Come see us at booth #427 at the Indiana Library Conference,
November 12-14, in Indianapolis, Indiana. BUSCA, INC. will be featuring details regarding its acclaimed library
supply service for hard-to-find, foreign, and conventional print books and
DVDs. Being an OCLC WorldCat Partner and
a SKYRIVER Vendor Partner allows our staff to assist library operations in
additional ways (including processing of ordered materials). Furthermore, BUSCA
is a partner with EBRARY....and we will be adding additional e-book platforms
in the future. BUSCA has also published a group of monographs, which will be
on-display at our exhibit.Recent Posts
Friday, August 31, 2012
2012 ILF Annual Conference November 12-14 - Indianapolis, Indiana
Come see us at booth #427 at the Indiana Library Conference,
November 12-14, in Indianapolis, Indiana. BUSCA, INC. will be featuring details regarding its acclaimed library
supply service for hard-to-find, foreign, and conventional print books and
DVDs. Being an OCLC WorldCat Partner and
a SKYRIVER Vendor Partner allows our staff to assist library operations in
additional ways (including processing of ordered materials). Furthermore, BUSCA
is a partner with EBRARY....and we will be adding additional e-book platforms
in the future. BUSCA has also published a group of monographs, which will be
on-display at our exhibit.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Busca Offers New Spanish Titles
Busca will help you fill your shelves with a wide range of
popular and hard to find Spanish language titles. To find out more about these and many other bestselling
Spanish language titles, or to locate that hard-to-find titles, log into your Busca account,
or contact our expert staff.
EL CAMINO DEL SOL | Rainshadow Road
By: Lisa Kleypas
9788415420088 | PB | 336 Pages | $20.95 | Ediciones B |
Contemporary Romance
Language: Spanish
Kleypas brings together richly nuanced characters, an
emotionally riveting plot, and a subtle touch of the paranormal to create an
unforgettable romance, that is pure reading magic.
- Booklist
Lisa Kleypas is the Award-winning author of twenty-one
novels. Her books are published in fourteen languages and are bestsellers all
over the world.
- Romantic
Times
SYNOPSIS
Lucy Marinn is stunned and blindsided by the most bitter
kind of betrayal: her fiance Kevin has left her. His new lover is Lucy's own
sister. Facing the severe disapproval of Lucy's parents, Kevin asks his friend,
Sam Nolan to "romance" Lucy and hopefully loosen her up and get over
her anger. Complications ensue when Sam and Lucy begin to fall in love.
EL NARCO | El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency
By: Ioan Grillo
9788493696160 | PB | 480 Pages | $25.95 | Ediciones Urano
| Present Chronicles
Language: Spanish
Effectively analyzes how Mexico came to control drug
trafficking, how it spreads, and what can be done about it. This excellent work
packs an exploration of the Italian Mafia, which also displays the fruits of
direct reporting bolstered by intensive interviewing.
- Booklist
Accomplished, chilling account of the murderous growth of
Mexican drug cartels, Grillo has reported from the region since 2001; his
experience is evident in his easy, wry familiarity with the political and
social currents of Latin America. It's a valuable contribution to the
literature of the Drug War.
SYNOPSIS
The world has watched stunned at the bloodshed in Mexico.
Thirty thousand murdered since 2006. It draws the first definitive portrait of
Mexico's drug cartels and how they have radically transformed in the last
decade. El Narco is not a gang; it's a movement and an industry.
BAILE CON SERPIENTES | Dance with Snakes
By: Horacio Castellanos Moya
9788483834107 | PB | 176 Pages | $19.95 | Tusquets
Editores | Fiction
Language: Spanish
Shocking and bizarre the book certainly is, but what
makes it most interesting is the way in which the violence, initially inspired
by a vague personal sense of vengeance, begins to threaten the entire
shakily-constructed social order.
- James Crossley, Review of
Contemporary Fiction
It's Castellanos Moya's fantastical novel, and a
different kind of revenge fantasy. Instead of working the intellectual angle,
it goes for the jugular. Nothing could be as terrifying and unpredictable as
poisonous snakes. They're the perfect stand-in for real-life violence that's
too extreme to be credibly portrayed in fiction.
