Coordinating the relocation of a large collection while thousands of students, faculty, researchers and the public are relying on uninterupted library services is an enormous challenge for any institution. Choosing the right partner to plan and execute such a project will be one of your most important decisions. Meyer’s Library Relocation experts understand that even minor inefficiencies can have a disruptive impact on your ability to provide vital resources to your patrons, and they are poised to put their extensive experience to work for you to ensure minimal down time.
Pre-Move Planning
Extensive pre-move planning is the key to a smooth, minimally disruptive and cost-effective transition.
Why it matters: Getting a Meyer Library Services Specialist involved at the very beginning stageswill enable us to help identify cost saving measures and to provide suggestions that may help to minimize or eliminate unnecessary work for your staff both before and after the move.
Best practices:
- Have a plan for weeding: Whether you are moving to an interim location, new building, or offsite storage, you shouldn’t have to pay to move or store material that you know will eventually be de-accessioned.
- What’s on your wish list?: During a library or archive relocation, your vendor will need to touch every book or box. Because of this, your move provides a unique opportunity to get other projects done at a fraction of the cost. Is there anything else we can do with that item while we have it in our hand? Some things that you may consider are cleaning, an inventory scan, retrospective conversion, barcoding, reconfiguration of the directional flow of the collection, physically weeding, RFID tagging, or de-duping. Although adding these tasks to the mover’s scope of work during the relocation may initially add some cost and time, almost anything that will require you to touch the material again in the future can be done during the move to save staff labor, time and, ultimately, money in the long term.
- Measuring & mapping: The careful measuring and mapping of a collection is vital to the smooth and efficient re-shelving of material. Your relocation partner should be able to tell you what your estimated shelf fill percentage will be and where every book will end up in the new shelving plan before beginning to move the first book.. If books are moving to temporary offsite storage, they should be measured carefully by class/subclass prior to being packed for storage. This data will be extremely important when you are planning your return move.
- Inventory control: Depending on the type of material that we are tasked to move, and the level of accountability required by the library, Meyer offers options for varying levels of inventory control from simple tracking of call number ranges that have been moved to item level, chain of custody, real time tracking for 100% accountability.
- Detailed Relocation Plan: Meyer’s Library Services Specialists will develop a project plan that will outline the scope of work and assumptions, define an overall strategy, and provide a detailed timeline including the sequence and schedule of materials being moved, methodology, and labor allocation for each task.
Rare & Special Collections
Nearly every institution has a collection of sensitive material such as historical collections, rare books, objects, artifacts and fine arts. Your partner must have the skills and expertise to identify the most safe and secure methods, materials, and equipment to pack and transport such priceless items.
Why it matters: Whether these items have extraordinary market value or simply historical value specific to the institution or geographic region, we understand that in many cases they are irreplaceable.
Best practices:
- Prior to the relocation of high value, sensitive material, the institution should prepare an inventory which includes a detailed description of the item including dimensions, condition and appraised value including digital images.
- Identify any pre-packed containers that may be housing fragile items so that the move partner can inspect the condition and re-pack the item if necessary.
- Discuss the types of specialized materials that are available for the packing and protection of sensitive material with the project manager. He/she will work together with you to identify materials that are best suited to your needs and your budget. These options include acidor lignin free containers, tissue and craft paper, Ethafoam, custom sized containers for framed objects, crates, Tyvek, bubble wrap, etc.
- Based on the distance your materials must travel and the ambient outdoor conditions during the time of the relocation project, decide whether a climatic van should be utilized for some or all your material.
- If you require the vendor to provide offsite storage for your material, verify that their facility offers the temperature and humidity controls that are recommended for the type of material that you are storing. Meyer provides secure temperature and humidity-controlled storage maintained at 68 degrees (+/- 4) 50% rh (+/-5). This facility offers both retrievable and non-retrievable storage for books, archives, fine arts and artifacts.
Technology
For sensitive, highly complex relocations projects, Meyer uses CaiaMoves Move ManagementSoftware to add an additional layer of security and to enable us to perform technical tasks on the flysuch as barcoding and inventorying collections. This program is custom coded for each individualproject and provides 100% accountability for every item that we move.
Why it matters: This technology will provide you with the security of knowing where every one ofyour precious items are at any given time; from when it is removed off its original shelf to when it is finally re-shelved in its new environment.
Best Practices:
- What level of accountability is right for your project? Once it’s determined that CaiaMoves is a good fit for your project, it can be coded to provide varying levels of accountability. The inventory data that is loaded into the program will be used to validate each scan. After the move is complete, CaiaMoves will produce a report that indicates what we received and what, if anything, was on the list that was not accounted for. The system can also be programmed to alert the user if they scan something that is not on the list to ensure nothing gets moved in error. CaiaMoves also produces daily productivity reporting that will verify whether the move is on track to be completed on time or alert us to an emerging issue that may impact the timeline.
- Determine whether CaiaMoves can add value to your project: Do you have a collection of high value material that is not catalogued and needs to be inventoried/barcoded? Do you have bound journal volumes that need to be individually barcoded? The CaiaMoves Software can be customized to enable such tasks to be done on the fly as they are being packed and moved.
- Offsite storage: If you are moving rare and valuable material to a vendor’s offsite storage facility, CaiaMoves integrates with the vendor’s inventory locator systems so material can be accessioned at the library and a report can be generated before the material leaves your building that will indicate every item that was accessioned and moved on any given day. Once the material arrives at the vendor’s storage facility, the container’s barcode only needs to be scanned to a shelf location and your material will be available for retrieval.
A Seamless Transition is Possible
While moving a library presents unique challenges, intensive planning can ensure a smooth transition with minimal down time. The partner you select must have the experience to foresee problems and pitfalls as well as the resources needed to avert them. The relocation team must understand that flexibility is paramount and must have the ability to respond quickly to address unplanned developments. They must have a clear understanding of how their daily activities will impact the sensitive faculty, student and patron issues that library administration faces and work diligently to minimize disruption. For over 50 years, Meyer’s highly skilled Library Services Specialists have assisted with the successful relocation of millions of volumes for hundreds of libraries and our team possesses the sensitivity, experience, and agility to meet your specific challenge.
