Annex Expansion
Project

Annex Expansion Project:

The following article originally appeared in the October 1997 issue of Kaleidoscope, the monthly CUL staff newsletter.

In mid-July a few Cornell people were treated to a rare sight in Upstate New York. A convoy of tractor-trailers loaded with concrete panels drove into town. For about two days the drivers waited in line to deliver their cargo to the crane driver and crew hired to erect the huge walls of the new Library Annex warehouse. Few in the crowd had ever seen a building's outside walls pulled into place and held up with giant metal pick-up-sticks.

In the weeks since the raising of the walls, the construction crews have built the steel structure to permanently support the concrete panels, erected the block walls of the staff work area, and installed the superflat concrete floor in the warehouse. Now the shelving is being manufactured, and the crews are getting ready for the twelve-week installation process. Photos of the highlights of the construction process appear on the new Annex Web site. To see them, read about the project, and look at the architect's sketches, log on to http://www.library.cornell.edu/newannex. New photos and information about the project are added to the Web site frequently.

As the building expands in all directions, many library staff and students are busy identifying and preparing the collections for the move. The expanded Annex is scheduled to open in March 1998, and the move of one million volumes will begin immediately after the building is ready. Pressure steadily increases on the project staff to make sure that all materials are identified by late October and boxed, barcoded, and ready to ship by February 1998.

Each library has a goal for the amount of material to transfer, which is based on an estimate of the number of volumes that it will be unable to house on campus in 2005. About 700,000 of the one million volumes to be moved will come from Olin Library and the Asia Collections in Kroch Library. The remainder will be transferred from the other libraries, notably Mann (approximately 120,000 volumes) and Engineering (93,000 volumes).

The methods of selection and marking materials vary from library to library. The Web site highlights a list of selection methods and the quantities of books, journals, microfilm, and microfiche to be transferred. Collection librarians, working in the stacks and using computer-generated lists to make their decisions, are focusing on serials that have ceased publication or were canceled by the library and monographs that have not been checked out via the NOTIS circulation system. Some libraries involve faculty groups in the process, and others rely on the computer lists or the experience of the selector. But whatever method is used, one million volumes will be on their way in 1998 and 1999.

Efficiently moving 2,000 items each working day for two years without creating bottlenecks and backlogs requires intense concentration on logistics and timing. Every piece of equipment, including book trucks, book carts, trays, and vehicles must be well designed, safe to operate, and sturdy enough to survive two years of strenuous use. The process must be practiced and timed to make sure that the crews can actually keep the massive amount of material moving and that special circumstances in some libraries, such as distant or absent elevators, must be taken into account. To get the staff ready, the project team is developing training materials and working closely with the staff of Cornell's Environmental Health and Safety Department to ensure that there are very few, if any, injuries during the move.

Besides preparing books and serial volumes for the move, staff are selecting an inventory control system for the warehouse. The software and hardware for managing the shelving and retrieval system will be purchased from a commercial vendor of archival systems. The system must be installed and tested before any library materials can be shipped to the Annex.

Catherine Murray-Rust is Associate University Librarian.