Old Library Redevelopment Project December 2022

The monumental task of decanting the Library collections commenced last Spring as part of the Old Library Redevelopment Project.

All of the Library’s Research Collections housed in the Old Library are being transferred to special storage. This means removing 350,000 Early Printed books and a total of 700,000 collection items as part of the Library collections.

A series of timelapses are capturing the painstaking work of the Library team involved in the project. So far almost 3.5 km of books stacked side by side have been removed or 32% of the overall project.  There is a target of over 10.5 km in the overall project. That means just 7 km to go.

Readers will continue to have access to all material in an Interim Research Collections Study Centre during the lifetime of the building conservation project.