Moving a large collection quickly: A study in chaos

Abstract

The University of Louisville’s Ekstrom Library needed to remove 260,000 items from its shelves, and shift a further 95,000 within an extremely short deadline ahead of plans to redesign its third floor into an inviting, modern, student-friendly space for patrons to enjoy. The move faced three distinct challenges: space, item tracking, and sufficient personnel to complete the project. Although the project finished ahead of schedule, things did not go as smoothly as planned. OPAC issues and lack of sufficient storage space forced the Committee to readjust plans on the fly, resulting in issues that could possibly take years to fix.

Keywords:

• Collection maintenance
• library space
• shifting
• stacks maintenance
• weeding

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.