No Off-Site for New York Public Library

The New York Public Library is building a new underground storage facility in which the 2.5 million items in the research collection will be barcoded and shelved according to size, not subject, with an automated retrieval system designed to fulfill user requests within 40 minutes. The system is expected to be operational by the end of spring, 2016. The library’s originall proposed to move the collection to a  storage site in New Jersey was met with strong protests from users.