NYPL Finally Delivers Some Books… But Wait!
NYPL has announced the completion of the underground storage facility built when Vartan Gregorian led the Library in the 1980s. CSNYPL has long advocated the use of this space. But even as they fill it with books, questions remain. On-site books, once routinely delivered in fifteen minutes, now take forty-five. And, while boasting of the capacity of the new facility, NYPL refuses to make plans to renovate the stacks where capacity for three million more volumes sits empty and unused. Those books take days to be trucked in from New Jersey.
The best way for a research library to serve its users is to deliver all available information to patrons as quickly as possible. Whenever they have been consulted, patrons have said they want the 42nd Street Library repaired so it can hold its full capacity of 7.5 million books. In the information age, why should we settle for fewer books with longer waiting times?
http://www.wsj.com/articles/reference-books-back-in-the-stacks-1464997764
Image courtesy of Melville House.