In October, in order to improve delivery time for readers without email, the library began to send printed notices through the U.S. mail to readers who formerly received Campus Mail delivery. Not surprisingly, readers are pleased with the email notification service. Although the renovation project begun in 1995 greatly improved environmental conditions in the Sterling Memorial Library stacks, it dramatically reduced shelving space and caused problems for readers and staff alike. The installation of heating and air conditioning ducts combined with some reallocation of space for the Gilmore Music Library consumed almost the equivalent of a floor of shelving. The Access Services staff has taken major steps to ameliorate these conditions.
Signs placed throughout the stacks now guide readers to the overflow shelving areas.
Many books, however, remained on trucks. With this new-found space, staff could begin returning books to their proper locations on shelves. Over the summer, they shifted some 750,000 volumes from over fifty book trucks and eliminated many overflow shelves. Access Services reintroduced systematic shelf reading in the stacks. More shifting projects are being planned for summer 2001 in a continuing effort to restore the stacks collections to their accurate call number sequences in their proper locations.