And...We're In!

Apologies for the lack of updates, but the move has been something of a time killer. The good news is that we have been comfortably ensconced in the new building for a month now, and while we have yet to get absolutely everything moved in from our off-site storage (both locally-housed and at Iron Mountain), we are more or less up and running. Here are a few things we learned during this most recent move:

1. New buildings can be dustier than 'old' archives
   The new compact shelving (left, with your cruise directors posed by photographer Dan Burke) is wonderful, but we had to wipe it down with old t-shirts before moving in the first portion of our holdings. Then there was a bit more construction work done which added yet more dust - but luckily, it seems this layer will be cleaned up by people who actually do that professionally, rather than by a few archivists.



2. New buildings mean many visitors
   While I've moved offices before, this is the first time I've experienced a nearly-daily stream of visitors coming to tour the new space. It's certainly not unpleasant to see people taking notice, but it does behoove one to keep things tidy - not always an easy prospect in this line of work!



3. New buildings have glitches
   While this is a no-brainer, the challenge has been trying to predict what those will be before they pop up - and who is responsible for fixing them when they do. So far, we've been relatively lucky and have managed to avoid any showstoppers.



4. New buildings generate 'stuff'
   Starting the day we moved in, various departments appeared with 'potentially important stuff' - the accessioning table filled up rapidly (and stayed that way).
   



5. New buildings have no impact on 'regular work'
   On-site and remote research has continued apace - we've been a bit slower in responding to requests, but we have yet to completely turn anyone away. The same is true of grant applications, College events, digital projects and the like; we may have to offer a bit more expectation management than normal, but the world does not stop for anyone - certainly not us!



6. New building t-shirts don't design themselves
   But we still hope to get around to doing that in the near future - I still have my 'I survived the Women.com server migration' shirt from the late 1990s, and it's only fair to commemorate this event in the same classic style.
   

We expect the rest of the collection to appear some time in January - and then a complex integration project will begin!

Imminent Move

We have been assigned a moving date, and, as promised, we've received a full two weeks notice. The Thanksgiving holiday will eat a chunk of that but with the help of our supporters we will pack our offices and on-site collection materials and move on Friday, December 4th.

As previously noted, we're returning to familiar ground. Our new building on the Queen Lane campus (2900 W. Queen Lane, 19129) is not far from the former Medical College of Pennsylvania Hospital, the campus built and occupied by Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1930.

Before we leave our current home at Hagerty Library we are hosting an Open House at the library on December 2, 4-6pm. Please join us to commemorate our partnership with the University Archives and celebrate our move to our new space.

Here's a peek at the new space.

Miles of aisles!

The as yet un-populated reading room.

Art shelving.

Latest Construction Photos: Nearly There!

Despite last week's torrential rain, some brave members of Team Archives went to the Queen Lane campus to check on the progress of our new building - and it's almost at the 'finishing touches' stage. Without further ado, a quick photo tour:

An exterior wall, just outside the lobby

Stairs off the lobby head down to the Archives, as is right and proper

Inside the future stacks - note the rails for the compact shelving

We will host future researchers here, in the reading room

Office interior - the windows may be well above eye level, but they still allow natural light!

Construction Update: July

We were lucky enough to get some updated photos of how construction is proceeding; while it's certainly exciting to see the exterior come together, we were thrilled to get some previews of our actual workspace as well.

Building exterior: those partial windows at the bottom left will be ours.

Inside (and, you'll notice, down the stairs, as is the rule for archives): we're reasonably sure this is where the compact shelving is going.

Interior: this looks to be the reading room (or the office watching over it - we're not entirely sure which side of the wall we're seeing).

Interior again: Finally, an office! And, in an even more exciting development, we can see what I understand is a 'window' - something nary a one of us has had at work for years. Granted, it's above eye level, but it's still natural light.

Now we just need to figure out how and when we're moving everything...

This Thing Is Actually Happening

We had one of our not-as-frequent-as-they-should-be formal staff meetings yesterday and as you might expect, our move was one of the larger topics of conversation. The concept is becoming less ephemeral as the building looks more and more like a real building, even if the actual move-in date keeps shifting. We hear that it's possible construction will be largely completed at the end of October, and that our compact shelving could be installed at that point - and that's when the fun begins.

Our collections are currently in three major chunks as far as their physical locations - a small portion is here on-site in Hagerty Library, a very large segment is in our 'local' offsite storage and another grouping of possibly indeterminate size is held by Iron Mountain. We discussed whether it makes sense to move any one group first, leaving space for the others, since we'd like to start actually putting items in accession order (notwithstanding the fact that there are a few different systems of accessions floating around - and of course scary unaccessioned items). It's clear in any event that getting everything in order is the new space will be a very long process; just the initial integration of these three groups that have not seen each other in years is going to be tricky. We do not know yet whether we will be able to rely on the movers for their large library carts (and manpower) in terms of simply getting things staged and on shelves, but we do know that we need to get it done (at least a first pass) with some celerity - there is a planned opening event for the building in January (for which we also want to create a small exhibition), and we're going to be involved in quite a few major events throughout 2010.

As our goal is to complete the move without having to shut down entirely to researchers, time will be of the essence in that regard as well - so even though we know there will be some very necessary reboxing (especially with the Iron Mountain materials) and moving around, we're going to have to try to make it snappy.

As much as we are looking forward to having our new offices (with windows! well, technically the windows will be above eye level, but they will be there all the same) it's clear we won't be spending much time in them for the first few weeks/months/longer.