- Natasha Wimmer, The Nation
SYNOPSIS
A yellow Chevrolet from the fifties appears parked in the
street. Jacinto, a homeless man lives inside of it. One night he dies
decapitated and a psychopath inherits the Chevrolet and its inhabitants: a
group of snakes with frozen eyes that act as if their souls are possessed,
rising to the murder, falling apart entire lives and spreading terror in town.
LOS MENSAJES DE LOS SABIOS | Message from the Masters
By: Brian Weiss
9788498726619 | HC | 306 Pages | $14.95 | Ediciones B |
Mind, Body & Spirit
Language: Spanish
Now in a new pocket format.
From the author of the bestselling Many lives, many
Masters comes a spiritual guidebook that shows readers how to capture the
energy of love.
The true story of a prominent psychiatrist, his young
patient, and the past-life therapy that changed both their lives.
SYNOPSIS
Dr. Weiss fascinating case stories and the wisdom of his
spirit guides to help bring joy, balance and harmony into life. Learn how to
use the amazing power of love to get rid of fear, worry, sadness, anger and
other negative thoughts and emotions, and bring love and healing into your
life. This spiritual guidebook will change how you think about the world for
ever.
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Oxford University Press Bestsellers in Law
Oxford University Press is bringing you the best titles in
law this August. As a Busca customer you
can take advantage of the Busca’s featured publisher discount. To find out more about these and many other bestselling
law titles, or to locate that hard-to-find title, log into your Busca account,
or contact our expert staff.
Point Made
How to Write Like the Nation's Top Advocates
Ross Guberman
ISBN13: 9780195394870
Paperback, 338 pages
Feb 2011
Price: $15.95
Description
With Point Made, legal writing expert Ross Guberman throws a
life preserver to attorneys, who are under more pressure than ever to produce
compelling prose. What is the strongest opening for a motion or brief? How to
draft winning headings? How to tell a persuasive story when the record is dry
and dense? The answers are "more science than art," says Guberman,
who has analyzed stellar arguments by distinguished attorneys to develop
step-by-step instructions for achieving the results you want.
The author takes an empirical approach, drawing heavily on
the writings of the nation's 50 most influential lawyers, including Barack
Obama, John Roberts, Elena Kagan, Ted Olson, and David Boies. Their strategies,
demystified and broken down into specific, learnable techniques, become a
detailed writing guide full of practical models. In FCC v. Fox, for example,
Kathleen Sullivan conjures the potentially dangerous, unintended consequences
of finding for the other side (the "Why Should I Care?" technique).
Arguing against allowing the FCC to continue fining broadcasters that let the
"F-word" slip out, she highlights the chilling effect these fines
have on America's radio and TV stations, "discouraging live programming
altogether, with attendant loss to valuable and vibrant programming that has
long been part of American culture."
Each chapter of Point Made focuses on a typically tough
challenge, providing a strategic roadmap and practical tips along with
annotated examples of how prominent attorneys have resolved that challenge in
varied trial and appellate briefs. Short examples and explanations with
engaging titles--"Brass Tacks," "Talk to Yourself,"
"Russian Doll"--deliver weighty materials with a light tone, making
the guidelines easy to remember and apply.
Client Science
Advice for Lawyers on Counseling Clients through Bad News and Other Legal Realities
Marjorie Corman Aaron
ISBN13: 9780199891900
Paperback, 288 pages
Apr 2012
Price: $31.95
Description
Lawyers know that client counseling can be the most
challenging part of legal practice. Clients question and often resist the
complexities and uncertainties inherent in law and legal process. Honest advice
from the lawyer can make a client doubt his or her allegiance and zeal. Client
backlash may be directed at the lawyer who communicates bad news. Thus, the
lawyer may feel torn between the obligation to clearly inform a client about
weaknesses in legal positions and fear of damaging the client relationship. Too
often, the lawyer struggles to counsel a particularly difficult client, but to
no avail.
The End of Lawyers?
