KU News Release

KU Library Annex reaches milestone: first 100k books

LAWRENCE—The University of Kansas Libraries announced today that the new Library Annex has reached an important milestone: five months after it opened for business, the first 100,000 books and other materials have been moved to the facility. The 100,000th item added to the annex was volume 154 of the German periodical Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik.

The Library Annex is a high-density storage facility for books and other library materials that are not frequently used. If an item has not been used in five years, it is automatically considered for move to the annex. KU’s library collections first exceeded storage capacity in 1995, when the libraries began storing materials off site. Many of the materials moved to the annex were among the 250,000 volumes stored in an east Lawrence warehouse.

“Like our peers, we are concerned about the preservation of our library materials in a climate-controlled environment,” Dean of Libraries Lorraine Haricombe said. “This is an increasingly common challenge among major research libraries. We are focused on preserving our rich collections into eternity, so the materials will be available when future researchers need them.”

Since August, the libraries have trained the five new annex staff, implemented new inventory management software to track materials and partnered with KU faculty to evaluate which materials should be moved to the annex.

Although it is open to researchers by appointment, the annex has yet to receive a visitor. Instead, faculty and student researchers take advantage of the online “Retrieve from Shelf” service, which allows them to electronically request materials. The requested materials are delivered within 24 hours to the library facility of their choice. Because this service preceded the annex and is widely used, patrons rarely realize that materials were retrieved from the Annex versus from the library stacks. The annex averages three to five requests per day.

With a capacity of 1.6 million volumes., the annex is designed on the high-density model pioneered by Harvard University and adopted by more than 50 other research libraries including those at Princeton, Cornell and Rice universities. The 7,877 square-foot storage area includes 9,000 shelves in units 35-feet tall, 4 1/2-feet long and 3-feet wide.

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The University of Kansas is a major comprehensive research and teaching university. University Relations is the central public relations office for KU's Lawrence campus.