Yale Daily News

Updated: Saturday, November 21, 2009 7:35 p.m.

A A A

Finding space for Yale’s volumes

Staff Reporter
Published Wednesday, February 11, 2009

HAMDEN — Of the roughly 12.5 million volumes in Yale’s libraries, approximately 4 million are housed right in the middle of campus, in the lavish Sterling Memorial Library.

Another 3 million or so are three miles away, in a nondescript warehouse here in Hamden.

Aside from library staff, few at Yale have ever been to the decade-old Library Shelving Facility. But LSF was always meant to be more like an unobtrusive waiter than a gaudy architectural marvel. After all, if not for the facility’s 30-foot-high stacks and capacity to hold millions of Yale’s most obscure texts,...

#1 By (Anonymous) 8:44a.m. on February 11, 2009

if yale gets rid of open stacks, IT WILL BE A TRAGEDY.

#2 By (Anonymous) 10:06a.m. on February 11, 2009

cool article. yale should give tours of LSF to the public.

#3 By Y '11 10:35a.m. on February 11, 2009

No one said Yale was getting rid of open stacks. The space simply isn't enough to store all the books, and LSF is serving the purpose by storing books that aren't frequently circulated. Read the story more carefully.

#4 By (Anonymous) 12:08p.m. on February 11, 2009

but i don't know how to read!

#5 By Recent Alum 2:32p.m. on February 15, 2009

Nice article, I had no idea there was this shelving space outside of the Yale libraries.

#6 By Observer 4:58p.m. on February 15, 2009

#3: Apparently you had a hard time reading the article until the very end:

"That expense, he added, will keep stacks open to students and faculty for the foreseeable future. While some argue that off-site storage is efficient enough to simply eliminate all patron browsing, Schneiter and Nitecki both said the art of, as Nitecki put it, “browsing for that one special book” will likely never be lost."

Add Comment

You are not logged in. We do allow posting without registration, but we encourage you to register or log in to enjoy full access to our comments features!