Rethinking the nature of legal services
Revised Edition
Richard Susskind OBE
ISBN13: 9780199593613
Paperback, 352 pages
Sep 2010
Price: $21.20
Description
This widely acclaimed legal bestseller has provoked a
tidal wave of debate within the legal profession, being hailed as an
inspiration by some and as heresy by others. Susskind lays down a challenge to
all lawyers, and indeed all those in a professional service environment. He urges
them to ask themselves, with their hands on their hearts, what elements of
their current workload could be undertaken differently - more quickly, cheaply,
efficiently, or to a higher quality - using alternative methods of working. The
challenge for legal readers is to identify their distinctive skills and
talents, the capabilities that they possess that cannot, crudely, be replaced
by advanced systems or by less costly workers supported by technology or
standard processes, or by lay people armed with online self-help tools.
In the extended new preface to this revised paperback
edition, Richard Susskind updates his views on legal process outsourcing,
courtroom technology, access to justice, e-learning for lawyers, and the impact
of the recession on the practice of law. He analyzes the four main pressures
that lawyers now face (to charge less, to work differently, to embrace
technology, and to deregulate), and reveals common fallacies associated with
each. And, in an entirely new line of thinking, Susskind argues that law firms
and in-house departments will have four business models from which to choose in
the future, and he provides some new tools and techniques to help lawyers plan
for their future.
Susskind argues that the market is increasingly unlikely
to tolerate expensive lawyers for tasks (guiding, advising, drafting,
researching, problem-solving, and more) that can equally or better be
discharged, directly or indirectly, by smart systems and processes. It follows,
the book claims, that the jobs of many traditional lawyers will be
substantially eroded and often eliminated. Two forces propel the legal
profession towards this scenario: a market pull towards commoditisation and a
pervasive development and uptake of information technology. At the same time,
the book foresees new law jobs emerging which may be highly rewarding, even if
very different from those of today.
The End of Lawyers represents a compelling vision of the
future of the legal profession and a must-read for all lawyers. Indeed this book
should be read by all those whose work touches on the law, and it offers much
food for thought for anyone working in a professional environment.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Springer Releases New Titles in Medicine
Busca, Inc. announces the release of new titles in
Biomedicine, Chemistry, Life Sciences and Medicine from Springer, one of
Busca’s featured publishers. Log into your Busca account to take advantage of our discount on these and many other title
from Springer, or contact our expert staff to learn more.
Advances in Neuromorphic
Memristor Science and Applications
Kozma,
Robert; Pino, Robinson E.; Pazienza, Giovanni E. (Eds.)
2012,
2012, VIII, 320 p. 164 illus., 116 in color.
Hardcover
ISBN
978-94-007-4490-5
Bacterial Regulatory RNA
Methods
and Protocols
Keiler,
Kenneth C. (Ed.)
2012,
2012, XI, 333 p. 55 illus., 10 in color.
A
product of Humana Press
Hardcover
ISBN
978-1-61779-948-8
Computational Systems
Neurobiology
Le
Novère, Nicolas (Ed.)
2012,
2012, VIII, 570 p. 171 illus., 80 in color.
Hardcover
ISBN
978-94-007-3857-7
Information Processing in
Computer Assisted Interventions
Third
International Conference, IPCAI 2012, Pisa, Italy, June 27, 2012, Proceedings
Abolmaesumi,
P.; Joskowicz, L.; Navab, N.; Jannin, P. (Eds.)
2012,
2012, XIII, 180 p.
Softcover
ISBN
978-3-642-30617-4
Monday, July 16, 2012
Review of Norman Desmarais' "The Guide to the American Revolutionary War In Pennsylvania..." in the Brigade Dispatch
Read the latest review of Norman Desmarais's "The Guide to the American Revolutionary War In Pennsylvania..." in the Brigade Dispatch.
"This is the fourth in a planned six volume comprehensive guide to the location of thousands of military actions of the American Revolution-from the great and well-known battles through the many intermediate and less well known engagements to the almost numberless obscure skirmishes, raids, ambushes and chance encounters that were little noted at the time and which today are virtually unknown, even to many professional historians..."
Available at BuscaInc.com
"This is the fourth in a planned six volume comprehensive guide to the location of thousands of military actions of the American Revolution-from the great and well-known battles through the many intermediate and less well known engagements to the almost numberless obscure skirmishes, raids, ambushes and chance encounters that were little noted at the time and which today are virtually unknown, even to many professional historians..."
