As you might already know, we go to some of the trainee sessions. These trainee sessions are for graduate trainees who either work in one of the Bodleian libraries or in a college library in Oxford. After a year as a graduate trainee one can get a degree in librarianship or information management.
The last trainee session was a trip to the BSF – the Book Storage Facility. The BSF is not in Oxford itself but in Swindon. It took about one hour by coach to get there. I have heard from my colleagues before how enormous and impressive it is so that’s why I was very excited about getting to see this place.
But, before the tour in the BSF began, there was a presentation about some general facts and statistics (for example how scan requests increased after the price for them was lowered).
Here are some facts:
The BSF opened in 2010 and can store about 12-13 million items (for more information see https://www.bodleian.ox.
At the moment it also stores some books from the Cambridge University Library which has just recently opened its own storage facility. Besides books, the BSF also stores lots of maps.
The items stored in the BSF can be requested by readers to one of the Bodleian Libraries. The requested material is delivered twice a day and can only be read in a reading room.
After the presentation, we started with the tour through the storage facility. First, they showed how the incoming and outgoing books are being processed. Then, the tour continued though the storage rooms. I was really impressed by those high shelfs and how they fetch the requested books. We could even go upstairs to the very top to see how high the shelfs are.
It was great to see the BSF and I really enjoyed the trip!
by Anne
