We’re three weeks in to our move which means we’re halfway there! It does feel like we’ve reached a tipping point with the shelves in our new space feeling more full than our old space. Here are some of our favorite that have made the move with us this week:
As the Rubenstein Library moves out of our space in original West Campus library building, it also means we won’t be using the 1928 elevator to carry us through all seven floors of the building anymore. 
While I could never decide if I found this elevator endearing or frightening, I think I’m going to miss its old school charms. It has a heavy metal door and a brass gate that need to be opened and closed by hand, as well as instructions on how to use the button and the door and gate.
If you want a chance to experience the thrills of Otis yourself, here’s a little video of a trip from the third floor up to the sixth floor in our former home.
We have made a lot of progress this week, moving everything from domestic advertisements from the Hartman Center to bound-withs to ledgers to more History of Medicine materials to our small manuscript collections. It’s time for another weekend. More updates next week!
The weather for the past week has been nothing but rain here in North Carolina. Just for fun, I looked up the January 17, 1862 entry in this diary from Philadelphia, and guess what I found?
January 17, 1862: Not very pleasant. (It was also “rainy and unpleasant” on January 18.) Perhaps this woman should have borrowed J. Walter Thompson’s umbrella, from the J. Walter Thompson Artifacts and Memorabilia collection.
Despite the rain, both of these collections safely made it to swing space today.
Things are rolling right along in Week 2 of the move. We’re working closely with the LSC as they ingest most of our books and manuscripts from the old stacks. At the same time, our fragile, oddly sized, and highly used collections are moving to swing space. This means we have lots of carts in motion.
It’s been great to see all our giant books (folios, in library-speak) come out of our old stacks and into their bright and dust-free new home. I’m of the opinion that if you are going to print a large book, it should include large pictures. This copy of The Raven caught my eye as it went by on the book trucks.
Rubenstein Library On the Move is off to a great start. Our new swing space is open for business and we’ve welcomed a dozen researchers to the new reading room.
We’ve also welcomed our movers, who have made excellent progress this week by packing up the Rare Book Room, moving almost all of our folios into swing space, and shipping over lots trays of books to LSC.
We’re looking forward to a restful weekend before getting started with Week 2!
Welcome to the fourth installment of the photo diary of the Rubenstein Library’s move. Like proud new parents, we present to you the firsts from this week of the collections move…
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Welcome to the third installment of the photo diary of the Rubenstein Library’s move. Today marks the first day of our collections move. Time to use our spiffy new aprons and fill up all of those book trays!
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Welcome to the second installment of the photo diary of the Rubenstein Library’s move! We’re going to start off by showing you our new secure stacks, the future home of many of our archival collections and rare printed materials for the duration of the renovation.
Nice and empty, right? But they were a teensy bit dusty . . . So we organized a Rubenstein staff flash dusting mob yesterday afternoon!
And now our new stacks are clean and ready to be loaded with collections materials. Just in time, too, because the collections move starts on Monday!
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