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Commencement:Looking
Outward • Feeling
Smart •
Filling Bass Chairs
Student Affairs VP Picked •
Christensen Honored •
Bigger, Better Bookshelves
Dancing Feats and Feasts
• Accepted
for Admission •
A Dean for Medicine
Scholars and Fellows •
Math Champs
• Healing
Damaged Hearts • Backing
a Digital Future
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Bigger, Better
Bookshelves
state-of-the-art, off-campus book repository opened in April, enabling
the university to accommodate an additional three million volumes
and better preserve its books and other holdings. The $7-million building,
the newest addition to Duke Libraries, is the first phase in the William
R. Perkins Library renovation, a series of improvements expected to
be among the most significant in the library’s history, according
to University Librarian David Ferriero.
“
This is a milestone,” Ferriero says of the new facility, named
the Library Service Center. “It will ease the shelving problems
we’ve faced in recent years. What’s more, it puts us in
position to begin the Perkins improvements.”
The stacks at Perkins and other libraries on campus are overflowing,
a situation Ferriero described as detrimental to the books and other
collections materials, as well as to their use. In the open-stack
campus libraries, it is hard to keep temperature and humidity at levels
that help preserve books and manuscripts. The Library Service Center
(LSC) has been designed to maintain optimal levels and give materials
longer lives.
Located at 5 Anson Street, near Durham Technical Community College,
the LSC is roughly 23,000 square feet and consists primarily of shelving
units. But it also includes a reading room, where materials can be
used on-site; a staging area; a processing room; a garage and utility
room; and other space for storage and preservation.
One of the LSC’s more innovative features is a bar-code system
that will significantly reduce what is known as “shelf failure,”
books shelved in the wrong places. Library administrators say the
new system could improve accessibility to materials even though the
facility is located off campus. A courier service will regularly deliver
books to campus libraries. Less frequently used materials from libraries
throughout the university will be shelved at the LSC, freeing up space
in the campus libraries for new acquisitions.
The facility will be able to hold three million volumes at first,
with the capacity to add additional shelving modules, raising the
maximum capacity to fifteen million volumes. Administrators have spoken
with colleagues at other Triangle universities about shared shelving.
Duke is a member of the Triangle Research Libraries Network, which
also includes North Carolina Central University, North Carolina State
University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The Library Service Center has been funded by the university with
the support of a grant from The Duke Endowment.
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