C.V. Starr East Asian Library Major stack shifts in progress!

As many of you will have noticed, we are in the midst of a major stack shift.  Over the summer our access staff, with the help of student workers, started moving the entire Library of Congress classified collection up a level. The LC call numbers now start immediately on the 250 level. The shift of the so-called old stacks is now complete, and our staff has started shifting in room 105, to be followed by room 108. We hope to finish the entire collection later this fall.  As each room is finished, ranges will be re-labeled, and both print and online stack maps will reflect the new arrangement of call numbers.  We are trying to do this work with a minimum of disruption, but obviously material in the process of being moved may be temporarily hard to find.  If you have trouble locating a particular item, please ask for assistance at our service desk.  Our staff will be happy to help.

Those of you who used our library before this summer will recall that the 250 level of the stacks housed a variety of materials.  These were  handled as follows: all materials with non-standard classification numbers (Harvard-Yenching, Nippon Decimal) have been either re-classified and integrated into the LC collection or processed for offsite storage (ReCAP).  All Ref2 (aka overflow reference) materials have been reviewed and re-assigned to one of three options: one portion has been integrated into the reference collection in the reading room, one portion has been shelved in the regular stacks as circulating items, and one portion has been integrated into the regular stacks but with non-circulating status.  The latter category is clearly marked on the spine with blue non-circ stickers.  Of course, all these changes are clearly reflected in the CLIO records.

This shift was initiated to redistribute the collection, and alleviate over-crowded shelves.  If you have questions about the shift, or any other matter relating to the Starr Library, do feel free to contact us at starr@libraries.cul.columbia.edu.