Hey! Does the Law Library Reading Room think that they get to have all the fun?
Stand back Public Services Division!
We’ll see your 40,000 volume move to temporary space pending the construction of the new and improved Law Library Reading Room, and up the ante to a 2.4 million (give or take 100,000) volume move in anticipation of Collection Services Division replacing the decades old compact shelving in our closed stacks.
Sixty times the volumes, sixty times the fun, right?
Well maybe not. Especially if you were to ask those tasked with the logistics of it all. They just seem to sigh a lot these days.
The good news is that we’re doing it in stages. We’re starting with our smallest space first.
And as a first step, we’re moving 1600 linear feet of older volumes of the United States Congressional Serial Set to space in the Library of Congress’ Adams Building kindly loaned to us by the Library’s Collections Access, Loan and Management Division.
Our staff loads the specially designed trucks used for transporting books over longer distances and secures the front panels so the books don’t fall out while making the trip through the Library’s underground tunnel system.
They then offload the books onto state-of-the-art compact shelving units in the Adams Building until they can be returned home. All the while ensuring that the volumes are still accessible to patrons by way of the Library’s OPAC and our cracker-jack Stacks Services’ staff and contractors.