One million books and counting — the entire Henry Madden Library collection will be on the shelves and ready for checkout at the grand opening on Feb. 20.
When the library remodel project began in 2005, the collection was moved to a warehouse in south Fresno and the online reserve system was put into place.
This arrangement allowed students, faculty and staff to research online and reserve the books they wanted through ALIS, the library̢۪s search engine.
Library staff then pulled the requested items from the warehouse and transported them to campus to be picked up.
Organization key
According to David Tyckoson, associate dean for the library, it took two and a half months to move the collection out of the library but only 19.5 days to move them back in during this past summer.
“You can move them fast but keeping them in order makes it challenging,â€Â Tyckoson said.
The books that people have reserved online have been coming from the new library since July but it has been difficult because of the construction.
Tyckoson said the collection, comprised of more than one million books, will be organized and ready to go for opening day. The shelves also have room for 20 years of growth.
Library Assistant Chris Ebert was the warehouse manager and also oversaw the move.
Now, he will work to maintain the collection in the new library.
He said keeping the books organized is a matter of training the library staff and informing users on the correct checkout, pulling and re-shelving processes.
“As long as you keep it up, it is pretty self sustaining,â€Â Ebert said.
Accessing books
Tyckoson said people wanting to check out books now have two options. “We’re not going to take the request system away,â€Â he said.
“[People] can continue to use the reserve system or they can come directly to the library and get their books immediately.â€Â
Jennifer Phillips, who began attending Fresno State in 2005, has not had a library for most of the time she has been in college.
“I will go straight to the library to get my books now that I finally can,â€Â she said.
Tyckoson said he expects undergraduate students to come directly to the library to get their books, but faculty and graduate students to continue to use the reserve system.
“Some faculty like the ability to reserve. Others are dying to get into the library to browse for books,â€Â Tyckoson said.
He said that the reserve system offers convenience for graduate students who are only on campus a couple days a week because they can do research from home and pick up the books at their convenience.
Even though all the books will be on campus now, the one day turnaround time will stay the same.
The only difference is that books will be now be available seven days a week.
“If you don’t want to worry about finding the book yourself, you can still reserve it online and pick it up the next day,â€Â Tyckoson said.
“We want to give people the option to get it immediately or reserve it the way they are used to.â€Â