Library Shelving Facility sets a record: Two million items delivered to users

Tom Landino, office assistant in Library Collection Services, steered an electric powered order picker through a warehouse, turned down an aisle lined with metal shelving, and swooped up to pluck a 1945 issue of the Hungarian journal “Magyar Egyhaz” from a shelf 25 feet above the ground. The journal, which focuses on the Hungarian Church, was packaged and delivered to a researcher at Rutgers University who had requested the item through interlibrary loan.

This seemingly routine transaction on Dec. 9 marked a major milestone for the Library Shelving Facility (LSF), Yale Library’s off-campus storage site: It was the  2 millionth item retrieved for library users since LSF opened in 1998. 

LSF  provides secure, climate-controlled storage, high-tech retrieval, and rapid delivery for more than 8 million books and other items, including rare and fragile materials from Yale Library Special Collections. LSF is located in Hamden, Conn., three miles from Sterling Memorial Library. 

Most of the 2 million requests filled to date have been for use at Yale, including by researchers from all over the world in  Special Collections reading rooms. The Hungarian journal is among the seven percent of requests for general collection material that have been filled for faculty, staff, and students at other institutions through interlibrary loan or Borrow Direct. 

The LSF operation runs on a highly automated system of barcodes and metadata used to track the precise location of items in 63,810 square feet of shelving. That system has allowed the facility to clock another critical milestone: “In all this time, we have never been asked for an item that we couldn’t locate,” said Chris Kilheffer, director of Library Collection Services and Operations. “We are very proud of that record.”

Learn more about the history of LSF, including video of the LSF team in action. 

—Patricia M. Carey

Photo by Viviana De La Cruz: Staff in Library Collections Services (left to right): John Charczynski, office assistant; Don DeChello materials assistant;  Mark Lombard, office assistant; and Tom Landino, office assistant, who is holding the 2 millionth item.