Available at BuscaInc.com
Friday, June 29, 2012
A Visit to the Harvard Depository
Library Marketplace
(John Riley, Editor. Eastern Regional Sales Manager, BUSCA, Inc. www.buscainc.com)
Forward into the Past: Offsite Book Depositories, The Future of Libraries?
Open stacks are a fairly recent development that can be traced back to nineteenth century English and American public libraries when their library collections began to exceed the size of the reading room. Book stacks quickly evolved into a fairly standard form in which the cast iron and steel frameworks supporting the bookshelves also supported the floors, which often were built of translucent blocks to permit the passage of light (but were not transparent, for reasons of modesty).(1)
Previous to open stacks archival storage was the norm. The current practice of offsite storage can just as easily be thought of as archival storage. Books and other materials are kept in a secure, climate controlled environment with access limited to individual requests filled by librarians or other library personnel. Archives have been a major component of libraries since their inception and offsite storage has been used ever since the first libraries were created. Most libraries in Europe still keep books in storage with access only allowed by request after searching a catalogue of their available materials. Perhaps their holdings of incunabula and other rare books or simply the scarcity of many books encouraged the practice.
We have reached a similar situation today with an explosion of information and an inability to house all of it comfortably within reach. In addition, mass digitization has quickly converted tens of millions of books to electronic format resulting in less demand for the printed versions. Between these two irresistible forces libraries now find that returning to the archival model for storage, not just of little used items, but current materials as well, is a viable way to continue growing the collection while re-purposing precious space in the heart of their campuses or in urban settings.
I am one of those people who initially was horrified at the idea of storing most library books offsite or in compact shelving. Roaming the stacks was a pleasure I relished in my college years, but it is not something I do very often nowadays. It has become a rarefied pleasure that has possibly been outweighed by the benefits of “archival” storage: secure and safe storage, climate controlled atmosphere, and easy location of needed items. Some libraries report that up to fifty per cent of books searched in open stacks cannot be located, whether because the item was checked out or more disconcertingly, because it was stolen or simply misshelved. One archive that I visited recently, the Harvard Depository, has lost only two books in its twenty six year history!
In fact my interest in the subject of archival storage came about from a talk I attended given by Matthew Sheehy, Head of Access Services of the Harvard University Libraries, where he gave a detailed history and tour of the facility using slides and pictures. The size and scope of this project so amazed me that I later asked Matthew for a personal tour. He turned me over to the capable hands of Patrick O’Brien, Systems and Special Projects manager of the Depository. Lee Anne Hooley, Dark Archive Project and Document Delivery Librarian, was a great resource for details about the journal archiving function of the Depository.
I visited the Harvard Depository on a cool March afternoon and it was a good preparation for entering the temperature and humidity controlled warehouse that is kept at a constant fifty degrees and thirty five per cent humidity. The Depository is also pressurized from inside to create an outgoing breeze when doors are opened to keep out unwanted intruders such as flying insects. So a cool gust of air greeted us as we entered the towering stack area. Summer is the hardest time for the Depository with the infamous New England humidity forcing the air conditioners and dehumidifiers to run twenty four hours a day.
On this day the Depository was handling its usual hundreds of requests from the Harvard libraries and nearly as many from its Borrow Direct partners: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, New York Public, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale. The partners have access to each others’ catalogues and patrons can “borrow direct” from participating libraries simply by requesting items from their catalogue screens. The books in the Depository are all in the library’s catalogue and can be delivered anywhere on campus within a day. Books ordered by 6:00 p.m. are delivered first thing in the morning. Same day delivery is also available if ordered early enough in the day. The Depository circulates about 2.5% of its holdings annually, around 215,000 items.
The Depository also acts as a “Dark Archive”, not unlike a ‘Seed Bank’ which stores seeds against the possibility of some future calamity. By storing runs of journals for JSTOR and others, the Depository provides a physical backup to online journals. In spite of the mass digitization of journals workers at the Depository deliver many articles electronically after scanning the appropriate journal.
The Harvard Depository has found that human retrieval of books works best for them. Employing the type of “scissor lifts” you see at Home Depot or Lowe’s they can go directly to the box they need and retrieve a single book. Books are grouped by size after bar coding and the box is bar coded as well. Robotic book retrieval typically brings back a whole box of books that contains the required material. Because of the size of the facility Harvard has found that individual item retrieval works best.
