The concrete has been poured and construction is now underway to create a new University of Alberta Research and Collection Resource Facility (RCRF), south of the Fort Edmonton/South Campus LRT station and Saville Community Sports Centre. This facility will house the entire collection currently located at the Book and Record Depository (BARD) while providing room for a projected growth of 50,000 items per year for the next 20 years.
The BARD has been in operation since 1994 and contains 3.1 million items. However, the university has realised the need for a more modern facility capable of housing its growing collection of library and archival material. In collaboration and consultation with various stakeholder groups, University of Alberta Libraries, Facilities and Operations, and University Relations have worked together to gather feedback from both the internal and external community and to secure approval from the Board of Governors.
I sat down with Trish Rosseel, Associate University Librarian, Learning Services/ Library Human Resources at her Cameron Library office for a brief chat about the project. Trish is closely involved with the planning process and puts out regular updates on the RCRF in the Library News blog. Trish shared her views on the new facility, the projected aims and where we are now in the construction phase. The following is a shortened version of our conversation.
Could you tell me a bit about the project — the need for it, the impetus behind it?
There are a couple of points right now. We have a book and record depository and that’s a rented space. Not only is it at capacity, it’s not on campus. We really just needed space for growth, for preserving our research collections. So [we wanted] to provide a really optimal space for our archival and … lower use items in our collection. It’s critically important to maintain our historical collection of materials. And building a new facility gives us the opportunity to build for growth and [create] the physical environment [that ensures] that they are preserved in a way that keeps them for the long-term.
Are there other similar storage facilities in Canada that the RCRF is modeled after?
There are quite a range of high density storage facilities in Canada and abroad. Certainly the University of Toronto Downsview has a very significant high density storage facility. UBC just recently built a high density storage facility. Those are just two examples.
Some of the folks on our team have visited quite a range of those as we considered our own in the process of moving forward with the proposal. The nice thing is that we had the benefit of being able to learn from a lot of institutions who have built them, and learn what works, what doesn’t, and really build that into our own proposal and planning.
One of our key priorities here in the library is very much ensuring the preservation of our print and our digital collections. Our print collection is significant but when we look at [the] use of our print collection, it’s not as high as it once was. Part of that is because we are buying more digital [material] as per the needs of our user community. . . .But [we are still concerned with] preserving that print collection which is a historical record and is certainly critical to historical research across a wide range of disciplines. The nice thing is [that] this facility provides the benefit of both: preserving the print collection but also providing a greater capacity to create our digital collection and expand it.
What are the implications of this new facility on faculty, staff and students — primarily researchers?
[One] thing that is really optimal is it’s much easier access in terms of proximity to North Campus, … so we expect that turnaround time may in fact be shorter for getting materials.
There may be materials we don’t necessarily want to go out to North Campus or materials that are delicate enough or fragile enough that we want them to stay in the building. There will be these two really nice spaces for people to access materials that they need. The multipurpose room is set up in such a way for people to utilize maps, with very different sizes. There will be a good big workable space to look at those materials. And similarly in terms of the design of the reading room, … we [will] do a setup that works really well for looking at archival material.
How does the U of A intend to make it easier to do research on campus through this new space?
We haven’t set what the turnaround times will be at this point but we do expect that since it’s a lot closer, that we will be able to manage that in a slightly different way. And also … we’ve been working with a lean design consultant to really try and make our processes as efficient as possible. … [We have looked] at work flows and processes to make them as efficient and effective for us but also in the service of our users.
Could you speak to the digitization opportunities in the new facility and how the RCRF fits within the modern library system?
I think in terms of digitization, we do do a lot of digitization now on site here. We have a digitization unit here on the second floor here in Cameron. And we see the potential to have greater capacity in this new RCRF facility to do that. We’ll actually have a few more digitization units and again it allows us to think more broadly about … aspects of our collection which, based on requests and usage statistics, would be appropriate to digitise in that space. Or again if we have materials in the RCRF that are fragile — that if someone requests it through an interlibrary loan — we could digitize it on demand. We haven’t worked out the whole service model for that but it does provide us some really nice capacity to build out and continue to develop the very successful digitization program we already have.
To watch the development of this new facility, check out Library News blog.
If planning and construction proceed as expected, the movement of items located at BARD to the new facility will commence in September 2017. The RCRF will be open to the public no later than July 2018. Stay tuned for more updates on the project.