[PADG:1232] Re: cost of shelving

[Wes Boomgaarden <boomgaarden.1@xxxxxxx>]

Cathy and colleagues:

I'm not certain of the meaning of your phrase "the annual cost of
'shelving a book'", but will take it to mean the cost of storing it
on library shelves once it is acquired.  With that assumption, and
with a good cup of coffee beside me, I offer this approach to cost
estimation...
 
A very good source is Leighton & Weber's Planning Academic and
Research Library Buildings (ALA, 1999, 3rd ed.), a Bible in the field
of building renovation and construction planning.  Its Chapter 6
"Programming Housing the Collections" is excellent in
describing space requirements for varied types of analog-format
collections, especially its0 section 6.2.

Armed with that data AND with the specific space costs on your local
campus or facility, you may be able to estimate a real annualized cost to
house a book in a particular building on your campus.

So, for example, we at Ohio State use "plant operations &
maintenance" -- or POM -- cost figures, which are paid by all units
at this university for the space they occupy.  The cost of POM at
this time is $12.36 per assignable square foot (asf) per year, a cost
that includes a host of costs for lights, energy, maintenance, etc. 

If the library facility houses, say, 14 volumes per assignable square
foot in its conventional-stack book storage areas, the cost per year
would be about $.88 per volume per year.   If, in contrast, it
stores 161 volumes / asf in its Harvard-style depository, the cost would
be a bit less than $.08 per volume per year.

Cathy, I hope you somehow find this trivia of value.

Best,

Wes Boomgaarden
Ohio State University Libraries

At 01:26 PM 10/10/2006, you wrote:
> For those of
> you PADGers who have your reference hats on this fine afternoon,
>  
> I have been asked to provide annual cost figures for
> 'shelving a book'.  Obviously this cost depends greatly on the
> particulars of the shelving location, such as open or closed stack,
> regular or high density, location of the building on or off campus,
> geographical location of University (Manhattan vs. Gainesville), as well
> as determining if are you worried about overhead and personnel,
> etc.  I have been hunting for one or two key, fairly recent articles
> on the topic and have been coming up short.  I have several from the
> late 1980's/early 1990's ( Michael Cooper, 'a cost comparison of
> alternative book storage facilties', from Library Quarterly v.59, no.3
> 1989 and by the same author, 'Sensitivity of book storage strategy
> decisions to alternative cost assumptions' Library Quarterly, v.61 no. 4,
> 1991) plus the Hain-Teper article from 2003 in Collection Management
> v.28, no.4 ('Time and Cost analysis of preparing and processing materials
> for off site shelving at the UIUC').  
>  
> Other than these three, which are not quite right, I
> have not found much on the topic.  Anyone out there have any
> ideas?  I am not looking for any construction information, or
> processing into an off site facility, or changing shelving locations in
> the OPAC, I just need a plain old discussion of what it takes to keep a
> book safe for a year.
>  
> I searched the PADG list archives to no avail on this
> topic.  
>  
> Thanks,
>  
> Cathy
>  
> Cathleen L. Martyniak
> Head, Preservation Department
> Smathers Libraries
> University of Florida
> Gainesville, FL 32611
> 352-392-6962 (voice)
> 352-392-6597 (fax)
> cathy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>  
>