News update April 2009
In January 2009 we started a Collection Moves programme of low-use items to a new storage facility at our Boston Spa site, in West Yorkshire. It is the largest programme of moves we have undertaken since the opening of St Pancras in 1998 and it is intended to secure the condition of these items for the long-term.
The move is being carried out in phases and while each phase is completed items that are transferred to the new storage facility will be under embargo, and will not be available to Readers. At this stage the embargo for Phase One items is expected to end in early 2010.
The embargo is necessary because of the massive logistical challenge of packing, transferring and reshelving many thousands of individual items (up to a peak of 9,000 - 10,000 items per day) into a high-density storage facility with a fully automated racking and retrieval system.
Phase One, in which 10.6% of the Library's collection will be transferred, is currently underway, with a rolling programme of items scheduled for moving. Many items have already entered the programme and new items are scheduled to do so, on an ongoing basis.
This update provides details of the latest items to enter Phase One of the programme. These will be unavailable from 20 April 2009.
How are Readers affected?
Humanities serials within the following shelfmark ranges have already entered Phase One and are currently under embargo:
P.101/1 > P.2000/1482
Materials with the following shelfmarks are now scheduled to enter Phase One. They have been recalled and will be under embargo from 20 April 2009:
PP.2 > PP.2000
You can now check, using the request page on Explore the British Library, whether a particular serial is included in the move.
The embargo period was initially set for a minimum of 9 months, to end in September 2009. It has now been necessary to extend this period until early 2010.
The Collection Moves and embargo period will not affect St Pancras high-use material e.g. rare books, monographs, standard-use monographs, maps, sound archive and music scores.
We will provide further updates and details of collection moves as they become available.