The Syracuse University Library system is facing the classic book-lover’s dilemma: too many volumes, not enough shelves. The stacks in the flagship Ernest S. Bird Library are at 98 percent capacity, the on-campus archives are totally full and dozens -- if not hundreds -- of new volumes flood in each day.
Suzanne E. Thorin, dean of libraries, thought she had a solution. Her plan was to ship rarely used or redundant texts 250 miles southeast of campus, to a storage facility in Patterson, N.Y. Readers and researchers would’ve been able to request books before 2 p.m. one business day and receive them the next. Space in Bird would be freed up for new acquisitions, study halls and classrooms.
Thorin framed faculty and student concerns as being about wanting to be able to browse the collection and have easy access to books they know they need or might stumble upon in the stacks.
Wow! Browsing and serendipity in the same sentence. It's good to know some people still browse and "stumble."
Lori Goetsch, president of the Association of College and Research Libraries and dean of libraries at Kansas State University, said Syracuse’s is “not an uncommon story among large academic libraries.” For decades, major libraries have been developing off-site, high density warehouses where books and other materials can be stored efficiently but delivered quickly to readers who need them.
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