With any library construction project, the library's collections will need to be moved, sometimes more than once, before renovation work can occur in each vacated space. Often, construction deadlines for clearing books out of an existing area and relocating them to a new area are very tight. When you consider that UW Libraries has a collection of more than 1.5 million volumes, the thought of relocating these materials during construction—while maintaining call number order—is exhausting enough. And that doesn't even account for the physical effort needed to carry out the operation.

Due to the complexity of Coe Library's concurrent renovation and new construction, with its demands for repeatedly shifting parts of the collection until the project is completed, we decided to hire an experienced library mover, Carney–McNicholas, to handle all collection moves. Whenever large portions of the collection need to be moved, Carney–McNicholas brings a crew to UW for approximately two weeks to complete the move. Over the course of this project, Carney–McNicholas will handle at least five different moves at different times.

Carney–McNicholas describes itself as a professional library mover, even though the firm also engages in the typical activities of any moving company, from moving corporate offices across a street to moving families across the world. What is remarkable about Carney–McNicholas as a library mover, though, is the sheer speed at which its teams can move library collections. Carney–McNicholas has moved Coe Library collections at a speed of 8,400 books per hour, and accurately stocked bookshelves at a rate of 720 linear feet per hour. For UW Libraries' most recent collection move in November 2008, Carney–McNicholas relocated over 32,500 linear feet of books, a combined weight more than 800,000 pounds, in about a week. That's nearly 400 tons of books on six miles of shelving!

It has been utterly phenomenal for librarians to see an entire floor of books vanish off one floor and reappear on another in a matter of hours, a feat that would be physically impossible using library personnel. "One of our biggest successes," says Matt Hagan, Carney–McNicholas' project supervisor, "is cost/benefit analysis, that people find paying us to move [their] collections is a better option for them."  How are they able to move so much in so little time? Carney–McNicholas focuses on teamwork and movement flow.

According to Dennis Cleland, Carney–McNicholas' foreman for the moves in UW Libraries, "You want a constant stream of motion, so that the movement is perfectly fluid, whether it is within a building or outside of a building."  Although the team is comprised of just twelve people, more than 80 carts are also involved. Carney–McNicholas purposely pairs loaders and unloaders who work at roughly the same speed, keeping the stream of 80 carts in motion like a circular railroad hauling books from one location to another, often on different levels of the building. Once the collection starts to move, the movement never stops until the crew is shut down. "One of our movers figured he was walking about fifteen miles per day," adds Matt Hagan.

Aside from speed, Carney–McNicholas is extremely conscious of accuracy, having the collection ending up in proper order once their moves are complete. "From a collection relocation perspective," says Matt Hagan, "error elimination and accuracy are two of the most paramount concerns. You don't want to mess up. Every time you mess up so much as one shelf, you upset your customer and create more work for you. Our job is really ensuring quality assurance—doing it right the first time."

Carney–McNicholas is also not shy about helping library staff and users during these potentially confusing moves. "We have no problem assisting patrons who need to find where things are in the middle of a move," says Matt. "We know where things are in the move, and often are in the best position to help them."For UW Libraries, Carney-McNicholas' responsibilities go beyond book movement. Once shelving on a floor is vacated, Carney-McNicholas also ensures that the old shelving is taken down and quickly removed from the building for recycling. In clearing Coe Library's 3rd and 4th Level stack areas for construction, Carney– McNicholas removed 50,400 linear feet of old shelving, amounting to about 96 tons of recycled steel. Again, the rapid movement of this material out of the building and into recycling trucks was accomplished by maintaining fluidity and efficiency. 

"We do anywhere between 30 and 50 library moves per year," says Dennis Cleland. "We particularly like moving academic libraries, and we take great pride in what we do. We're looking out for the company, but we both take a great deal of interest in what we're doing. Matt's in it for life and so am I. It's what we do, and it's what we know."

By Sandy Barstow, Assistant Dean and David Kruger, Special Projects Librarian

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