The Time Has Come... To Move Many Things: Inventorying and Preparing a Collection for Offsite Storage

In the spring of 2019, the Montana State University (MSU) Library embarked on a large-scale inventory project that involved weeding and moving portions of their collection to an offsite storage facility within six months in order to create more student study space in the Library. The department primarily responsible for leading the project, Collections Access & Technical Services, the result of two departments merging, was also simultaneously navigating their new structure and a remodel of their workspace thus adding further challenges to the project. This poster session demonstrated how MSU Library approached and completed this project by advocating to their Library Administration for additional resources, including hiring a project manager and third-party companies to assist with the inventory and moving of the collection. It also discussed the types of work groups formed to identify new workflows (i.e., retrieval of offsite items) and modify existing ones, involving student employees in the project, and internal and external collaborations that took place. Additionally, presenters shared strategies used to communicate to their campus community, and the impact this project has had on our patrons. They also included statistics that were gathered during the project including deselection figures, the number of materials that did not have barcodes and were not accounted for in the Library’s catalog and discovery layer (Ex Libris’ Alma and Primo), and what subject areas currently remain in the main library building.