A Visit to the Collection Storage Facility

Posted on 3 November 2023 by mendonckw — No Comments ↓

Picture of a long aisle of high warehouse shelving filled with cardboard trays of books — Looking down an aisle at the CSF

In South Marston, just on the edge of Swindon, there’s an unremarkable-looking, medium-sized warehouse that contains a sizeable chunk of the world’s knowledge. Unlikely location as it might seem to those imagining the Bodleian and other famous libraries as crenelated holdfasts of forgotten tomes, it is in fact here, among the prefab walls and steel girders, that most of its collections are housed. The Book Storage Facility – soon to make good its new name as the Collection Storage Facility (CSF) – has for twelve years now been keeping safe more than 10 million titles, together with maps and other miscellaneous objects, on more than 150 miles of shelving. 30-ish aisles of more than 10 metres high filled with books ordered by size alone (!) are navigated by large picker-like assist vehicles that echo hollowly in the cavernous space. Despite the seemingly random placement, any book can be procured within a minute: if you order up your CSF materials in any Bodleian library by 10.30 am, you are guaranteed they will be available the same afternoon. At the same time, the CSF team works through an enormous mass of scan requests, often more than a hundred a day (more than a 1000 in the first week of Covid!). It was at this massive information management operation that we trainees got a look last week, and boy, were we impressed.

Photo of multiple bays of high warehouse shelving stacks filled with books — The high reaches of knowledge

There was a time, as our wonderful CSF guide told us, when Bodleian book transit meant a horse-drawn dray going between different Oxford locations, the horse reportedly refusing to pass by the King’s Arms pub without a drink (one might think the driver had something to do with this, though). Today, vans go out twice daily from the CSF, where storage is optimised for efficiency. Books are sized (from A to E), sorted and packed onto short acid-free cardboard trays (assembled on site) in the large workroom. Then, they’re shelved several rows thick in the 70-metre long aisles of one of the four temperature- and humidity-controlled storage rooms (outfitted – for obvious reasons – with a massive sprinkler system: wet books, as we learned, can be repaired – charred books can’t). Because all items and trays are barcoded, the electronic request system is able to immediately show staff the most efficient way to fetch any item. It is people, though, who have had to input all these books onto that system: when the facility opened in 2010 (at a cost of more than 20 million pounds), 7.5 million items had to be ‘ingested’ into the facility in one go. These had been gathered together from previous storage locations, including the ‘New Bodleian’ (Weston) library and Gladstone Link, the former Nuneham Courtenay storage facility, and even deep storage in Cheshire salt mines! As a continuation of this mammoth operation (which took a mere 15 months!), two days a week new material still arrives from the Special Collections and Legal Deposit teams: indeed, once again, and in what is a stable motif in the history of the Bodleian, space is becoming a precious commodity, especially for the largest-size material! The planned new storage chambers will surely be very welcome.

Picture of temporary storage caddy filled with trays of books — Newly ingested or audited material being readied for storage

The CSF, it should be stressed, does not just contain academic books: its materials are as varied as you could imagine. There’s university paperwork. There’s Mills and Boon. There are boxes of free toys that came with magazines. There are up to 2 million maps stored across multiple floors filled with planchests, some of which we got to have a look at (the relief map of Britain was a firm favourite!). There is archive material. There are busts. There are death masks. And all this mass of material is managed fulltime by only 23 people: that is, as our guide pointed out, almost half a million books per person. If that is not impressive, I’m not sure what is.

We all loved it. This visit was a privilege, and a joy, not least because of the warm welcome we received (thanks to the CSF staff!). Looking down from a platform over a vista of high shelving, a picker bleeping unseen in a distant aisle, and, when the door opens, a flash of Iggy Pop playing in the background, it’s actually a rather emotional sight: here they are, all of these books that writers poured their heart and time into, being kept safe for the future, in a warehouse in Swindon.

The Life Cycle of a BSF Book

Posted on 28 November 2022 by Alice — No Comments ↓

On Wednesday 26th October the 22-23 Trainees had their annual Book Storage Facility Tour. As this blog has seen a good 12 years of posts about the facility (we’ve been visiting since its grand opening in 2010) this year we thought we might do something a little different. Rather than wax lyrical on its 11m tall shelves (which would stretch 153 miles end to end) and its incredible collection of around 12 million items, we thought we’d start a little smaller and look at the life cycle of a single, solitary BSF book.

Ingenious Ingesting

White cardboard boxes are splayed open on a workbench, the top box is being held by a woman in a high-vis jacket to show the viewer. — Boxes for books

New books first arrive at the BSF through the Delivery Room and then progress onto the Processing Floor to undergo the process of ingestion. No, this has nothing to do with any bodily functions (thankfully), instead it’s the term we use to describe an item being welcomed into the Bodleian’s collections. For our book, this means first being given an all-important barcode. Barcodes are to Librarians what ear tags are to animal conservationists, we use them to track the movements of our respective objects of study. Without this barcode it would be impossible to find the item once it disappeared onto the near endless shelves of the BSF. Barcodes are assigned to books based on how they were acquired, barcodes starting with a number 7 are legal deposit items, and non-legal deposit books will start with either a 6 or 3.

Now that our book has a barcode attached to it, its height is measured, and it’s placed into a special paper box with other books of the same size. Our book gets only the best as this box is made of special acid-free paper sourced from Germany. The handle is also a specially made plastic, tested thoroughly to ensure that it won’t melt in a fire. The BSF has thousands of these incredible boxes across the site, and its one poor person’s task to take the flat nets and build them up into boxes. I’m told it’s one of the riskier jobs on the rota given the likelihood of vicious and painful paper cuts.

With our book safely nestled in its new home it’s time to go through some more scanning. Having already had a barcode stuck to its front cover and scanned into the system; the book now has its barcode scanned again to attach it to the barcode of the box it’s sitting in. It goes through this process not once, but twice, to ensure it’s not missed the first-time round. This method of grouping books into boxes based on their height rather than their contents may seem to be a textbook case of judging a book by its cover, but I can assure you that the BSF isn’t organising its books this way just to fit in with the latest BookTok trends. There is a logic to this madness.

Organising the books by height, as some storage-savvy librarians may already have guessed, is the most efficient way to

Tall industrial shelves extend to the ceiling with books on the various shelves, a forklift/cherrypicker runs between the two shelves. — BSF shelves and cherrypicker

make use of the space. Rather than one shelf accommodating books ranging in size from the tiny ‘Old King Cole’ (clocking in at a miniscule 0.9mm) to the unwieldy ‘Birds of America’ (an impressive 1×0.72m in size), the shelves at the BSF maximise their use of space and ensure no large gaps are left from having to accommodate books of diverse sizes. A further benefit to mixing up the collections this way, is that should the unthinkable ever happen and disaster strike, causing damage to some of the books, you’re less likely to lose an entire curated collection all at once. Happily, this is not something the BSF has ever really had to worry about, as it has a stellar record on the safety and well-being of the books in its care (12 years and no major incidents!)