But there will be a certain satisfaction when we can input meaningful information in the Archivists' Toolkit 'location' tab - the idea that in the near future we can simply look up a collection or box and know exactly where it is (rather than referring to several spreadsheets and a reasonably useful mental map) makes the move worth the hassle.

More Construction Photos

We got another set of construction photos this morning (and were duly warned that although things seem to be moving with some celerity now, we may later have the opposite impression) but it’s difficult not to get a little bit excited about them since the size and outline of the building are so much more apparent.


The approach to the building is clearer now.














The framing for the upper floors is in place.













The big machines are working in what will be our office and stack space; the small orange one in the center is more or less in Joanne's future office. (Or possibly it's the back of the stacks - we're not entirely sure how it matches up to the blueprints).








We are excited (and not least because we can visualize where our windows will be)! On that note, I'd also like to add that I'm proud to be counted as a 2009 Shover and Maker - with all this construction, it seems, somehow, appropriate.

Construction pics courtesy of Bernard Moore, Drexel University College of Medicine.

The Big Dig

The speed of the building progress caught us by surprise. Just a few short weeks ago, I visited the hole in the ground, which was unreasonably impressive - we could actually imagine ourselves moving in and managing our materials there in the dirt.



Since we are not currently at the same location as the new building site, more thrills came when these images were sent.

Forms for walls.

Progress as of just last week. The first pour: setting the forms for the rails that will support the compact shelving.

Before we know it we'll be loading our 9,000 linear feet of shelf space...

Zamboni for concrete.

Construction pics courtesy of Bernard Moore, Drexel University College of Medicine.

You Can't Always Get What You Want...

We had quite a bit we wanted to say last week about the latest installment in our move saga, but we opted to wait to see how the situation developed. Without going into too many specifics, it's a near certainty that any major construction project at a university will undergo a few changes along the way and, as with any large organization, those changes may or may not be communicated to all interested parties (especially when the news might not be welcomed by said parties).

It's easy to understand why there was reluctance to announce 'we're putting a large electrical room where your stacks are on the plans' (clearly, no one wants to cross a bunch of scary archivists!) and given the scale of the larger project, it is perhaps surprising something similar had not happened already. The good news is that everyone who needed to know did find out in time and while more complicated political machinations were going on behind the scenes, a happily workable solution was produced (we think!).

While the placement of the new electrical room is in direct opposition to Chapter 3 of Planning New and Remodeled Archival Facilities and so of course we still have concerns about what this means as far as fire suppression, water damage possibilities and general environmental concerns, there is good news - the loss of storage space will not be nearly as bad as we feared (despite a loss of overall square footage). In fact, it's possible that we will end up with a more usable (if slightly less aesthetically-pleasing) space as a result of being forced to think creatively about how to manage the interloper. And when all is said and done, we'll still have the entire collection in one space and largely housed in fantastic compact shelving - it's only to be expected that there will be some bumps along the road, from both internal and external sources.

Hopefully this is the last major layout concern we will face, as we really want to move on to the more important items on our moving list - like choosing paint colors for the walls and panel colors for the aforementioned compact shelving. Given that the footprint for what will be our offices finally exists (and, therefore, seems a lot more real), we are looking forward to getting those fun decisions made (and we are not at all procrastinating about the hard ones, like the logistics of actually getting all our offsite material folded into one big, happy collection).

The lessons so far can be summed up as follows: 1) remain vigilant; 2) make friends and influence people; 3) Mick and Keith were right: you just might find you get what you need!

Documenting ourselves

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Originally uploaded by mmg24

The groundbreaking was joyful as it was simultaneously laughable (golden shovels and hardhats) and exciting (anticipating a new space in the not-too-distant future).

Where we are, where we're going

You could say that the fact that our current offices are nowhere near the reading room or the actual materials keeps us fit to a certain extent; while we are very appreciative of the space our Drexel University Archives colleagues share with us, we won't miss having to circle the semi-wall that divides the basement of Hagerty Library (and blocks what little view of the reading room we had before it suddenly appeared one Monday).

Our new building will be on the main Med School campus in the East Falls section of Philadelphia; it's something of a homecoming for the Woman's Medical College half of the collection which was largely created in the same neighborhood. Of course, being archivists, we will still be housed in the basement, but our new space will have what I understand are called windows in it. They may be slightly above our heads, but at least we will be able to keep an eye on the weather. Even better, the reading room, digital lab, workspace and storage will all be together - along with our offices. It's going to be lovely once we are moved and settled in (and re-arranged the entire collection). I suspect the actual moving part won't be quite as much fun, but at least the movers know us well already...

What's this all about?

The Drexel University College of Medicine Archives and Special Collections on Women in Medicine and Homeopathy (to give the full title) is an experienced traveler. The entire collection was moved in 2004, again in 2006 and is preparing for its third (and, one hopes, final) move in 2009 (or possibly 2010, depending on how construction progresses). This semi-official blog, penned by the archivists and staff, will document the move (from all viewpoints) and the planning involved in getting all 4000 linear feet (and growing) in one place for the first time ever.

The good news is that after years of making do with space wherever it could be found, we will be moving into an entirely new building and that we have had a reasonable amount of input as far as how our space will function (fire supression! compact shelving! workspace! windows!), but we've also had to wear some unexpected hats - fundraiser, cheerleader, space planner - you name it. No doubt as the physical move approaches we will be donning further pieces of unfamiliar headgear, but our plucky little team hopes the rest of the archival world can learn from our experiences and inevitable mistakes along the way.

In the meantime, we continue to welcome researchers and look forward to the day when we don't have to apologize for some materials being offsite!