If you’ve recently visited the first floor stacks, you may have spotted some empty shelves. Don’t worry! They are not a sign of troubled times or a dwindling library collection. In fact, our empty shelves are purposeful, as they provide space for new materials and growth.
The library may seem like a static space, but the stacks are constantly changing, and there is a lot more to collection maintenance than just re-shelving books. In 2022, Pitts acquired 2,060 new items, taking up nearly 50 yards (half of a football field!), or an entire aisle, of shelf space. Making room for that amount of material is no small feat. To accommodate the ever-expanding collection, we do daily shelf-reading, inventory, and shifting projects, which you’ve probably seen our staff doing downstairs. Daily shelf-reading helps us ensure that all of our books are tidy and nothing has been horribly misplaced. Inventory, another ongoing project, helps us track each individual book’s place on the shelves and assess its condition. Any books that are falling apart, water damaged, or otherwise unsuitable for circulation are removed from the shelves.
Finally, the most important task for making space in the stacks is shifting. Shifting begins by measuring every individual shelf and determining the size of the existing materials in each section to find the proportion of the space currently being used. Based on heat maps of space density, we locate available space in other sections. Once the math balances out, we can begin the physical process of moving all of the materials into their new locations, creating the needed space for new materials to be shelved in their respective sections. Throughout the shifting process, we continue measuring and calculating density ratios to make sure everything is going according to the plan. Shifting is a process that is never fully complete.
You may have also noticed the New Acquisitions section located on the 2nd floor of the library. Designated by yellow signs and end caps, the New Acquisitions section is an important space for us to show the cool, new things we get, but also highlight growth in certain areas of the collection. Before we started this section, library staff were able to see the new purchases, engage with them, and have first dibs on checking out the materials, but patrons weren’t able to engage in the same way. This section was created with you, our patrons, in mind, and we encourage you to check it out and see all the new materials arriving at Pitts! Anything in the New Acquisitions section can be checked out with a valid library account. After a few months, all these new materials are placed downstairs into their permanent homes.
Our current shelving space is structured to comfortably house our current collection with more than sufficient room for growth. So the next time you come across empty shelves, know they are waiting their turn to hold our books.
Written by Yasmine Green, Collection Management Coordinator, & Liz Miller, Coordinator of Digital Initiatives