I got to ride along on one of the lifts with Patrick and I got to see firsthand how easily it can be positioned exactly where the driver wants it. Boxes are stored on shelves that have been polished with bowling alley wax to make sliding the boxes onto steel work trays practically effortless. I asked Patrick what other techniques they employee for long term storage and he told me “The “tray” boxes in which we store books upright are made with PH neutral paper. The air circulated in the storage area is filtered mainly for particulates. Lighting in the storage area is UV-filtered and switched by motion detection, so overall exposure is reduced as well as saving power. Pest control is managed on a regular basis with “bug lights” and periodic cleaning.” We also discussed earthquake preparedness and Harvard is beginning to take action on that front. Depositories in higher incidence earthquake zones, such as California, have built earthquake mitigation details into their construction from the ground up. It cost Stanford University millions of dollars simply to re-shelve all of the books that came down in their main library during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
The Harvard Depository is built in a “modular” format that has been extended several times since its inception in 1986. The Depository was the first facility specifically designed for library storage. Previously older warehouses or factories were retro-fitted for library use. This modular design will allow for continued growth in a facility that is absorbing nearly a half million items per year. The Depository now contains over nine million items including books, media, photographs, and manuscripts. It houses more books than the many libraries at Harvard combined do. Because of overcrowded shelves on campus and the Depository’s effective delivery system and limitless storage capacity most of the new books purchased for the library are going directly to the Depository. This has freed up a lot of space in the Harvard libraries for use as teaching and meeting facilities.
Another Harvard library, the Baker Library at the Business School, has developed a “virtual browsing” window on their catalogue that allows patrons to view books stored offsite as if they were on a shelf. For an added benefit the books are color coded by frequency of circulation.
Harvard Digital Archive
“In Cambridge, the Digital Repository Service (DRS) is a rapidly growing, 109-terabyte online library of 14 million files representing books, daguerreotypes, maps, music, images, and manuscripts, among other things, all owned by Harvard. In a facility that also serves other parts of the University, a two-person command center monitors more than a hundred servers. Green lights indicate all is well; red flashes when environmental conditions such as temperature or humidity exceed designated parameters. In a nearby room, warm and alive with the whirr of hundreds of cooling fans, their cumulative sound resembling the roar of a giant waterfall, a handful of servers hold the library’s entire digital collection. Other servers are dedicated to “discovery,” the technical term for the searchable online catalog, or “delivery,” the act of providing a file to an end user.” (2)
Robotic Storage Depositories
The first time I visited a shelving facility for “little used” books that employed robotic technologies I also got a personal tour of the Jean and Charles Schulz, of Peanuts fame, Information Center at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California. When it opened in 2000 theirs was the third such facility built in the U.S. (Cal State Northridge was the first in 1996). Even though many other industries had been utilizing the same robotic technology for years libraries only started taking advantage of them comparatively recently. The first warehouses to employ robotic storage were aircraft manufacturers who needed “just in time” access to the hundreds of thousands of parts required for assembling even one airplane, let alone hundreds of others. Library compact storage is actually one of the smallest uses of compact storage in a field where industrial warehouses may cover many acres.
I also got to visit the robotic storage facility at Colgate University that like Sonoma State has decided to keep archival storage as part of the library building. Both libraries found that quick retrieval was paramount in convincing faculty and students of the effectiveness of storing books away from the open stacks. Colgate also found that storing current DVD’s and other media gave them another layer of security for items that had a habit of “walking” from more public spaces.
In some ways this new view on managing library materials is a return to the past, almost Medieval in its outlook. In Europe and elsewhere books are not kept on open shelves for browsing. Most books are kept in an archival setting and are retrieved only on request. This gives much more security to the collection and allows for compact storage. Once upon a time books were even chained to library desks for greater security. On a similar note, computer use for reading has been compared to more ancient modes of interacting with texts: scrolling, bookmarking, and using tabs.
