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The process of bringing Lied Library’s automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS) online consisted of setting up the system and storing materials. Setting up the system required defining specifications, designing a user‐interface between the integrated online library system and the ASRS, training in operation, and preparing for maintenance. Storing materials required selecting and processing the items to be stored, loading them into bins, and retrieving them with the system. Library staff spent countless hours in planning, customizing, preparing data, supplementing existing data, testing, and learning the system. The time was well spent as the load process went smoothly with relatively few problems.

Library storage is traditionally viewed as a space management strategy, a way of dealing with overcrowded buildings and growing collections. Storage also is implicitly a preservation strategy: an alternative to weeding, cramming books tightly on shelves, stacking them on the floor, or not purchasing them in the first place. Among its obvious preservation benefits, storage provides security from theft and vandalism, and protection from spills and pests caused by increasingly prevalent food and drink in library buildings. Although transfer to storage may be risky for fragile materials, leaving them in stacks that are constantly being shifted is likely to be more damaging. Many storage facilities provide better environmental conditions for collections than old or poorly maintained modern library buildings.

This paper aims to provide a case study of the CARM (CAVAL Archival and Research Materials Centre) Centre, a print repository owned and managed by CAVAL, an Australian consortium of academic libraries, based in Melbourne, Australia. The history, business models and operations of the initial module, CARM1, which commenced operations in 1996 and the recently completed module, CARM2 are described. This is preceded by a review of literature addressing the issue of retained or ceded ownership of stored items, and is followed by a discussion of the trend from a shared collection to shared storage within a shared facility.

The approach is descriptive and explanatory. CARM1 was designed for both operations and space utilisation to be managed as economically as possible. This was achieved by storing items in a high density configuration and the collection, now known as the CARM Shared Collection, being owned by the CAVAL consortium. In exploring options for an expanded facility in 2007, a shared storage facility was determined to best meet the qualitative needs of member libraries. This option minimised the set-up and operational costs and required the lowest initial capital. CAVAL constructed a second storage facility, CARM2 which began operations in late 2010.

The CARM Centre demonstrates that variant models for storage configurations and collection ownership can co-exist and meet the differing needs of member libraries within one facility. The need for off-site storage and the terms and conditions under which member libraries are willing to accept it differ widely. CAVAL's approach has been, and continues to be, that each member library makes its own decision and that CAVAL's role to facilitate those decisions while retaining an approach that supports broad-based solutions, be this in the form of a fully integrated shared collection, or a co-ordinated and carefully managed shared storage facility.

This paper will be of interest and value to other organisations or consortia with an interest in the development, business models, implementation and management of shared print repositories that respond to the needs and circumstances of their member libraries.

Aims to present the authors' efforts towards the development of a digital library environment supporting research at the Medical School of Athens University, Greece.

The digital library facilitates access to medical material produced by laboratories for both research and educational purposes. As the material produced varies (regarding its type and structure) and the search requirements imposed by potential users differ, each laboratory develops its own collection. All collections must be bilingual, supporting both Greek and English. Extended requirements were imposed regarding the services offered by the digital library environment, due to the following reasons: end‐users actively participate in the cataloguing workflow; cataloguers should be able to create and manage multiple collections in a simplified manner; and different search requirements must be supported for different user groups. To formulate and then deal with these requirements, the authors introduced the term “dynamic collection management” denoting automated collection definition and unified collection management within an integrated digital library environment. Digital library components providing the desired functionality and the interaction between them are described. System performance, especially during collection search, and bilingual support are also explored.

Finds that Athens Medical School Digital Library facilitates access to medical material to researchers and students for both research and educational purposes.

The paper provides useful information on a digital library environment which supports research.

This paper seeks to record a collaborative project in the management of legacy collections.

The eight New Zealand university libraries have a history of collaboration and sought a shared storage solution. It was agreed that a single copy of low‐use print serials would, in most cases, be sufficient for the country's research communities. The libraries have chosen to outsource storage to a commercial provider with facilities throughout the country.

