

The vault where Harvard keeps millions of books - benbreen
http://gizmodo.com/a-glimpse-inside-the-hidden-vault-where-harvard-keeps-m-1684024865

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Pyrodogg
I'm partial to the Elmer L. Anderson library and the Minnesota Library Access
Center located at my alma mater, the University of Minnesota. It might not be
quite as large as Harvard's store, but instead being located in an warehouse,
it's located in two lime stone caverns carved into the bluffs above the river.

    
    
      The Andersen Library has been characterized as "geology-friendly;" and indeed, the geology of the site is an integral part of the underground structure. Behind the concrete portal, two enormous caverns, each two stories high and the length of two football fields, lie below a 30 foot layer of limestone plus an additional 30 feet of topsoil, clay and gravel. The solid limestone serves both as the structural roof of the caverns and the foundation for the Andersen Library building above. [1]
    

[1] [https://www.lib.umn.edu/andersen/about-
building](https://www.lib.umn.edu/andersen/about-building)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihLwcqSJzF4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihLwcqSJzF4)

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gwern
> When I was an undergraduate at Harvard, I knew the Harvard Depository only
> as it appeared in the online library catalogue. I could click a button and a
> book would magically appear on campus a couple days later. By my senior
> year, I could click a button and an email would pop up in my inbox a couple
> days later, with a scanned PDF of the book section I requested.

Nice.

~~~
fernly
Interesting. They are implementing, in effect, an LRU cache algorithm:
scanning books as they are requested. The next person to request that book
gets an email in 30 seconds, not two days.

~~~
thret
What are they discarding? It's more of a FIFO isn't it? I assume that when
they have no new requests they are scanning books based on some other
criteria.

~~~
cjubb39
Perhaps it's best described just as an infinite-sized cache. I would assume
they have enough request to very rarely be idle.

~~~
gwern
Copy-on-write might be a better concept to allude to. You're making a new
version, but efficiently, on demand.

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prbuckley
Here is a link to the 24 minute documentary about the Harvard Depository...

[http://librarybeyondthebook.org/cold_storage/](http://librarybeyondthebook.org/cold_storage/)

Very cool how they use the depository floor plan as a way to navigate the
film.

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peteretep
Bigger, prettier, older:
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodleian_Library](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodleian_Library)

~~~
insipid
Not really, debatable, barely:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Library](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Library)
:)

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Maken
I fail to understand why they haven't scanned all the books yet.

~~~
caseysoftware
I used to work with the Library of Congress' digitization efforts, so some
perspective..

I know you said books but the larger problem is that sometimes the equipment
to play back the media is no longer available.. or damages/changes the media
in some way.

For books specifically, to get the entire "work" many scanning efforts are
destructive in that you have to cut the binding of the book to get the full
page.. because if there are notes in the margin, that is part of the work. For
some researchers, the medium (material) of the paper itself is significant and
could be useful. It can help establish age, printing process used, provenance
and a variety of other aspects.

If you just care about the words printed on the page, it's much easier. But
that's only part of the picture. (pun intended)

------
madengr
I'm surprised the retrieval lift is not automated; probably has something to
do with unions.

~~~
ars
Perhaps.

It could also be cost. Automated machines are expensive and only worth it if
there is a high volume. Perhaps there's just not enough volume to make it
worth it.

