Four million books are stored underneath New York City’s Bryant Park. Twenty-seven feet below the grassy patch in mid-town Manhattan are miles and miles of bookshelves at the New York Public Library’s (NYPL) newly expanded Milstein Research Stacks.
So many, many books has made storage a challenge for the 105-year old institution. When New Yorkers vehemently opposed the idea of shipping three million books to an off-site facility in New Jersey, administrators not only had to consider how to expand the library’s in-house storage facility but totally rethink the way it physically stores its collection.
To maximize space, the NYPL is now storing its collection based on a book’s physical dimensions instead of shelving them based on where they fall in the Dewey Decimal System. This means that Religion and Innovation: Antagonists or Partners? which measures roughly 6 x 9 in. would be placed next to the recipe book Oyster: A Gastronomic History which measures 7 x 9 in. “Content, color [of the cover]—it doesn’t matter. It’s all based on size,” explains Gerry Oliva, the NYPL’s head of facilities who gave Quartz a tour of the underground stacks–which are not open to the public–and the library’s newly refurbished reading room.
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