By GAIL FINEBERG
The Nov. 18 opening of a futuristic high-density book storage facility at Fort Meade added a new chapter to an old Library story. Not only will the new space alleviate an overflow of books on Capitol Hill, but the paper-friendly environment will add centuries to the life of the collections.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said, "I cannot overemphasize the dramatic effect that cool temperatures and controlled humidity have on the longevity of our collections. A paper-based item with a life expectancy of 40 years on Capitol Hill will have a life expectancy of 240 years when stored here, a six-fold increase."
He noted that the Library is a "guardian of this nation's patrimony and a good deal of the world's knowledge." As such, he said, "having a well-designed facility to safeguard and preserve our collections is essential."
Billington thanked Congress for its support. In 1993, Congress appropriated $3.2 million to find the Library an off-campus site and design storage to meet a space crunch on Capitol Hill and absorb collections stored in rented space. The same year, Congress passed a law transferring 100 acres from the U.S. Army to the Architect of the Capitol (AOC) for use by the Library. In 1995, Congress added $3 million to build the first module, which comprises a total of 24,800 square feet, including a footprint of 8,500 square feet for book storage, 6,300 square feet for office space, and 10,000 square feet for mechanical rooms, loading docks, and corridors. (The final construction cost was $4.7 million.)
In particular, Billington thanked Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.), "a friend of libraries everywhere," for his long-standing support of the Library and "concern for the life of the mind."
Just as Congress designed the Jefferson Building in the 1890s "to make a statement," to show Europeans that Americans, too, could design beautiful buildings, so "we want to make sure the impact [of the new structure] is amenable to the neighborhood," Sarbanes said, in reference to the criticism of some Odenton, Md., residents that the new concrete-slab building does not measure up to the Capitol Hill standard. He said landscaping, tree plantings, and the addition of other modules will "soften" the lines of the building exterior.
Acknowledging the advantages of high-tech, high-density storage and climate controls as well as the Library's perpetual race for space, Sarbanes said the Fort Meade modules should free space on Capitol Hill and enable more efficiency there. "I think this provides a solution for the Library," he said.
During the past 202 years, the Library ran out of shelf space every decade or two as its collections grew from 740 volumes and three maps in 1800 to an estimated 126 million items today. Materials pouring in by the thousands every day soon filled shelves to overflowing in the Jefferson, Adams and Madison buildings, almost faster than planners could plan or builders could build new shelf space.
With the move to Fort Meade, the Library will have access to 100 acres on which the AOC can build up to 13 additional storage modules over the next 50 years. The Copyright Office will have its own module, and refrigerated vaults will protect nonpaper formats requiring very cold temperatures.
Between Fort Meade and Culpeper, Va., where space is being prepared to house and preserve its extensive audiovisual collections, the Library will be able to vacate rental space in Landover and Suitland, Md., and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.
And by constructing new space, rather than retrofitting existing buildings, according to Architect of the Capitol Alan Hantman, the Library was able to select state-of-the-art technology to: (1) maximize the use of space by storing 1.2 million books and bound periodicals on 30-foot-high shelves in 8,000 square feet (future storage modules will be 50 percent larger); (2) preserve materials by keeping them cool (at an even 50 degrees Fahrenheit) and dry (at 30 percent relative humidity), packing them upright in heavy boxes, filtering out damaging pollutants, and illuminating the area with sodium-vapor lights that do not give off paper-fading ultraviolet rays; (3) safeguard the collections with electronically controlled security and fire-protection systems; track materials with bar codes and computers; and (4) provide twice-daily delivery service to readers. A book listed in the Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) may be requested in the morning, retrieved from the smallest box on the highest shelf 25 miles north of Washington, and delivered to a researcher in the afternoon. Material requested in the afternoon will be delivered the next morning.
Steven J. Herman, chief of the Collections, Access, Loan and Management Division (CALM), is responsible for moving 2,500 books a day from the Jefferson Building to Fort Meade—and finding them once they are sorted by size and placed in boxes that are double-shelved on 36-inch-deep shelves that nearly reach a 40-foot ceiling. "This is a massive undertaking," he said.
He described the process of tracking a book going from Capitol Hill stacks to Fort Meade. A book leaving Capitol Hill for Fort Meade first will be inventoried by the staff of the Baseline Inventory Program and provided with an item ID (bar code) if one is not already present. Once the item is inventoried, the location is changed in the OPAC record to reflect that the item is at Fort Meade. The item is then taken to a new processing area in the Jefferson Building where it is vacuumed. The book is measured and placed in a box with other volumes the same size. Each box is given its own bar code, and each book in that box is linked to the box bar code. When the boxes are shelved at Fort Meade, the box bar code is linked to a shelf bar code.
Boxes of the same size are loaded onto specially designed metal book carts, and 12 carts at a time are rolled into a truck, driven to Fort Meade, unloaded, and hoisted with a modified forklift to the proper shelves. An employee driving this computer-activated "book picker" will shelve the boxes and link each box bar code to a shelf bar code with a hand-carried computerized portable data terminal (PDT). PDT data (links of boxes to shelves) are then uploaded into a database that is backed up at least once a day, if not more often. Bar codes are verified and reports generated twice in the process.
Herman said the Library purchased Library Archival Software (LAS) to manage the tracking system. Any item location changes now have to be entered manually in the Integrated Library System (ILS), which manages the online catalog. "Our goal is to link the LAS and ILS systems or to find a satisfactory alternative to eliminate the need to use stand-alone databases and to require dual data entry," Herman said.
The Library of Congress' high-density storage system is based on a model developed by Harvard University and used widely by research libraries.
Herman noted that planning for off-site storage began as early as 1989 with a Library-wide Collections Storage Facility Working Project Team of staffers from throughout the Library. A Materials Selection Working Group developed criteria for selecting the least frequently used collections for off-site storage. These include portions of agriculture, medicine and literature collections as well as portions of collections in the custody of the Law Library and the Asian and African and Middle Eastern divisions.
Hantman said at the dedication ceremony in November that construction of the second book storage module, to adjoin the west side of the first module, will begin "less than a year from now." Scheduled for start of construction in 2005 are modules three and four, which will complete the pod of four modules. The Copyright Deposit Facility will be designed this year and constructed in 2005, he said.
"We have brought in the Baltimore District of the Corps of Engineers—a stable, dedicated team of professionals—to act as our project management agent for the future modules," Hantman added.
Gail Fineberg is editor of The Gazette, the Library's staff newsletter.