The paper describes the background to the New Zealand situation, the process of reaching this decision and the challenges of implementation across a group of libraries, including the rationalisation of the eight collections to retain a single shared copy.

The case is relevant to library consortia undertaking collection management projects.

This paper aims to provide a context for Brazilian Portuguese language documentation and its data collection to establish linguistic repositories from a sociolinguistic overview.

The main sociolinguistic projects that have generated collections of Brazilian Portuguese language data are presented.

The comparison with another situation of repositories (seed vaults) and with the accounting concept of assets is evocated to map the challenges to be overcome in proposing a standardized and professional language repository to host the collections of linguistic data arising from the reported projects and others, in the accordance with the principles of the open science movement.

Thinking about the sustainability of projects to build linguistic documentation repositories, partnerships with the information technology area, or even with private companies, could minimize problems of obsolescence and safeguarding of data, by promoting the circulation and automation of analysis through natural language processing algorithms. These planning actions may help to promote the longevity of the linguistic documentation repositories of Brazilian sociolinguistic research.

This paper seeks to explore five forces likely to significantly affect interlending operations in the near term: the transition from print to electronic resources; management of legacy print collections; mass digitization projects; competition from other information providers; and copyright.

The author uses data from authoritative sources to illustrate the effects these forces are having and will continue to have on libraries and ILL operations.

The author predicts that most libraries will be slow to divest themselves of print monographs on a large scale; libraries will continue to build new offsite storage facilities but put more thought into their contents; increased discoverability of digitized texts and greater copyright restrictions will drive users to print; librarians will make gray areas of copyright law work for them instead of against them; publishers, librarians, authors, lawyers, and scholars will find a responsible and fair solution to providing digital access to “orphan” works; and ILL will persist as a core operation for nearly all libraries.

This paper provides a unique look at forces that are shaping the future of global ILL activities.

People with visual impairment comprise the second high disability population in Hong Kong, but only two existing information centers provide information services for visually impaired people, which is inadequate. Therefore, this study aims to provide a more in-depth understanding of the information services for visually impaired people in Hong Kong.

People with visual impairment comprise the second high disability population in Hong Kong, but only two existing information centers provide information services for visually impaired people, which is inadequate. Therefore, this study aims to provide a more in-depth understanding of the information services for visually impaired people in Hong Kong.

IAC's main problems include limited collection, inconsistent multiple digital platforms for user access, limited service hours and limited promotion. Some technological suggestions were proposed, which include: expanding its electronic and special collections, establishing a one-stop digital platform, AI-based chatbot for automated caring chats and reference services, and extending its social network marketing.

Scant studies focus on the information services and management of special libraries for visually impaired people, especially in East Asia. On the other hand, there are limited case studies analyzing libraries with value-chain analysis.

The environmentally controlled library warehouse stores ten million collection items and its team of staff provides a delivery service to the students and researchers. Statistics show that the demand for the service was much higher than the forecast at the design stage and, as a result, the operationally intensive environment had bottlenecks and backlogs, which were affecting the service-level agreements. It was clear that the staffing levels were inadequate to meet the demand, so there was a need to capture data to enable evidence-based decision making to restructure and supplement staffing. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Each of the activities undertaken by staff were observed and timed over extended periods, which resulted in detailed measurements for each elemental task. On the basis of known demand for services, the author was able to extrapolate these measurements to model the demand on services and, therefore, the staffing requirement for a whole year.

The author was able to provide evidence to show that the levels of staffing were inadequate and two further full-time equivalent staff were required. The data also highlighted specific areas that required higher and lower levels of resourcing than those were currently provided.

The research was motivated by operational need in an environment where meeting service-level agreements is a key performance indicator. The methods can be applied to many library activities and are especially applicable to repetitive or high-intensity tasks. It is equally valuable in library operations where there is a perception that staffing levels are inadequate but it is not clear how additional staffing should be deployed.