So, it is with great care that various boxes of books are loaded up onto one of the building’s many forklift/cherry-picker hybrids and chauffeured into their new position atop one of the many towering shelves inside the BSF. Our books travel in style as the machine they are transported on is carefully designed to assure a smooth ride between the very narrow aisles of the BSF. The floor is laced with a magnetic wire that guides the machine with pin-point accuracy between the shelves to ensure there are no unfortunate accidents á la Rachel Weisz in her ground-breaking role as Evelyn Carnahan in The Mummy. Once our book has arrived safely in its place it is scanned once more to connect it with the barcode number for its specific shelf, then it goes into a cosy hibernation, waiting quietly for a wandering reader to stumble across its SOLO (Search Oxford Libraries Online) record and make a request.

Daring Deliveries

When this occurs, it’s time for our book to spring back to life. Its name will make a list of VIP books for collection, generated 6 times a day. If it makes that list before 10:30 it will likely be delivered the same day, any later and turnaround extends into the next day. Once the list has been picked, the book makes a return journey via cherry picker back to the Processing Floor where it is packaged into a special blue tote (fancy librarian name for a box)

A pile of books is neatly stacked inside a blue plastic box — Books in boxes

labelled with the name of the library where our reader wishes to receive it. That tote is then loaded onto a van (which runs this route twice a day) and then starts this mass migration of books from Swindon into Oxford. The van deposits the books at Osney where they are sorted into two further vans with different routes. Regardless of which route they take, our books will arrive at the library in good time for the reader to access them for whatever essay, tutorial or exam they might be taking part in.

Before the reader can access the book however, they need to know it is there – that’s where we librarians come in. At the Radcliffe Camera and the Old Bodleian, we receive deliveries sometimes as often as twice a day, although for most other libraries the frequency is a little slower. When those deliveries arrive, we must safely guide the delivery van into place, then carry all the boxes back and forth (being careful not to mix books returning with books arriving). The totes are carefully packaged so as not to be too heavy to carry but many are still hefty, clocking in at roughly 10-15kg each when full. Once the delivery is unpackaged, we gently scan each book and check it is correctly tagged for its reader to find with a Self-Collect slip, and then shelve it accordingly.

Once its reading period is over, the librarians will remove it from the shelves and begin the whole migration process in reverse. Upon their arrival back at the BSF, the books are sorted according to their barcode numbers, packaged back into the correct boxes, and returned to hibernation to await their next adventure.

Scrutable Scanning

A book rests the base of a machine which has a central pole extending from the back of the base up to house a scanning light above the book. There is also a glass plate that can be pulled down over the book, and various button on the base. — A BookEye scanner

Another important aspect of the BSF book life cycle is scanning. For books that cannot undertake the twice daily migration another option is available, as the BSF has been offering a ‘Scan and Deliver’ service (clearly named for all the Adam and the Ants fans out there) since 2012. Once again, our book will be placed on a special list, picked from the shelves according to the barcodes listed for its location and taken to a special room inside the BSF designed entirely to accommodate the massive amounts of scanning that takes place. The BSF is the most efficient of all the libraries’ locations in terms of scanning, and they are proud to note that they average around 45,000 pages scanned a month. It’s no doubt then that the staff in charge of scanning at the BSF are highly skilled at handling these books.

When scanning commences, each item is carefully lifted from its place on the scanning shelf and laid to rest in a special BookEye scanner. These scanners are specially designed to work with the book’s physiology and allow it to be scanned without damaging its spine or any other vital organs such as pages or binding. The book is then pressed gently underneath a sheet of glass and a bright light runs across it, logging every curve and line of the text within. The pages of the book are delicately turned, and the process repeated for every required page. A skilled scanner can complete an entire chapter without distressing the book at all. Once all the requisite information is recorded the book is lovingly returned to its nest in the bowels of the BSF.

Dastardly Dangers

So far you can see that the books within the BSF are incredibly well cared for and face little in the way of existential threats. In fact, many of the natural predators of the book are managed by the BSF in such a way that they pose little to no threat at all.

A large red pipe connected to multiple smaller pipes with levers and gauges — Pipes for the sprinkler system

One of the most prescient threats to the lives of our books is the risk of fire. Thankfully the BSF has ensured our books are safe from harm in that respect, they’re kept safe by massive 4-hour fire walls (and 2-hour fire doors) to minimise the risk of fire spreading from one book settlement to the next. There’s also an incredibly sensitive air sampling system connected to the building’s sprinklers and two massive tanks of water ready to extinguish any flame the moment it sputters to life. Despite its sensitivity, the sprinkler system has only ever had one false alarm in 12 years. The poor books caught in the ensuing deluge were diligently dried out by an outside firm and then returned happily to their respective nests in the store (although a few items still have visible watermarks from the incident).

Another potential danger to our books is pests. Many a librarian has known the horror of leafing through the pages of a book, only to find they have been nibbled on by a parasitic visitor. However, thankfully, conditions at the BSF are such that they discourage other forms of life from outstaying their welcome. The rooms are temperature controlled to a perfect 18°C and the lack of moisture and other food sources mean that any adventurous animals that might find their way in, such as woodlice or flies, often die off fairly quickly in an environment that is perfectly suited for nourishing books but hostile to pretty much everything else. This being said, pest control still makes a visit to the BSF every 5 weeks or so just to ensure no intrepid insects have braved the harsh conditions to gorge on the juicy pulp of book paper.

Thanks to these careful measures, the life expectancy for books at the BSF is long and it’s rare for books to die of unnatural causes under their care, so we can rest easy in the knowledge that the books under that big warehouse roof will have a long and happy life.

A long grey warehouse made up of a main chamber with a metal and concrete exterior and a smaller side chamber with a wood panelled front entrance. — The BSF (Book Storage Facility)

An afternoon at the BSF

Posted on 22 November 2021 by brownj — No Comments ↓

On Wednesday the 27^th of October, the 2021/22 cohort of trainees were given the opportunity to visit the Bodleian Libraries Book Storage Facility (BSF), on the outskirts of Swindon.

