! One of our braries report that up to fifty percent of books The Harvard Depository has found that hu- interviewees was the brilliant Scott Plutchak searched in open stacks cannot be located, man rather than robotic retrieval of books works who plays with the Bearded Pigs, a band of whether because the item was checked out or, best for them. Employing forklifts fitted with librarians! We are hoping to get the Bearded more disconcertingly, because it was stolen or work stations, they can go directly to the box Pigs to the Conference for a small gig in simply misshelved. One archive that I visited they need and retrieve a single book. Books 2013! Unfortunately, Scott will not be with recently, the Harvard Depository, has lost only are grouped by size after bar coding and the continued on page 59 two books in its twenty-six-year history! continued on page 24 22 Against the Grain / June 2012 person command center monitors more than were probably referring to future digitization Forward into the Past ... a hundred servers. Green lights indicate all is of those holdings. Libraries need to work from page 22 well; red flashes when environmental condi- closely with faculty and students to make sure tions such as temperature or humidity exceed that what is sent off to storage is not material box is bar coded as well. Robotic book retrieval designated parameters. There are at least three that is needed as reference materials. And typically brings back a whole box of books that copies of the entire repository — one in, and librarians need to exert their curatorial control contains the required material. Because of the two outside of, Cambridge. One of them, over what is being saved. One added benefit size of the facility, Harvard has found that secured by thumbprint access, is constantly of sending materials to offsite storage is that it individual-item retrieval works best. being read by machines at the disk level to must be catalogued beforehand. This has led to I got to ride along on one of the lifts with ensure the integrity of the data, a process that more cataloging efforts resulting in more easily Patrick, and I got to see firsthand how easily takes a full month to complete.” locating items in the collection.4 it can be positioned exactly where the driver “Several times a year,” says Tracey I would like to close with an observation wants it. Boxes are stored on shelves that have Robinson, who heads the library’s office for regarding the curatorial aspect of storage from been polished with bowling alley wax to make information systems, “we detect data that have the Cornell University synopsis of offsite sliding the boxes onto steel work trays practi- become corrupted. We engage in a constant library storage: cally effortless. I asked Patrick what other process of refreshing and making sure that I turn readers’ attentions to the work of techniques they employed for long-term stor- everything is readable. Any damaged material Jorge Luis Borges, who knew a thing age, and he told me, “The ‘tray’ boxes in which is quickly replaced with another copy from or two about libraries, and much more we store books upright are made with PH-neu- the backup.”2 about speculation. Writing of an infinite tral paper. The air circulated in the storage area Robotic Storage Depositories “Library of Babel,” Borges describes is filtered mainly for particulates. Lighting in two types of intruders. The first are the storage area is UV-filtered and switched The first time I visited a shelving facility inquisitors, always on the alert for mate- on by motion detection, so overall exposure is for “little-used” books that employed robotic rial that offends orthodox sensibilities. reduced as well as saving power. Pest control is technologies, I also got a personal tour of the “Other men, inversely, thought that the managed on a regular basis with ‘bug lights’ and Jean and Charles Schulz, of Peanuts fame, In- primary task was to eliminate useless periodic cleaning.” We also discussed earth- formation Center at Sonoma State University works. They would invade the hexagons quake preparedness, and Harvard is beginning in Rohnert Park, California. When it opened in [Borges’ library shelves], exhibiting to take action on that front. Depositories in 2000 theirs was the third such facility built in credentials which were not always false, higher-incidence earthquake zones, such as the U.S. (Cal State Northridge was the first in skim through a volume with annoyance, California, have built earthquake-mitigation 1996). Even though many other industries had and then condemn entire bookshelves to details into their construction from the ground been utilizing the same robotic technology for destruction.” (Borges 1962, 84-85)3 up. It cost Stanford University millions of years, libraries only started taking advantage of Much of what offsite storage reminds me of, dollars simply to re-shelve all of the books that them comparatively recently. The first ware- and not just the robotic part of it, is a science came down in their main library during the 1989 houses to employ robotic storage were aircraft fiction tale. In fact, such sci-fi movies as “The Loma Prieta earthquake. manufacturers who needed “just-in-time” Book of Eli” directly address the possibility The Harvard Depository is built in a access to the hundreds of thousands of parts required for assembling even one airplane, let of a loss of books, archives, and, thus, of our “modular” format that has been extended species’ memory. Science fiction has proven several times since its inception in 1986. The alone hundreds of others. Library compact storage is actually one of the smallest uses to be a good predictor of future realities. I am Depository was the first facility specifically glad to see that depositories such as Harvard’s designed for library storage. Previously, older of compact storage in a field where industrial warehouses may cover many acres. are addressing this issue of preservation and warehouses or factories were retro-fitted for re-invention in the real world. library use. This modular design will allow for I also got to visit the robotic storage facility continued growth in a facility that is absorb- at Colgate University that, like Sonoma State, ing nearly a half-million items per year. The has decided to keep archival storage as part of Endnotes the library building. Both libraries found that Depository now contains over nine million 1. “Library” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ items including books, media, photographs, quick retrieval was paramount in convincing Library). and manuscripts. It houses more books than faculty and students of the effectiveness of stor- 2. “Gutenberg 2.0” Jonathan Shaw; Har- the combined holdings of the myriad other ing books away from the open stacks. Colgate vard Magazine (May- June, 2010). Harvard libraries. Because of overcrowded also found that storing current DVDs and other 3. http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/ shelves on campus and the Depository’s ef- media gave them another layer of security for storagehistory.html fective delivery system and limitless storage items that had a habit of “walking” from more 4. “Debate at N.Y. Public Library Raises capacity, most of the new books purchased public spaces. Question: Can Off-site Storage Work for for the library are going directly to the De- In some ways this new view on managing Researchers?” Jennifer Howard; The pository. This has freed up a lot of space in library materials is a return to the past, almost Chronicle of Higher Education (April 27, the Harvard libraries for use as teaching and Medieval in its outlook. In Europe and else- 2012; page A20). meeting facilities. where books are not kept on open shelves for For further reading: Another library, the browsing. Most books are kept in an archival Harvard Baker Li- http://blog.archive.org/2011/06/06/why- brary at the Business School, has developed a setting and are retrieved only on request. This gives much more security to the collection and preserve-books-the-new-physical-archive- “virtual browsing” window on their catalogue of-the-internet-archive/ allows for compact storage. Once upon a time that allows patrons to view books stored off- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-ox- site as if they were on a shelf. For an added books were even chained to library desks for fordshire-16325727 greater security. On a similar note, computer benefit the books are color-coded by frequency http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/ of circulation. use for reading has been compared to more home/891734-264/robot_visions.html.csp ancient modes of interacting with texts: scroll- “Superpostapocalypticexpialidocious” John Harvard Digital Archive ing, bookmarking, and using tabs. Riley, 2010; Benjamin Press; also available “In Cambridge, the Digital Repository Ser- One thing I think we need to keep in mind on Kindle; (title story of the book is about vice (DRS) is a rapidly growing, 109-terabyte is the tension between curatorial demands and the Harvard Depository in a post-apoca- online library of 14 million files representing the desire to “save everything.” When visit- lyptic world). books, daguerreotypes, maps, music, im- ing Sonoma State the librarians joked about To see pictures inside a high-density book ages, and manuscripts, among other things, the depository as “a monument to deferred storage facility, go to YouTube “Views at all owned by Harvard. In a facility that also disposal.” When seeing some of their holdings Duke: Library Service Center.” serves other parts of the University, a two- I couldn’t help but agree, even though they 24 Against the Grain / June 2012