The Yale University Library will create at West Campus a state-of-the-art processing facility for the receipt, description, and shelf preparation of new acquisitions. More than 100,000 volumes arrive at the Yale Library each year, and these arrivals will be made more efficient by West Campus’s proximity to I-95 and other major transportation routes. Once they have arrived at West Campus, new acquisitions can be cataloged, assigned their call numbers, and labeled, before they are delivered from West Campus to their final destination at any library on the Central Campus. The processing of new acquisitions would occupy approximately 25,000 square feet and involve more than 150 staff members. An additional 5,000 square feet could be reserved for the arrangement and description of manuscript and archival materials whose size or format makes them challenging to process on Central Campus. One example would be the Library’s growing collections of architectural archives that require large amounts of space in which to spread out and process blueprints and drawings.

While the new processing center would be the hub of the Yale Library’s technical services at West Campus, there will also be robust provision of public services to the campus occupants in the sciences and collections. The Library will have at least one location for picking up and dropping off materials delivered from any of the Central Campus libraries and the Library Shelving Facility. There will also be shared touch-down spaces in the laboratory and collection buildings, a place for library subject specialists to “touch down” at predetermined times among their constituents at West Campus. The subject specialists will answer reference questions and provide individual and group instruction in using Yale Library resources, including electronic materials, just as they currently do on Central Campus.

The Yale Library also plans to share in the planning and development of the shared collection conservation facilities and the shared digitization facilities in still to be defined ways.

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