Why is the BSF necessary? A brief history of legal deposit:

The Bodleian Library is one of six copyright libraries in the UK, which entitles the Library to receive a copy of any material published in the UK, under the Legal Deposit Libraries Act (2003).
This elite status was first obtained by Sir Thomas Bodley, who was responsible for re-establishing the University Library in 1602.
Sir Thomas Bodley wanted to ensure that the library (now Duke Humfrey’s Reading Room) would thrive, continuing to be endowed with items. In 1610, he obtained an agreement with the Stationers’ Company, which ensured that the Bodleian Library could claim a copy of everything printed under royal licence.
As such, the collections belonging to the Bodleian Libraries have expanded significantly and exponentially over the last 400 years, with the current total standing at approximately 13 million items.
At the beginning of this century, concerns began to grow regarding the limited storage capacity in Oxford, and discussions for an offsite storage facility began.

The BSF was officially opened in 2010, costing £26 million and housing 7 million books, maps, manuscripts, newspapers, periodicals and various other items that were slowly overwhelming the Bodleian’s dwindling capacity. The move took 15 months, with an average of 23,000 items being delivered, processed and shelved per day! The original idea was to store low usage items, drawing together collections from a variety of Bodleian storage facilities, including: the Underground Bookstore (now the Gladstone Link), the New Bodleian Library (now the Weston Library) and even some legal papers kept in salt mines in Cheshire!

Since 2010, the BSF has continued to grow. The collection now stands at roughly 9.5 million items, held on 153 miles of shelving and configured to accommodate various sizes of items. However being offsite doesn’t mean the books are inaccessible. The BSF team provide an essential service to readers through their book delivery service, which allows readers to access material held offsite, requested material being delivered to specific Bodleian reading rooms once a day, 5 days a week*. This allows readers to gain access to an incredible amount of physical material quickly and easily, which significantly benefits study.

*COVID scheduling still applies

Naturally, we were all very excited to visit the BSF, but in particular the trip was of interest to me as the Old Bodleian trainee. The Old Bod receives approximately 80% of the books ordered from the BSF, so I was determined to gain a greater understanding of the processes that allow items to be found, picked, processed and delivered to our library.

Arrival, Introductions and Lots of Tea:

The journey from Oxford to Swindon takes about 50 minutes, which is the route the delivery van takes twice a day to deliver and collect the books from our libraries.

Upon arrival, we were greeted by Lindsay (Bodleian Storage and Logistics) and Chris (Collection Co-ordinator), who provided us with lots of tea and biscuits, before we were given an introductory presentation about the BSF. This included some brilliant information about the formation of the facility, and the ongoing projects that are being managed at the BSF. For example, libraries at different academic institutions have been able to store vast amounts of their collections whilst they renovate/remodel their own buildings.

The Processing Floor:

Upon the conclusion of the presentation, we were shown directly into the processing room, which was actually the size of a small warehouse! This is where the majority of the work is carried out, accompanied by a rotating playlist of music chosen by the staff. On this occasion, we were treated to some 80s hits as we were led into the delivery room.

Delivery Room

The delivery room takes up the last part of the warehouse, and it is where the vans are loaded and unloaded with book deliveries. The room provides shelter, so that the books are never impacted by the weather.

Sending Books

Next, is the area where books are collected, processed and packaged – ready to be sent out to the various libraries for collection. Seven times a day, a list of requested items is printed, automatically organised into an order that allows the drivers to navigate the most effective route through the aisles. The books are then collected by staff, who package them into distinct trays to be processed. At this station, the books are scanned in to the computer and their end destination is listed. This information allows staff to know where the item is heading, which will dictate where the item needs to be stored before packaging. Just before delivery, these books are then boxed up, weighed to ensure that no box is too heavy for an individual to lift, and moved to the delivery room ready to be loaded.

Receiving Books

At the other end of the processing room is the returns desk. Here books are unboxed, scanned back into the BSF and placed on two distinct benches: legal deposit and non-legal deposit. Books are separated by size, and placed into rows according to their aisle location. These rows are also divided into grids. The grids help to manage the returns process, as they are the exact same size as the boxes that the books are packaged back into, in order to be returned to the shelves.

Stock Check Station

The final area that we were shown in the processing room was the stock check station. Here we were met by Lisa (Business Process and Project Manager), explained the importance of this station. In order to ensure that information about the books is correct and current, items are brought through from the stacks and scanned into the computer. This ensures that books can be easily located and readers can request items with ease, as items are accounted for at all times.

The Main Floor:

Following the tour of the processing floor, we were joined by Teresa (Team Leader at the BSF) and led up to a set of large doors, ready to be shown the internal workings of the main warehouse. As the doors slide up, the stacks were revealed – which at eleven metres high was a rather impressive and intimidating sight!

The main floor is made up of 4 sections: two legal deposit and two non-legal deposit.

The warehouse is kept at approximately 50% humidity and temperature controlled at 18 degrees, with discreet fans to ensure any dust is removed, which all helps to preserve the books in the best condition. In addition to this, there are 15,000 sprinkler heads dotted around the facility, which are fuelled by two huge water tanks – in case of emergency. Although it seems drastic – and slightly horrifying – to think of books being doused with water, there are not many alternatives. Additionally, as Lindsay pointed out, there is a 1 in 6 million chance of a sprinkler being set off in error, and “it is easier to repair a book damaged by water, than a book destroyed by fire”.

Book Organisation

Books in the stack are organised by three barcodes, which are located:

On the shelf on which the book is located
On the box in which the book is located
On the book itself.

This system allows for books to be easily moved to different locations in the stack, which is necessary when reorganising (for instance if books are heading back to be stored permanently in libraries, or are in high demand so convenience dictates a more accessible location).

This organisational structure allows books to be located in approximately a minute, which is very impressive, however the randomised order of books seems an alien concept to us as library trainees – where are all the shelfmarks?

Book Collection

Books are collected by staff, using machines that are a cross between a forklift and a cherry-picker. Staff will manoeuvre to the beginning of the relevant aisle, before they are magnetically connected to a metal guide on the floor, which allows them to navigate in precise straight lines through the narrow aisles. Once they reach the correct column of shelves, they are able to raise the platform to the correct shelf height and slide out the necessary archive tray. The books in the tray are naturally sorted according to popularity, as the high demand items are usually returned to the front of the tray.