One thing I think we need to keep in mind is the tension between curatorial demands and the desire to “save everything.” When visiting Sonoma State the librarians joked about the depository as “a monument to deferred disposal.” When seeing some of their holdings I couldn’t help but agree. Libraries need to work closely with faculty and students to make sure that what is sent off to storage is not material that is needed as reference materials. And Librarians need to exert their curatorial control over what is being saved. One added benefit of sending materials to offsite storage is that it must be catalogued beforehand. This has led to more cataloging efforts resulting in more easily locating items in the collection. (4)
I would like to close with an observation regarding the curatorial aspect of storage from the Cornell University synopsis of offsite library storage:
I turn readers’ attentions to the work of Jorge Luis Borges, who knew a thing or two about libraries, and much more about speculation. Writing of an infinite "Library of Babel," Borges describes two types of intruders. The first are inquisitors, always on the alert for material that offends orthodox sensibilities. "Other men, inversely, thought that the primary task was to eliminate useless works. They would invade the hexagons [Borges’ library shelves], exhibiting credentials which were not always false, skim through a volume with annoyance, and then condemn entire bookshelves to destruction." (Borges 1962, 84-85) (3)
Much of what offsite storage reminds me of, and not just the robotic part of it, is a science fiction tale. In fact such sci-fi movies as “The Book of Eli” directly address the possibility of a loss of books, archives and thus of our species’ memory. Science fiction has proven to be a good predictor of future realities. I am glad to see that Depositories such as Harvard’s are addressing this issue of preservation and re-invention in the real world.
(1) “Library” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library)
(2) “Gutenberg 2.0” Jonathan Shaw; Harvard Magazine (May- June, 2010)
(3) http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/storagehistory.html
(4) “Debate at N.Y. Public Library Raises Question: Can Off-site Storage Work for Researchers?” Jennifer Howard; The Chronicle of Higher Education (April 27, 2012; page A20)
For further reading:
http://blog.archive.org/2011/06/06/why-preserve-books-the-new-physical-archive-of-the-internet-archive/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-16325727
(John Riley, Editor. Eastern Regional Sales Manager, BUSCA, Inc. www.buscainc.com)
Forward into the Past: Offsite Book Depositories, The Future of Libraries?
Open stacks are a fairly recent development that can be traced back to nineteenth century English and American public libraries when their library collections began to exceed the size of the reading room. Book stacks quickly evolved into a fairly standard form in which the cast iron and steel frameworks supporting the bookshelves also supported the floors, which often were built of translucent blocks to permit the passage of light (but were not transparent, for reasons of modesty).(1)
Previous to open stacks archival storage was the norm. The current practice of offsite storage can just as easily be thought of as archival storage. Books and other materials are kept in a secure, climate controlled environment with access limited to individual requests filled by librarians or other library personnel. Archives have been a major component of libraries since their inception and offsite storage has been used ever since the first libraries were created. Most libraries in Europe still keep books in storage with access only allowed by request after searching a catalogue of their available materials. Perhaps their holdings of incunabula and other rare books or simply the scarcity of many books encouraged the practice.
We have reached a similar situation today with an explosion of information and an inability to house all of it comfortably within reach. In addition, mass digitization has quickly converted tens of millions of books to electronic format resulting in less demand for the printed versions. Between these two irresistible forces libraries now find that returning to the archival model for storage, not just of little used items, but current materials as well, is a viable way to continue growing the collection while re-purposing precious space in the heart of their campuses or in urban settings.
I am one of those people who initially was horrified at the idea of storing most library books offsite or in compact shelving. Roaming the stacks was a pleasure I relished in my college years, but it is not something I do very often nowadays. It has become a rarefied pleasure that has possibly been outweighed by the benefits of “archival” storage: secure and safe storage, climate controlled atmosphere, and easy location of needed items. Some libraries report that up to fifty per cent of books searched in open stacks cannot be located, whether because the item was checked out or more disconcertingly, because it was stolen or simply misshelved. One archive that I visited recently, the Harvard Depository, has lost only two books in its twenty six year history!
In fact my interest in the subject of archival storage came about from a talk I attended given by Matthew Sheehy, Head of Access Services of the Harvard University Libraries, where he gave a detailed history and tour of the facility using slides and pictures. The size and scope of this project so amazed me that I later asked Matthew for a personal tour. He turned me over to the capable hands of Patrick O’Brien, Systems and Special Projects manager of the Depository. Lee Anne Hooley, Dark Archive Project and Document Delivery Librarian, was a great resource for details about the journal archiving function of the Depository.
