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Leeds: British Library unveils new automated storage facility
The British Library has unveiled its huge new automated storage facility in Leeds, which is a far cry from the traditional image of a dusty and cramped archive.
Much of the sorting and carrying at the futuristic, 26m building at Boston Spa, near Wetherby, is carried out by robots which operate along 131 miles of environmentally-controlled storage.
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The additional storage building will eventually house approximately seven million items from the UK national collection, stored in more than 140,000 bar-coded containers.
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The building will house low-use material including patent specifications, books, serials and newspapers.
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The seven robots operate in the massive main storage void where they pull out the containers and take them to a retrieval area for the staff to take out requested documents.
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The building, which has been funded by a 26m grant from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, was was officially opened by the Minister for Yorkshire and The Humber, Rosie Winterton.
The new facility is housing material which is currently stored in a range of leased properties in London.
The library is vacating the buildings and transferring low-use material
to Boston Spa, and high-use items to its St Pancras HQ.
Steve Morris, the library's director of finance and corporate services, said: "The design and construction of the additional storage building has been a huge task involving library staff from a wide range of different areas along with external providers."
Mr Morris said the library was also hoping to build a new newspaper storage building at the site, which currently employs about 900 people.
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Saturday 04 February 2012
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