Maps, Masks and Miscellaneous Items

Alongside the incredibly impressive shelves, the BSF stores a vast collection of additional items that don’t fit neatly into archive trays. These items are divided across 5 levels: 4 levels of plan-chests (thin drawers designed to hold the 1.5 million maps stored at the BSF – see below), and 1 level of additional shelving. The latter holds a variety of papers, artefacts and pieces of art from across the libraries. We were shown around 2 levels, which included viewing:

A beautifully illustrated map of 1800s London, sketched from the view of a hot air balloon
A horrifying death mask, courtesy of the Ashmolean museum
An abnormally large book, created by gluing regular A4 sized pages onto A1 sized pages

The Scanning Room:

We concluded the visit with a look inside the scanning room, in which a dedicated team of two work through scanning requests from readers. This became an essential service for readers during the pandemic, as the scanning facilities allowed students to continue accessing resources remotely, when they were unable to enter the physical libraries. This service continues to be popular to this day, with the BSF team completing over 1000 individual page scans per day!

Final Thoughts:

We were all really thankful for the time that Lindsay, Lisa, Teresa and Chris took to make us feel welcome, and for their kindness in showing us around the BSF. Overall this was a brilliant trip and an unmissable opportunity to look behind the doors of the Bodleian Libraries largest storage facility.

12 million books and a cherry-picker: Graduate Trainee visit to the Bodleian Storage Facility

Posted on 12 June 2020 by haynesd — 3 Comments ↓

Working from home for the foreseeable future, locked-down librarians are wistfully recalling the rustling of pages, the gentle bustle of readers, and that unmistakable eau de bibliothèque. Whilst the Bodleian is working hard at ‘keeping the University reading‘, and we’re all getting used to Teams and Zoom, a VPN’s no substitute for being among the books. So, while we’re all yearning for more library in our lives, what better time to revisit our 2019 trip to the Bodleian Storage Facility — which holds more books than anyone can imagine.

Exterior of the Bodleian Storage Facility (Wikimedia Commons).

Some quick facts:

The BSF opened in 2010, with an initial capacity of 8.4 million items
It sits on a 17-acre site just outside of Swindon
The BSF replaced the New Bodleian (now the Weston Library) as the main storage site
Following reconfiguration, the BSF now holds over 12 million items
A book delivery service to departmental libraries operates twice a day on weekdays
In October 2015, the BSF fulfilled its one millionth book request

The Grand Tour

Our visit began with a talk by Boyd Rodger, the (then) Logistics Manager of the BSF. Boyd gave us a run-down of the BSF and the book delivery service. The BSF differs from a library in a few important ways. Items at the BSF are organised only by size, which should scandalise any librarian. You won’t find any readers here, either, and you can’t browse the BSF’s shelves in any conventional sense — but you can order any book from the BSF to arrive the following weekday, or that afternoon if you got your order in before 10am. Every item is barcoded, so requests placed via SOLO are logged by the BSF’s computer system, which tells staff where to find books and the optimal order in which to pick them. Once gathered, requests are boxed in the processing area and loaded onto vans for delivery. At their destination libraries, deliveries are scanned in and returns loaded back onto the van. Efficiency is key, because book delivery is a vital part of Reader Services at the Bodleian Library. Boyd told us that e-books aren’t threatening to close libraries — in fact, the Bodleian is buying more physical books than ever.

Processing floor at the BSF, with books to be sorted on trolleys.

So how do you store 12.5 million books — and not only books, but maps, manuscripts, microfilms, periodicals and newspapers too? By 2009, the New Bodleian (which had 11 floors of space) as well as facilities at Nuneham Courtenay and a salt mine in Cheshire (yes, really) were at capacity. Costing approximately £25 million, and involving the biggest book-move in the Bodleian’s history (6.5 million items!), the BSF needed some serious storage. As we entered the main warehouse, it became clear that they really pulled it off.

Interior of the Bodleian Storage Facility, showing its unusual classification system: books are organised by barcode; the books in each box become organised naturally by usage.

The BSF is huge. Its shelves are 11 metres high and over 70 metres long. Before the automatic lights kick in, the narrow aisles seem to converge into darkness. We wore high-visibility jackets to alert staff driving the book-retrieval vehicles to our presence. A cross between a cherry-picker and a forklift, these vehicles are configured to fit exactly between the shelves, allowing staff to retrieve an impressive average of one book per minute. Although I personally wouldn’t like to be 11 metres up in the air, Boyd assured us it’s a very safe operation!

During downtime, staff at the BSF conduct stock-takes and look for ways to consolidate and optimise the available space. For us trainees, Boyd’s most important lesson was that future-ready libraries must be logistically and spatially adaptable:

Low-use books kept in storage might suddenly become grow in demand and require relocation ‘on-site’, or vice-versa;
Renovation or building work might require temporary storage (in fact, the BSF currently holds several thousand volumes from Cambridge), so could your facility accommodate for that?
Existing space can always be reconfigured to meet new challenges and needs;
Since an off-site facility means books always moving around, could it also offer research facilities? Some libraries are considering specialised reading rooms to avoid transit for fragile or valuable material.

Perhaps most importantly, as the current crisis forces libraries everywhere to re-imagine services, the BSF’s dual role in storage and logistics brings it to the fore of the Bodleian Libraries’ updated Scan & Deliver service. Pre-lockdown, photocopies of material in storage were useful for scholars who could not visit a library; in our cautious post-lockdown world, it’s clear that the ability to provide resources remotely will be vital.

All of this is a far cry from what the librarians of yore imagined. As a trainee at the Weston Library, I was aware of the building’s history as the old stack, and of the early-century conveyor belt that famously transported books underneath Broad Street to the Old Bodleian. I wondered how books were kept before it was built, and the archives obliged…

Crowds gathered at the New Bodleian Library (now Weston Library) for its grand opening in 1946 (photograph from the Rare Books office).

A Brief History of Space

In 1908, the incumbent Bodley’s Librarian, E. W. B. Nicholson, made a public plea to save the Proscholium from a grim fate as a glorified bike shed. The idea is barely conceivable to us now: the Proscholium, refurbished in 2009, has become a central hub for students and tourists alike. But in Nicholson’s day the Library was short on space, and every available nook was in danger of being turned into storage. The acquisition of the entire Old Bodleian quadrangle by 1859 (which had, according to Thomas Bodley’s vision, housed examination and teaching rooms) and the Radcliffe Camera in 1860 couldn’t match the rapid growth of the collections. In 1909, work began on the Underground Bookstore beneath the Radcliffe Camera (which now houses the Gladstone Link), the Library’s first purpose-built storage solution. At the time, it was the largest bookstore of its kind in the world. The Oxford Chronicle for 29th November 1912 recorded the opening speech of Nicholson’s successor, Falconer Madan, who even at that moment was conceptualising more storage:

‘Then will be the time for the engineers to set to work burrowing on the other side of the Camera, so that another quarter of a century’s growth may be provided for by a second subterranean chamber’.

