FFHS-NEWS British Library collection moves programme

[News from the Federation of Family History Societies]

In January 2009, the British Library will be starting a collection moves
programme of low-use items. This is the largest programme of moves that
have been  undertaken since the opening of St Pancras in 1998.
The transfer of low-use items to a new storage facility in Boston Spa, West
Yorkshire, will take place in phases. This first phase will see 10.6% of
their total collection transferred to Boston Spa.  During the first phase,
these low-use collections will become unavailable to Readers. The embargo
period will start in January 2009 and last for a minimum of nine months.
This period of restricted access will not affect St Pancras' high-use
material such as rare books, manuscripts, maps, sound archive and music
scores.
The collection moves are taking place as the British Library needs to vacate
current leasehold storage buildings. Firstly, they fail to provide adequate
environmental conditions. Secondly, the Library does not have the
opportunity to extend the leases. The moves will allow the British Library
to rationalise their collection storage, provide future growth space and
continue to act as guardians of the national collection. 
The planned closure of the newspaper library in Colindale and the transfer
of the newspaper collections form a part of Phase Two of the Collection
Moves programme, starting at the end of 2009. The material stored at
Colindale will be transferred on a staggered basis, and will only be
unavailable to Readers whilst in transit. This is expected to be a matter of
weeks. Moving the hard copy collections to the state-of-the-art storage
conditions in Boston Spa will considerably improve their lifespan. Microfilm
will be stored and available at St Pancras
More information on this can be found at:
<http://www.bl.uk/news/2008/pressrelease20080717.html>
www.bl.uk/news/2008/pressrelease20080717.html
The background to Colindale Newspaper Migration Strategy can be found at:
  <http://www.ffhs.org.uk/news/news070604.php>
http://www.ffhs.org.uk/news/news070604.php 
 <http://www.ffhs.org.uk/news/news071016.php>
http://www.ffhs.org.uk/news/news071016.php 
 
Maggie Loughran 
Joint Administrator, Federation of Family History Societies 
*   <mailto:admin at ffhs.org.uk> admin at ffhs.org.uk 
 <http://www.ffhs.org.uk/> www.ffhs.org.uk 
 
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://ffhs-lists.org.uk/pipermail/ffhs-news_ffhs-lists.org.uk/attachments/20080722/07d7b672/attachment-0001.html