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Kent State Library in Midst of Massive Move

Thousands of books and periodicals have been shuffled and reorganized as part of a collection move this spring and summer

Things have changed at main library this summer. About 600,000 things.

The , an area of about 15,000 square feet, was cleared to make room for The Math Emporium, a new facility where students can schedule time to improve their math skills. The area features 250 computer stations and a variety of seating space. It's expected to be ready for students when classes begin on Aug. 29.

While clearing the floor presented a challenge, the library staff turned the challenge into a massive project, rearranging the majority of the library's collections and upgrading and improving several aspects of the library at the same time.

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Planning for The Math Emporium began in the fall of 2010, and the first phase of the project — moving the periodical collections — began this spring.

By May 1, the second floor of the library had been cleared of its 200,000 bound items, or as Assistant Dean for Technical Services and Systems Tom Klingler described it, "about 100 years' worth of the bound journal collection."

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That was just the beginning.

Klingler said, "Nine teams of people, with carts, wireless laptops, and barcode scanners, touched all 1.2 million books" in the library this summer.

All of those workers came from the Chesterland, OH, location of AssureVault and from Youngstown-based Carney McNicholas, Inc., Klingler said. Klingler coordinated all the planning and designed the overall project, and while several KSU staff members have been working nearly full time on the project, everyone at the library has been involved in some way, Klingler said.

Roughly half of the library's books now reside in off-site storage, but all are available for circulation through KentLINK and OhioLINK catalogs, Klingler explained.

"A driver brings the requested items daily," he said.

While the scope of the project that started this spring was extraordinary, it's not the first time KSU collections have been shifted to other facilities.  A storage facility on the Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy (NEOUCOM) campus provides storage for KSU and several other universities.

"In the past 16 years we've put about 600,000 items in there," Klingler said. To put this summer's project in perspective, Klingler pointed out, "In 16 weeks we've put essentially the equivalent number of materials, about 580,000, in the AssureVault facility."

While that move constituted a major task, it was only a piece of the overall project. While nearly all of the library's collections were reorganized and moved — at least once — this summer, Klingler used the opportunity to make some other significant changes in the library.

Although about nine linear miles of shelving were removed from the library building, it's unlikely returning students will notice that.

Probably, the biggest change returning students will notice is the addition of new seating throughout the building. Nearly 800 new seats will be in place by the start of the fall semester, including about 75 seats in an area on the second floor that overlooks the plaza.

They may also notice some extra space between the stacks on the sixth through the ninth floors. While workers were reorganizing most of the library's collections and disassembling many shelving units, they  replaced the shelves so the aisles are at least 36 inches wide, and therefore compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements, explained Klingler.

In addition to creating the new Math Lab on the second floor, new seating throughout the building, and reorganizing almost all of the library's materials, bound journals from the Math/Computer Science Library and Chemistry/Physics Library were incorporated into the Main Library's journal collection. The Math and Computer Science library was eliminated, Klingler said. Loose journals will still be housed in the Chemistry/Physics department. 

The total cost of the move was about $698,000. In addition, Klingler estimated annual storage and delivery charges from AssureVault will amount to less than $120,000. Another option he considered at the beginning of the Math Lab planning process was creating a journal service center off-campus. Initial move and first-year operations costs of such a center would have cost more than $800,000, plus ongoing annual rent and utilities charges of more than $200,000, Klingler said, making the massive project an economical choice.

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