The prophetic Madan foresaw that ‘within fifty years every college and institution will have a receptacle for its stores beneath its front quadrangle’ — in recent years, St John’s, Magdalen, and the Queen’s College have all completed very similar projects. What’s also interesting about Madan’s speech is the admission that even the Bookstore represented borrowed time. Sure enough, within that quarter of a century, designs were drawn up for another new storage facility that would provide some respite for the Bodleian’s beleaguered librarians and cataloguers. Giles Gilbert Scott’s design for the New Bodleian won him the contract, but here are a few proposals from the archives that didn’t make the cut:

Designs for a new library — Top: a neo-classical edifice spanning the Old Bodleian and the Clarendon Building, but at the expense of the Sheldonian prospect; Bottom-left: a strikingly modern idea, possibly located near Port Meadow; Bottom-right: building here would have sacrificed much of University Parks.

One particularly dreadful design would have seen the Old Bodleian’s Quadrangle roofed over and the resulting central compartment turned into stacks. Although in concept this isn’t too far removed from the New Bodleian, I’m sure we’re all glad it was rejected…!

In 1602, Thomas Bodley could not ‘rest as yet satisfied’ with the small number of books in his new Library, but predicted correctly that an influx of donations could only influence more. Centuries on, and the Bodleian has benefited from enormous donations, greatly increased buying power, and the strengthening of its historical legal deposit. It’s anticipated that the Bodleian Storage Facility will get an extension within the near future, as more and more items pour in. A modern history of the Bodleian, then, is one of exponential growth — 220,000 printed books in 1849; one million books in 1914; some 12 million today — and a far cry from the modest 2,500 tomes that once comprised Duke Humfrey’s Library.

Duke Humfrey’s Library: engraving from David Loggan’s ‘Oxonia Illustrata’ (1675) (Wikimedia Commons).

The History Faculty Library’s Collections

Posted on 3 February 2019 by jonesr — No Comments ↓

The first weeks of February occupy the middle of Oxford University’s Hilary Term. They represent a busy time for students; the History Faculty Library’s self-collect shelves are heaving with off-site stack requests and there is rarely an empty seat in sight. Roughly speaking, this period also marks the midway point of the Bodleian Libraries Graduate Traineeship and now I feel more familiar with the library’s collections, I thought I’d use this space to share a few details about them.

Not just books: The HFL houses a variety of other items including maps and DVDs.

There are a little over 80,000 volumes at the HFL, including 1100 books in the local history section and 3,500 ‘oversize’ books on art, architecture and archaeology. Yet, it’s the main lending sequence that accounts for the bulk of this figure. Spanning three floors, the majority of the books in this collection can be borrowed by anyone with a blue reader’s card. Theoretically, this means that every current member of the University has the opportunity to take home a sample of what the History Faculty Library has to offer.

Those with a blue card like this one can borrow a variety of items from the HFL.

Though it parted ways with 473 of its rare antiquarian books when it moved from the Old Indian Institute in 2012, the library still has approximately 1,000 pre-nineteenth-century volumes in its care. A portion of these are known as ‘set texts’, which are prescribed readings for undergraduates studying Joint or Single Honours History Degrees. In certain cases, the HFL has the only available copy these readings in Oxford, making the Set Text Collection in the Upper Camera a particularly important and unique resource.

A sample of the blue-labelled books in the Set Text Collection.

The library further provides for the needs of students by responding to trends currently shaping the historical disciplines. Between March and June 2018, the library purchased just over 1100 books in the wake of a recent syllabus reform by the University’s History Faculty, whilst steps have also been taken to secure additional funding for pre-emptive purchasing in growth areas, such as global medieval history. The time spent processing these new acquisitions has been fascinating. All too often an intriguing title or profound idea has diverted my attention from the timely application of stamps and Tattle Tape. It’s a similiar story organising the New Books Display, though I think this is somewhat understandable given the premise of a few volumes in particular…

The weird and wonderful! Captivating titles at the HFL include: The Bedroom, An Intimate History; Shoplifting In Eighteenth Century England; Beard Fetish In Early Modern England; and The Known Citizen, A History Of Privacy In Modern America.

Joking aside, it has been exciting to witness an influx of research on previously neglected pasts. It seems historians are now asking more questions, about more things, than ever before. Welcoming the fruits of their labour to the HFL with a shelf mark, bookplate and dust-jacket cover has certainly been a therapeutic way to spend a quiet afternoon!

Adding to the breadth of the library’s collections, many of these new arrivals are inter-disciplinary in nature, made worthy of a position on the open shelves by virtue of their versatility. However, some more specialist works are sent directly to the off-site storage facility in Swindon, a decision predicated on a forecast of infrequent use. Here, they are kept safe in climate-controlled conditions under the watchful eye of the Head of the Bodleian Storage Facility, or BSF. Being so far removed from Oxford doesn’t necessarily mean these books won’t see a day in a reading room though. Despite the 80(ish) mile round trip, off-site items are never more than a few clicks away from being sent to a variety of Bodleian Libraries via SOLO.

The Radcliffe Camera’s large wooden sorting table for incoming and outgoing BSF deliveries.

Though comparably modest in size, the HFL certainly punches above its weight when it comes to provision. This is, in no small part, due to a concise and effective collection development policy which sees students and academics well catered for. Yet, as one of the Bodleian Libraries, the HFL is also aided by the logistical and technical support derived from the legal-deposit library’s infrastructure. The Bodleian’s network of reader terminals, dotted throughout the Radcliffe Camera and Gladstone Link, provide access to hundreds of thousands of e-resources, including eLegal-Deposit items. Additionally, the Radcliffe Camera’s status as a collection point for off-site stack requests puts the Bodleian’s vast reserves of print material at the fingertips of any HFL visitor. Though such a symbiotic arrangement might seem challenging, in this instance, it has proven to be a winning combination.

Ross Jones, History Faculty Library and Radcliffe Camera

Michelmas Term Round-Up

Posted on 19 December 2018 by Emma — No Comments ↓

Hello! Now that Michaelmas term is coming to an end, Bethan and I thought we would do a round-up post about some the things we have been up to so far.

PGCE workshop

In September we had the opportunity to participate in an information literacy training session for new PGCE students with the Education Librarians. This included helping the students utilise the online library catalogue and make the most of the libraries to aid their studies. We also showed them tips and tricks on sourcing academic journals, articles, and books.

Beth says – This session highlighted the importance for new students to learn key skills about using the library catalogue and finding e-resources to aid them in their studies. We got the opportunity to participate in the group work parts of the session to offer suggestions and help when needed, as well as the individual exercises. Although I was supposed to be helping with the teaching, I ended up learning a lot myself!

