Books in Transit: The Logistics of Library Book Movement

In 2015 RMIT University commenced a two-year building redevelopment project which included completely refurbishing the main library. Approximately 180,000 books were temporarily moved to off-site storage and this posed the challenge of how to manage a working collection so that there would be minimal impact on the university's students and staff still requiring 'just in time' access. In preparation, the library implemented a two-year project to enable it to continue to provide high-level services for the duration of the construction work. This paper considers if logistics processes could be applied to mitigate any access issues caused by off-site storage of library resources.