Why a Repository

For the last decade, the library’s collection has exceeded its capacity to safely house and preserve it. 

Better care for the collections

The library's physical collections are a vital resource for researchers today and into the future, and contain an important share of the world's scholarly and cultural record. As things stand, however, much of it is shelved in conditions that endanger its long-term preservation and usability.

All campus library buildings, including the Buhr Building — the largest university-owned shelving facility — have been at capacity for years. The university has had to lease multiple off-site facilities to shelve materials. None of them meet environmental standards for preservation, plus it’s challenging to manage the collection across 13 buildings.

The new repository will provide a high-density, preservation-grade environment that tightly controls temperature and humidity levels to protect materials from mold, moisture damage, temperature fluctuation, and long-term deterioration.

Fiscal stewardship

The cost of leased storage continues to increase, and maintaining aging storage facilities as long-term collection environments is not financially sustainable.

The repository project will reduce reliance on leased storage, decrease the need for reactive maintenance and mitigation, and provide a purpose-built home for materials that represent a university asset of extraordinary scholarly and cultural value.

It's a strategic investment that shifts our collection strategy from short-term workarounds and temporary fixes to a permanent solution for long-term stewardship.

Planning for the future

The repository will be an enabling project for the future of library spaces.

Today, approximately 3 million volumes are held in the Hatcher and Shapiro libraries, while approximately 6 million volumes are stored off-site. By relocating materials to the new facility, the library will be able to maintain a significant, thoughtfully curated, browsable on-campus collection while creating opportunities to reimagine library spaces for teaching, learning, research, collaboration, and community use.

The repository will equip us for future participation in coordinated print collection-building and sharing efforts with research partners in the state of Michigan as well as broader organizations such as the Big Ten Academic Alliance, the Center for Research Libraries, and HathiTrust.