Behind-the-Scenes is a series in which we share stories of the work we do hidden from view, and more recently what we accomplished during our year-long hiatus from public service.
The Kiplinger Research Library is reopening on August 27th—Support our efforts and help us cross the finish line! Learn more at our Crowdrise page.
Relocating to the Newly Renovated Carnegie Library
Safely relocating thousands of historic materials from one building to another is a daunting task. Add reorganizing those collections in a historic building on a shifting move-in timeline and you have a true behemoth. This is the situation in which the staff of the Historical Society found themselves from 2018 to 2019.
Mapping the Collection Layout
The Historical Society had over 5,000 boxes of collection materials onsite at the interim location at the Newseum (the rest of the collection went to offsite storage). Varying in shape and size, these boxes contain valuable and historically important materials that are vital to telling the stories that have shaped the District. Their contents form different collections and comprise various material types, such as manuscripts, portraits, printed materials, and many more.
In order to organize these materials within the new storage configuration across three floors in the Carnegie Library, staff needed to figure out how to keep collection types together in logical groupings. This is key to a working research library where materials are retrieved daily for library patrons.
Based on experience from previous moves, the staff knew the moving process works best when all items are labeled clearly and their destinations are pre-assigned. In order to do this again on a larger scale, they teamed up with a local technology company. Together, they designed and built a custom software platform which would map the layout of the Historical Society’s collection materials onto shelves.
This mapping software needed to account for the intricacies of library and archives space planning. It had to keep collections together in a certain order, use multiple shelving types with varying dimensions, stack certain box types, and account for future growth space. The result was a product that assigned each item to a place on the shelves. Additionally each shelf had a “visualized label” which showed the exact configuration and description of the boxes.
For this mapping platform to work, it needed data. The Historical Society had to supply a detailed inventory of all collection boxes and data on box dimensions, collection type, contents, and more. In total there were 23 data fields collected for each box. For those keeping score, that is over 126,000 data points gathered from 5,514 boxes inventoried for this project. Naturally, it took our two library staff members several months to gather this data accurately.
The other vital piece of the puzzle was collecting similarly detailed data for the shelving—from its usable interior dimensions to the exact height elevations of each shelf. Aside from the 20 different shelving types, this task was further complicated by last-minute changes to the shelving due to as-built alterations.
With this data, the team was able to optimize collection integrity and create a “best-match” layout of collections across the four storage rooms. As an additional benefit to this process, the Historical Society now has a strategic space plan to inform collection growth.
Relocation
With a plan in hand for how to arrange the collection, the staff could focus their energies on the physical relocation process. Since there were so many different material types being moved, it was important to have experienced movers on the job. The team was made up of both general movers as well as a specialized team of fine art movers. The work of packing and unpacking was split—the fine art movers wrapped framed works and 3D objects, and delicately packed boxes of glass plate negatives, while the general movers packed manuscripts, books, and the administrative offices.
The collections were packed on carts at the Newseum based on their end destination at the Carnegie Library since it was not a direct shelf-to-shelf match. Once loaded with boxes, the moving carts were labeled with destination room and shelving unit information. Thanks to the visualized shelf labels, carts did not have to be unpacked sequentially—they could be moved in any order and be easily matched to their assigned location.
We can happily say that the relocation process went smoothly and the collection mapping system worked beautifully! With the physical move complete, the staff has been focused on setting up the reading room, including unpacking the 3,800+ books onto the new library shelves. There is still a lot of work to do before public services reopen—including updating the back-of-house catalog for home locations for each of these newly placed boxes—but we cannot wait to welcome library patrons again!
And, if all of those details made your head spin, here is the move “by the numbers.”
Stay tuned for next week’s blog about what to expect in the new Kiplinger Research Library! Please consider donating to our fundraising campaign that directly supports the library’s reopening needs. Every donation, no matter how small, helps us better serve our D.C. history community.