Emma says – Teaching the PGCE students really helped to confirm what I knew about the library system and it was a great opportunity to put some of the training into practice in a different setting. We worked with other members of staff from the Education library and two Swiss interns so we had a lot of support! The PGCE students were really friendly and it was a good session to be a part of.

Training sessions: which have we enjoyed so far?

During this term we’ve had the opportunity to have practical and theoretical training at Osney. Training sessions have been varied this term, including an interactive session on customer care, an introduction to cataloguing using the Oxford library system, as well as a presentation on applying for courses in library and information studies. Here’s what we each enjoyed the most:

Beth says – In November we got the opportunity to visit the BSF, a warehouse where over 11 million of the Bodleian’s collections are held. There was an informative presentation about the challenges and logistics of the facility, as well as how it is developing. This includes issues of storage space as the collections grow, and improving sustainability to reduce its environmental impact. We were also given a tour of the facility, which highlighted how efficient the process is to ensure that the books are delivered to the libraries on time, twice a day. Indeed, apparently it takes experienced staff members less than 45 seconds to pick a single book – which is very impressive considering the size and scale of the warehouse.

Emma says – The visit to the Weston Library and having an introduction to the Special Collections in October was a real eye-opener. After an £80m refurbishment the Weston Library, originally called the New Bodleian Library, opened in March 2015 after work began in 2011. The library now has a lot more space including areas for research, public galleries, and a cafe. It was a pleasure to be shown around the conservation department, to see the archivists at work, and to see behind the scenes at the library. As the Weston is so different from the Business library, it was a worthwhile opportunity to see the different roles within librarianship. It was great to see how the conservationists take care of the old books, maps and the libraries themselves.

The Book Storage Facility, aka the BSF, in Swindon

Internet Librarian International (ILI) conference, London

In October we were fortunate enough to go to the ILI conference in London due to the sponsored places offered by FLIP and NLPN. There were six of us in total that went from the Bodleian libraries and we all took away a lot from the experience. There were lots of different talks and presentations, from AI to tips for searching relevant information.

Beth says – A session I particularly enjoyed was about how libraries can utilise digital technology to increase reader accessibility. For example, a case study discussed the DAISY Consortium, which is an organisation which aims to improve the reader experience for people who are blind or print disabled by making digital talking books an industry standard across libraries worldwide. Indeed, the clear theme across the conference was about how libraries can develop in the digital age, as well as the challenges this brings. Myself and a few of the other trainees who attended contributed to a blog post for NLPN about the conference here: https://nlpn.wordpress.com/2018/11/01/internet-librarian-international-info-today-sponsored-places/

Emma says – During the conference we were invited to a session by Liz McGettigan about how to be an information professional in the 21^st century. This was an informative session about how to advance our careers, what skills we would need to move forward, and how best to develop them. This was a great opportunity to see what paths were before us and give us an idea of what we could do in the future. Working in a library we are able to learn many new and transferable skills, some of which we’re not always able to recognise, so this was a great session to bring out in us what we’ve learnt so far and what sort of roles we would like in the future.

Ben Gable, Katie Day, Bethan Morgan, Jennifer Garner, and Emma Gregory at the ILI conference in October 2018.

Outside of the training programme the trainees meet up fairly often after work. For example, some of us went round the Oxford Open Doors event in September together, visiting Baliol College, Blackwells, the Examination School, and the New Theatre. We’ve frequented a game board café, where we played a variety of card and board games. Luckily, we didn’t fall out too much! Two trainees, Elspeth and Lauren, started a book club. So far, we have read Annhiliation by Jeff Vandermeer, Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, and we’re currently reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. We had the weather on our side on Bonfire Night when we went to watch the fireworks at South Park. Recently we had our Christmas dinner which nearly all of us attended. It was a great night with great food and company.

Next term looks to be quite busy. We’re looking forward to a new set of training sessions, which includes a visit to Oxford Brookes library and a visit to the digital archives. We can’t wait to see what the next year will bring!

Merry Christmas and a happy 2019 from all the trainees!

By Bethan Morgan and Emma Gregory

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Summary of Graduate Library Trainee Training (so far)

Posted on 16 February 2017 by Fiona Mossman — No Comments ↓

As Graduate Library Trainee, I have had – since September – quite a lot of training. I’ve become very familiar with Osney Mead industrial estate, which is where a lot of Bodleian staff training takes place, as well as some of the more specialist cataloguing, the Bodleian Digital Systems and Services, and a few other departments. The mud spatters on my bike every time that I go down the tow path can testify to my journeys there, but the weekly trips with my fellow trainees are a chance to learn a bit more about the world of libraries and can often offer knowledge or perspectives that are very welcome to me as a newcomer to the library world. This post will hopefully give you an insight into what kind of training we have as Oxford Library Trainees, every Wednesday afternoon.

Michaelmas term was orientation, an intensive few weeks of the systems that we use here. There was Circulation for Desk Staff, Customer Care, Resource Discovery, Working Safely, Supporting Disabled readers and discovering the mysterious workings of Aleph, our library software, all completed in September, allowing me to get up and running with the systems. October saw the start of graduate training proper, with sessions designed introduce us to the Bodleian as a whole and libraries more generally. There were visits to other parts of the Bodleian to help us to get a handle on the diversity of things that go on here and how they all hang together – from the dignified turrets of the Old Bodleian to the Weston’s shiny new spaces, including Special Collections and Conservation, and also a trip to the leviathan behind it all, the BSF, where books go to be ‘ingested’. They are also circulated from there around all the libraries, the speed and efficiency of which was impressive. My fellow trainee David wrote a blog post on it, here. There was a session on e-developments at the Bodleian, too, which was particularly interesting. We were introduced to such things as open access, the Bodleian Digital Library, ORA as a digital repository for Oxford’s research, and some of the issues around e-Legal Deposit. (For those not in the know, Legal Deposit is an arrangement whereby five libraries in the UK are entitled to a copy of everything published here; e-Legal Deposit is the same principle for electronic works, but I am not really qualified to talk about all the complications of either system. However, there is a brief overview by a former trainee that you can read here.)

Duke Humphrey’s Library in the Old Bodleian. Credit David Iliff (Creative Commons licence).

The shiny Weston Library’s entrance hall. Credit Paul Hayday (Creative Commons licence)

Then there was training focussed more on our future as library professionals, such as the session on Professional Qualifications, which included some talks by former trainees who had completed or were undergoing their degrees. We got the low-down on what types of degree there are, where they are offered, and what to consider when applying. This term we’ve had a sort of follow up in the session on Career Opportunities and Skills Workshop, where there were some tips on CVs, networking and interviews, and some very good talks by former Law Library trainees, which were particularly interesting to me as the current Law Library trainee.

