A Shelving Tale

By Teresa L. Jacobsen -- Library Journal, 9/15/2006

What do wedding cakes, gondolas, and waterfalls have to do with library shelving? If you've had any experience shopping for shelving recently, you know these are popular buzzwords for attractive display furnishings. Wedding cakes, which are short, circular, or hexagonal tiers, present face-out titles all around their perimeter. Gondolas tend to be A-frame display units, either of wood or metal, with all sorts of possible display permutations (zigzag, face out, spine out). And waterfalls can show up in wood or metal, but the basic idea is descending display tiers on either side of a flat top.

“The most dramatic change we've made over the years has been the move to emphasize and market the collection using display pieces and slat-wall display on the end panels,” says Ann Cousineau, library director for Solano County Library (SCL), CA. “There is a much greater emphasis on displaying the collection so people can see it. This concept must also be balanced with shelving the collection so the public or staff can find the specific items they [want].”

Cousineau's remarks illustrate a delicate balance: the library must merchandise its wares, but it also has to store materials in a systematic, cost-effective, and space-efficient manner. Can it be done? Her administrative team at SCL has proven more than once that a library can make it happen, with attractive and unusual furnishing components in conjunction with standard, seismically approved steel shelving. The latest building venture, the Fairfield Cordelia Library, a 15,600 square foot branch, will open this December with a 47,000-volume opening-day collection (ODC) on its brand-new shelves.

Where does shelving come from anyway? It's a specialized niche of the library furnishings world. A library can deal directly with a manufacturer, but the preferred method is to work with a library furnishings contractor or dealer, in Fairfield's case, Ross McDonald Company, Inc., a state-approved contractor with a strong reputation in northern California. (For obvious reasons, California libraries have stringent seismic standards to abide by; floor-anchored shelving is considered part of the structure itself.) Since the beginning of this year, the staff and the furnishings contractor have reviewed the Fairfield plans and gradually, after a series of meetings, emerged with an excruciatingly detailed library furnishings order.

The actual amount of shelving in the architect's plans goes back to SCL's original project consultant. The ODC category breakdowns she devised (percentage of adult nonfiction, children's media, pictures books, etc.) made it possible for the architect to position appropriate numbers of stacks in the floor plans, with elaborate coding for age- and media-appropriate heights and stack configurations.

Library shelving is full of variables, just like our materials. For instance, newspapers have to survive the public for several days, and Plexiglas covers on sloped display shelves help corral them. Library customers like to find back issues of periodicals adjacent to the current ones. Graphic novels come in an astonishing array of sizes, defying any sort of order. But wait, there's more! Powder-coated, baked enamel finishes for shelving come in several colors—choose one. Frames: Will you be ordering seismic welded, sway-braced, or transverse overheads? How about tilt-base shelves? Kick plates? Ten-, 12-, or 13-inch deep shelves? The vocabulary is daunting, and the library must live with the choices for a long time.

Cautionary notes: Count out your shelving estimates using your library's agreed-upon formula; don't assume the architect's plans jibe perfectly with the ODC numbers. Check for height of shelving and sight lines. Make sure you've accommodated all those odd items: library kits that come in hanging bags, odd-sized books, floppy documents in the reference section. Talk about bookends and book braces with your shelving staff before ordering something everyone hates. How many CDs and DVDs can the waterfall table hold, and if it's fewer than the original shelves you had in mind, just where are they going to go?

The Battle Of The...: Jaconsen (left) confers with Garen McDonald, project director for Ross McDonald, and branch manager Cara Duffy Swartz over how to make picture-book shelves fit with the "concrete bulge" in the floor Disturbances in the field With a December opening, the August visit to the construction site was critical: time for the furnishings orders to be submitted. No matter how careful everyone is, the onsite visit from the furnishings consultant can be a real eye-opener. A fire extinguisher box quashed all plans for a small range of children's books on one wall. A mysterious concrete bulge interfered with the base shelf of another unit. A built-in alcove was narrower than the shelf ranges. By the way, architects design lighting schemes to correlate with shelving arrangements. Don't forget to tell them about your clever changes. Weeks before the furniture arrives this November, the shelving will be installed (October); weeks before that, the shelving installers will have put the anchors into the floor (August), so the carpet installers (August) could work around them. Like a puzzle, the pieces fall into place sequentially. Professional installation is critical: leveling (did I mention the concealed leveling system in the base?), modifying, and making adjustments to the building's idiosyncrasies will take the better part of a week. An eye to the future Throughout the shelving and furniture-planning period, we've attempted to think about the future as well. When CDs and DVDs have run their course, what will need to be shelved in their place? Will the reference collection disappear altogether? What media format lies ahead, and will our gondolas and powder-coated steel shelves be up to the challenge?