During the week of June 19, 2000, the Scott Memorial Library Access Services Staff (Circulation Department) started a shift of the more than 63,000 books on the 4th floor.What is a shift, you may ask? A shift is literally that--a shift of our holdings. Books are shifted from one location to another in the library. In our case the books are being shifted using new and existing shelf space, or stacks, as they are known in library land.
Why is this being done? The shift is being done primarily to create more space on the 4th floor for the existing titles, and secondly to allow for an estimated 3 years worth of growth for new titles. The first phase of the shift involved moving the Abstracts titles (Biological Abstracts, Chemical Abstracts, etc.) from the east side of the building to the new stacks on the west side of the building. We were then able to use those empty shelves to start shifting book collection.
The "how" of shifting a book collection is a complicated process. Stacks Manager, Tanya Finney-Ellison had to first count all of the shelves on the 4th floor. From that number we had to determine how many shelves held books and how many shelves were unused. Based on this information we came up with a formula to determine how much shelf space we could leave open in individual sections of the collection to accommodate three years growth overall. We were able to use circulation reports to identify subject areas in which the most and least amount books had been added to the collection. For example, the Q-QZ section had the most titles purchased and needed the most room for growth. This call number range includes biochemistry, clinical pathology, human anatomy, microbiology, immunology, oncology and pharmacology. We will allow for 12 inches of empty space in this portion of the collection, as opposed to 6 inches of empty space on every other shelf in the very beginning of the collection which starts with the A-PZ call numbers. While this range of call numbers covers a broad range of subjects, from philosophy to psychology, and from art to literature, they represent the slowest growing parts of the collection in which fewer books will be purchased over the next three years.
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