National Library of Australia - Gateways>

ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 48| December 2000


The race to deliver:
more efficient handling of offsite material

Delivery of items from our offsite stores has significantly improved with the lease of a new transport vehicle. The National Library of Australia operates two offsite storage facilities located 15 kilometres from the main Library building. Three full-time staff are employed by the Stack Services Branch to retrieve, refile and maintain material from the collections stored offsite. The challenge for staff is retrieving material from both facilities and delivering it to the main Library building within two hours. Delivery occurs five times per day Monday to Thursday and three times per day Friday and Saturday. The staff also retrieve material from the Library’s offsite collections for the Document Supply Section. As well as standard bibliographic skills, staff require a licence to operate motorised stock picking equipment to access high-rise shelving (7.2 metres high) at the second storage facility and the ability to drive a courier van.

Stack delivery staff

The task of transferring material between stacks and van was made easier in 1998 with the introduction of purpose-built trolleys designed to fit stockpicker platforms, the courier van and the Library’s book lift. This allows material to be transported from highrise shelving at the Hume Annexe to the reserve shelves in the Main Reading Room without changing trolleys. The next goal was to replace the standard hydraulic lifting equipment used to load and unload trolleys from the van because it was cumbersome and slow to operate.

In July the Library took delivery of a new Volkswagen Razorback courier van with a unique load bed that drops down to ground level allowing easy access for library trolleys. The new van has provided a safer and more efficient means of transferring material between the Library’s storage facilities.
—Lawrie Salter

Delivery staff with the van.
Left to right: Lauren Donald, Ken White (OIC Offsite Storage), John Petrie.Photograph: Helen Minopetros

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