I visited the Harvard Depository on a cool March afternoon and it was a good preparation for entering the temperature and humidity controlled warehouse that is kept at a constant fifty degrees and thirty five per cent humidity. The Depository is also pressurized from inside to create an outgoing breeze when doors are opened to keep out unwanted intruders such as flying insects. So a cool gust of air greeted us as we entered the towering stack area. Summer is the hardest time for the Depository with the infamous New England humidity forcing the air conditioners and dehumidifiers to run twenty four hours a day.
On this day the Depository was handling its usual hundreds of requests from the Harvard libraries and nearly as many from its Borrow Direct partners: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, New York Public, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale. The partners have access to each others’ catalogues and patrons can “borrow direct” from participating libraries simply by requesting items from their catalogue screens. The books in the Depository are all in the library’s catalogue and can be delivered anywhere on campus within a day. Books ordered by 6:00 p.m. are delivered first thing in the morning. Same day delivery is also available if ordered early enough in the day. The Depository circulates about 2.5% of its holdings annually, around 215,000 items.
The Depository also acts as a “Dark Archive”, not unlike a ‘Seed Bank’ which stores seeds against the possibility of some future calamity. By storing runs of journals for JSTOR and others, the Depository provides a physical backup to online journals. In spite of the mass digitization of journals workers at the Depository deliver many articles electronically after scanning the appropriate journal.
The Harvard Depository has found that human retrieval of books works best for them. Employing the type of “scissor lifts” you see at Home Depot or Lowe’s they can go directly to the box they need and retrieve a single book. Books are grouped by size after bar coding and the box is bar coded as well. Robotic book retrieval typically brings back a whole box of books that contains the required material. Because of the size of the facility Harvard has found that individual item retrieval works best.
I got to ride along on one of the lifts with Patrick and I got to see firsthand how easily it can be positioned exactly where the driver wants it. Boxes are stored on shelves that have been polished with bowling alley wax to make sliding the boxes onto steel work trays practically effortless. I asked Patrick what other techniques they employee for long term storage and he told me “The “tray” boxes in which we store books upright are made with PH neutral paper. The air circulated in the storage area is filtered mainly for particulates. Lighting in the storage area is UV-filtered and switched by motion detection, so overall exposure is reduced as well as saving power. Pest control is managed on a regular basis with “bug lights” and periodic cleaning.” We also discussed earthquake preparedness and Harvard is beginning to take action on that front. Depositories in higher incidence earthquake zones, such as California, have built earthquake mitigation details into their construction from the ground up. It cost Stanford University millions of dollars simply to re-shelve all of the books that came down in their main library during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
The Harvard Depository is built in a “modular” format that has been extended several times since its inception in 1986. The Depository was the first facility specifically designed for library storage. Previously older warehouses or factories were retro-fitted for library use. This modular design will allow for continued growth in a facility that is absorbing nearly a half million items per year. The Depository now contains over nine million items including books, media, photographs, and manuscripts. It houses more books than the many libraries at Harvard combined do. Because of overcrowded shelves on campus and the Depository’s effective delivery system and limitless storage capacity most of the new books purchased for the library are going directly to the Depository. This has freed up a lot of space in the Harvard libraries for use as teaching and meeting facilities.
Another Harvard library, the Baker Library at the Business School, has developed a “virtual browsing” window on their catalogue that allows patrons to view books stored offsite as if they were on a shelf. For an added benefit the books are color coded by frequency of circulation.
Harvard Digital Archive
“In Cambridge, the Digital Repository Service (DRS) is a rapidly growing, 109-terabyte online library of 14 million files representing books, daguerreotypes, maps, music, images, and manuscripts, among other things, all owned by Harvard. In a facility that also serves other parts of the University, a two-person command center monitors more than a hundred servers. Green lights indicate all is well; red flashes when environmental conditions such as temperature or humidity exceed designated parameters. In a nearby room, warm and alive with the whirr of hundreds of cooling fans, their cumulative sound resembling the roar of a giant waterfall, a handful of servers hold the library’s entire digital collection. Other servers are dedicated to “discovery,” the technical term for the searchable online catalog, or “delivery,” the act of providing a file to an end user.” (2)
Robotic Storage Depositories
The first time I visited a shelving facility for “little used” books that employed robotic technologies I also got a personal tour of the Jean and Charles Schulz, of Peanuts fame, Information Center at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California. When it opened in 2000 theirs was the third such facility built in the U.S. (Cal State Northridge was the first in 1996). Even though many other industries had been utilizing the same robotic technology for years libraries only started taking advantage of them comparatively recently. The first warehouses to employ robotic storage were aircraft manufacturers who needed “just in time” access to the hundreds of thousands of parts required for assembling even one airplane, let alone hundreds of others. Library compact storage is actually one of the smallest uses of compact storage in a field where industrial warehouses may cover many acres.
