Overcoming Space issues experience by Numerous Universities

One of the primary features of the new library is the autmated storage and retrieval system which allows university to keep its collection on site by putting 80 per cent of its stack in a compressed space. This features is crucial in comparison to other University, who are coming to grips with the limits of shelf space.

The University of Sydney and the University of NSW are cutting back on hard copies, either by discarding duplicates or moving titles into off-site storage. Since the removal process was introduced, librarians have discovered countless numbers of rare books such as an 1892 copy of The Story of a Puppet or the Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. Earlier this year, Students and Librarians protested on Facebook against their planned renovation of the Fisher library. They borrowed 1100 books in a single hour to save them from storage, which included a book that was not borrowed since 1979.

The University of Oxford faced opposition when it ran out of shelves at the centuries-old Bodleian Librarry and trucked books to an industrial estate on the outskirts of Swindon, 45km away. When the Ernest S. Bird Library, at Syracuse University in the US, tried to move books 400km away, staff and students ran the "free Bird" campaign to prevent this from occuring.