I’ve also been lucky compared to other trainees, because my supervisor lets me to do plenty of training in my role that not all of the trainees get. I’ve had training on serials and acquisitions, and these things tied into my role here, since I’m able to assist both teams: that is, I can process new journals which arrive periodically, and can help in the process of buying new things for the library. There was also a session that I attended more recently with two of my colleagues, entitled Preservation Advice for Library Staff, where we learnt about how to set up and maintain a library space that is safest for your books, plus some detail on the dangers ranged against them (the seven agents of decay, which sounds to me a bit like a fantasy book series waiting to happen). The seven agents of decay include physical forces – such as handling by readers – fire, water, pests, pollutants, light, incorrect temperature, and incorrect relative humidity. Oxford is an especially damp place (as I can testify to – I’ve already had an outbreak of mould in my wardrobe since moving here), so the everyday monitoring of collections is particularly relevant.

Humidity control is important. Photo credit to Alex Walker, Acting Head of Preventative Conservation.

This term’s training started off with a visit to Oxford Brookes Library, which was a fancy new building at their main Headington campus. We had a tour, learning about their use of space, which is divided into various zones of noise so that both quiet study and group work are encouraged, and a bit about their collections and processes. There was also a look at their Special Collections, which was quite eclectic (an artificial arm, a golden wok). Last week we had a session on effective training techniques, very useful for any kind of induction, training and indeed presentation that I may do in the future. There was also Libraries and Social Media yesterday afternoon, at which we learnt about the key principles of social media for libraries, and thought through a few of the possibilities and issues with social media in general and certain platforms for certain libraries in particular. From that session I’ve taken away a healthy appreciation of animated gifs when it comes to medical textbooks, and a newfound love of Orkney Library. (See the Wellcome Unit Library’s feed, here, and Orkney Library’s feed, here, respectively.)

Next up will be Talks on the Book Trade; Collection and Resource Description; and some visits to other Oxford libraries, including All Souls’ Codrington Library, the Alexander Library of Ornithology, the Sherardian Library of Plant Taxonomy and the Radcliffe Science Library. I’m also booked on to a minute-taking session, since taking the minutes at our staff meeting is one of my duties, and a session on Academic searching with Google and alternatives.

My favourite training sessions are definitely those that touch on librarianship as a whole, since what I learn every day here is about how this library works. Bernadette O’Reilly’s OLIS training course was particularly good in that respect, as was the E-Developments session by Michael Popham and Sally Rumsey. All of these looked outwards a bit, explaining, for example, how the publishing habits of publishers like Elsevier impact on the libraries’ and university’s open access policies. The tours can also contribute to this broader perspective, especially when we can find out a bit about the history of a library or, equally important, a particular librarian’s career. So training is definitely a very important and useful part of my role here, and something that is particularly special about the job of Graduate Library Trainee. I hope this gives a sense of the myriad of things that we get up to, and how it benefits us and our libraries.

Book Storage Facility (BSF) Tour, 9 November

Posted on 22 November 2016 by davidphillips — No Comments ↓

On Wednesday 9 November, the 2016-2017 Graduate Library Trainees (GLT) were bussed to South Marston on the outskirts of Swindon and treated to a tour of the Bodleian Libraries’ £26-million strategic storage solution, the Book Storage Facility (BSF).

The BSF opened in 2010 to accommodate the Bodleian Libraries’ rapidly accumulating collection (expanding at a rate of approximately 170,000 volumes per annum). It has subsequently ingested over 8 million books, maps, manuscripts, music scores, microfilms, microfiches, newspapers, periodicals and other low-usage material from disparate storage locations in and around Oxford (including salt mines in Cheshire). It has the capacity to store 12-13 million items and potential for further expansion.

The Closed-Stack Delivery Service: The BSF retrieves and delivers requested material twice-daily to pre-selected Bodleian reading rooms. Requests are often honoured within 24 hours. On 6 October 2015, the BSF celebrated its one millionth book request (Aristophanes by James Robson to the Sackler).

bsf-1 — **A kickstool is just not going to cut it!** The trainees are dwarfed by their surroundings. The BSF comprises 31 aisles of shelving (11.4 metres high by 71 metres long) designed to maximise storage density. It also has “planchests” (out of shot). These are tray-based shelves designed to store 1.2 million maps. Photo: Chantal van den Berg

bsf-2 — **The Room of (almost) Infinite Wisdom.** The BSF’s wonderfully multifarious collection of books (from “the Art of Eating in” to the “Handbook of Phonological Development” to Alexa Chung’s memoirs) sit in special acid free, bar-coded cardboard crates with nylon grab handles and a design life of 50 years. Photo: Chantal van den Berg

Jessica Woodward (Taylor Institution Library) describes the BSF tour:

Hardly a day had gone by at the Taylorian when I hadn’t encountered the work of the BSF. Readers would come to my desk wanting to borrow or return books containing neat little white slips, my fellow trainee Will would tantalisingly allude to his activities with crates upstairs, and other colleagues would be glimpsed sifting through items for the leviathan facility to “ingest”. You can imagine, then, that I was really intrigued to see the BSF, and our training session certainly didn’t disappoint.

It began with several Powerpoint presentations on different aspects of the facility’s work: storage, logistics, packaging and book moving. We learnt a lot about choosing the right conditions for books to live in and minimising the potential for wear and tear during transportation. We were even given tea and biscuits to have while we listened, which was greatly appreciated!

We were then taken for a tour of the storage and processing areas. Our group was fortunate to have extra time for this as our coach had arrived early. We watched books being boxed up for delivery to our libraries, to the rhythmic accompaniment of ‘Ghostbusters’ (!). We observed a PhD student using high-tech equipment to research paper conservation, then a giant futuristic door slid open to reveal the incredible 10m-high shelving towers. Many of us were eager to take photos to remind ourselves of the impressive scale of these. As we wandered around, dodging the forklift trucks that were zippily picking up and depositing material, we learnt that all kinds of collections can be found in warehouse’s depths, from books to maps, paintings to toys!