I also got to visit the robotic storage facility at Colgate University that like Sonoma State has decided to keep archival storage as part of the library building. Both libraries found that quick retrieval was paramount in convincing faculty and students of the effectiveness of storing books away from the open stacks. Colgate also found that storing current DVD’s and other media gave them another layer of security for items that had a habit of “walking” from more public spaces.
In some ways this new view on managing library materials is a return to the past, almost Medieval in its outlook. In Europe and elsewhere books are not kept on open shelves for browsing. Most books are kept in an archival setting and are retrieved only on request. This gives much more security to the collection and allows for compact storage. Once upon a time books were even chained to library desks for greater security. On a similar note, computer use for reading has been compared to more ancient modes of interacting with texts: scrolling, bookmarking, and using tabs.
One thing I think we need to keep in mind is the tension between curatorial demands and the desire to “save everything.” When visiting Sonoma State the librarians joked about the depository as “a monument to deferred disposal.” When seeing some of their holdings I couldn’t help but agree. Libraries need to work closely with faculty and students to make sure that what is sent off to storage is not material that is needed as reference materials. And Librarians need to exert their curatorial control over what is being saved. One added benefit of sending materials to offsite storage is that it must be catalogued beforehand. This has led to more cataloging efforts resulting in more easily locating items in the collection. (4)
I would like to close with an observation regarding the curatorial aspect of storage from the Cornell University synopsis of offsite library storage:
I turn readers’ attentions to the work of Jorge Luis Borges, who knew a thing or two about libraries, and much more about speculation. Writing of an infinite "Library of Babel," Borges describes two types of intruders. The first are inquisitors, always on the alert for material that offends orthodox sensibilities. "Other men, inversely, thought that the primary task was to eliminate useless works. They would invade the hexagons [Borges’ library shelves], exhibiting credentials which were not always false, skim through a volume with annoyance, and then condemn entire bookshelves to destruction." (Borges 1962, 84-85) (3)
Much of what offsite storage reminds me of, and not just the robotic part of it, is a science fiction tale. In fact such sci-fi movies as “The Book of Eli” directly address the possibility of a loss of books, archives and thus of our species’ memory. Science fiction has proven to be a good predictor of future realities. I am glad to see that Depositories such as Harvard’s are addressing this issue of preservation and re-invention in the real world.
(1) “Library” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library)
(2) “Gutenberg 2.0” Jonathan Shaw; Harvard Magazine (May- June, 2010)
(3) http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/storagehistory.html
(4) “Debate at N.Y. Public Library Raises Question: Can Off-site Storage Work for Researchers?” Jennifer Howard; The Chronicle of Higher Education (April 27, 2012; page A20)
For further reading:
http://blog.archive.org/2011/06/06/why-preserve-books-the-new-physical-archive-of-the-internet-archive/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-16325727
Friday, May 25, 2012
BUSCA, Inc. On the Road
BUSCA, Inc. enjoyed exhibiting at the recent ENY/ACRL Spring Conference at Mohawk Valley Community College in Utica, NY. Nearly 40 different institutions were represented. Library assessment was the main topic.
http://enyacrl.org/site/spring-2012-conference/
Look for BUSCA, Inc. next at the SUNYLA Conference at Fashion Institute of Technology June 6-8
http://sunyla.org/node/79
And then this Summer you will find us at ALA Annual in Anaheim, CA. Look for us in the Basch Subscriptions/Prenax Booth #2748
See you soon either at one of these functions or on the road. Happy Memorial Day from all of us here at BUSCA!