Library Shelving Facility offers final spring student tour on April 18

The Yale Library Shelving Facility (LSF) is opening its doors to students for the first time. The sprawling facility—located in Hamden, just 3 miles from Sterling Memorial Library— is rarely open to visitors. 

There is still availability for the last tour of the season!

The tour and round-trip travel time are included in the time slot specified below. The tour is limited to 16 students, so advance registration through the links below is required.

Thurs., April 18: 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.

The tour and round-trip travel time are included in the time slots specified . Each tour is limited to 16 students, so advance registration through the links below is required.’

Gary Burcheski, manager of Library Collections Services, will be conducting the hour-long tours of the impressive facility and its operation.

The pickup and drop-off point for registered participants is Phelps Gate at 344 College Street. The bus will leave promptly, so students should arrive at Phelps Gate 15 minutes before departure time.

LSF is home to more than 8.5 million library resources. Each year it fulfills more than 100,000 patron requests via its Eli Express 24-hour weekday delivery service to individual library locations.

LSF opened in 1998 to accommodate Sterling’s growing collection of materials, which was steadily exceeding its storage capacity. Throughout the next 25 years, items from the collections of every library in the extensive Yale Library system have found space on the 63,000 shelves of LSF.

This tour is for students only. Library staff and faculty tours will be scheduled this summer.

—Deborah Cannarella

Images: Staff member operates order picker to retrieve and replace items on shelves up to 30 ft. high; two views of storage areas in the Yale Library Shelving Facility. Photos by Robert Lisak