Sadly it was soon time for us to take the coach home, but I came away with a lasting sense of how complex an organisation the Bodleian is and how hard its staff work to ensure readers have access to the greatest possible variety of educational materials. I am very grateful to everyone involved in running the training session for providing such a fascinating insight into this awe-inspiring library outpost.

bsf-3 — Again…the BSF is vast. Its shelves span 153 miles/230km (or the approximate distance between Oxford and Sheffield). It is also temperature and humidity controlled to create an optimal environment for its book stock. We are informed that the warehouse is fixed at 18 degrees Celsius +/- 1 degree. Photo: Chantal van den Berg

End of Year 2015 – Emma Quinlan

Posted on 16 December 2015 by ahernm — No Comments ↓

Officially, our first academic term as trainees has come to an end! Well done all! We’ve had many highs – who can forget the ‘getting stuck in a lift at the trainee reception’ episode or more recently the epic selfie with the Bodley’s Librarian, Richard Ovenden at the Bodleian Xmas Party. We have had many training sessions on a variety of subjects from Supporting Disabled Readers to How to Become a Qualified Librarian (a very informative and useful session, I might add). I think one of the highlights of the first academic term was to visit the Book Storage Facility (or BSF for short) in Swindon. A place so large it is staggering in its entirety (FYI it has 153 miles of shelving and can hold up to 8.4 million books) and very reminiscent of that famous scene in Harry Potter where Ginny Weasley causes the bottled prophecies to come crashing down in the Department of Mysteries….

BSF Swindon (Thank you, last trainee cohort for providing the pic!)

Well that’s what it looked like to me! Anyway, this first term has been an eye opener to the big world of Librarianship and I for one, cannot wait to get stuck into the training next term. First we just have to get through the festive period and all the joys that entails!

Merry Christmas everyone and have a wonderful New Year!

Our Day Out: The Bodleian Storage Facility

Posted on 20 November 2014 by ahernm — No Comments ↓

By Sarah Arkle (English Faculty Library) and Hannah Hickman (History Faculty Library)

The trainees were recently packed onto a small coach and driven out to Swindon to visit the Bodleian Library’s storage facility (or the BSF, to those in the know). The BSF is an enormous warehouse, opened in 2010 to house some of the ever-expanding collections of the Bodleian Libraries. Our visit comprised of a talk about the history and operation of the facility, followed by a very impressive tour.

Boyd Rodger, the Logistics Manager, welcomed us warmly (and instantly won a place in our hearts by offering tea, coffee and biscuits). It was under his direction that the BSF project came together. Although to us the BSF certainly seemed a new and exciting way to approach library stores, Boyd contextualised it as the latest in a series of innovations that define the history of the Bodleian – a history marked by the crisis of expansion. Here’s a quick run-through:

1300s: Church of St Mary is the first site to hold collections associated with the university
1487: Duke Humfrey’s Library is built following a donation of manuscripts from the brother of Henry IV – too generous a gift to turn down, too large to be held in the church. DH was extended twice, in 1612 and 1637, to build the Arts End and Selden End
1613-1620: Old Library built around DH
[1749: Radcliffe Camera is opened, intending to house independent science and medical library]
1860: Radcliffe Camera taken over by the hungry, hungry Bodleian
1908-1912: Underground storage built in Radcliffe Square, which is now the Gladstone Link reading room
1937: Work begins on the New Library, but just as it reaches completion, war breaks out and the site is used as a military hospital
1946: The New Library returns to the hands of the Bodleian and is opened to readers – it has recently been opened again, this time as the Weston Library, home of the Bodleian special collections and rare books
1975: The first Bodleian storage outside of Oxford is built at Nuneham Courtenay, a small town eight miles away
2003: Nuneham Courtenay site is full (is anyone surprised by this point?), so the Bodleian uses salt mines in Cheshire as a temporary location while plans for a mega-storage site are processed
2010: BSF opens! Low use items are transferred from the various different storage sites
????: BSF 2.0…

At first, the question of new storage sites only cropped up every century or so, but publishing rates (and the consequent acquisitions and legal deposits) have continued to soar since the nineteenth century. Boyd Rodger reckons that it is unlikely that digital media will have an impact any time soon – the growing scale of operations at the BSF indicates that print is in more demand than ever. The BSF was built with 20 years room for expansion based on its current needs… Fortunately, some clever bean thought about this and the Bodleian owns the entire 17 acre site with plenty of room to expand the warehouse in the future.

Entering the facility proper, we were greeted by the enormous backlog of returned materials needing to be scanned back – about a week’s worth of returns. It really helped us understand the sheer volume of work done at the BSF. We moved on into the warehouse itself. Our Law Bod trainee, Mandi said, “It really impressed me… in terms of scale (those shelves were so high! It actually hurt my neck to look all the way up),” which is certainly an accurate assessment. At 30 feet high they were an enormous sight to behold. I’m not even sure this picture does it justice.

But it wasn’t only the height that was impressive – it was also the depth of the warehouse. The shelves are incredibly long, to the extent that they look a bit like a set from a sci-fi or horror film. Although that doesn’t seem to put off our Codrington Library trainee, Micha, who said she’d “happily set up a tent between those shelves.” The place was indeed very atmospheric!

We had the storage system explained to us, as books are shelved in a different manner to a traditional library. Duncan, the Bodleian trainee, noted, “It didn’t really feel that tied to libraries,” as it very much gave the impression of being a smoothly operated logistics facility. Just describing it as a ‘storage facility’ I feel undermines how impressive the whole thing really is, especially when you consider that they pick up one book per minute on their selection rounds. Micha thought, “the efficiency was incredibly impressive…the amount of organisation that must go into the systems that allow you to retrieve one book a minute from an 8million book stack must be incredibly complex.” Furthermore, our Archives trainee, Marta, commented that, “it’s clearly quite an innovative solution and a state-of-the-art facility and it was nice to see that in Oxford which may seem a bit set in its ways sometimes.” Innovative indeed – I don’t think any of our cohort left the facility not feeling a little awestruck at the size and complexity of things!

We were taken up to the top of the shelves – 30 feet off the ground! – which made for some great photo opportunities when half of us were up there and half were on the ground.

One floor up…

Five floors up!

On the whole, the visit was great – not only was it a lot of fun to go on a trainee day trip, it was really interesting to get a better overview picture of the book delivery process. What we learned on the visit will definitely be helpful back at our various library sites, especially when dealing with reader enquiries about BSF books. It’s truly incredible that you can order a book the morning and by the afternoon, it will have been processed, picked by a member of staff, travelled an hour to Oxford, and made its way to the requested reading room – I think we all left with a real appreciation of the hard work of the BSF staff. Lydia, our Sackler trainee, pointed out that the “staff were incredibly friendly and welcoming,” and we would very much like to thank them for such an enjoyable visit!

Jamie, the trainee in the Sainsbury Library at the Said Business School summed up our feelings succinctly, when he said “I just thought it was really cool, especially the sheer volume of books” – hardly a surprising reaction to letting a bunch of trainee librarians loose in a warehouse storing millions of items.

BSF Swindon

A Visit to the Collection Storage Facility