Building the Library

Creating the Crystal Bridges Library included the electronic and physical organization of three previously acquired collections and five-to-six years of backlog collections. Months were spent identifying and prioritizing items for classification. The large majority of books and items were not physically in hand. They had been acquired during the years 2005 – 2011 and were stored in four offsite storage locations.

There was no Library of Congress classification or standard fields for the four collections of items. Data was extracted from three different databases into spreadsheets, and librarians worked to prioritize, align, and standardize fields before the list was sent to Backstage Library Works where a skilled team of librarians and programmers spent over three months creating 30,000 metadata records.

At the same time, Crystal Bridges librarians were preparing a staging site in Bentonville AR, and a collection of over 20,000 stored books were moved, unpacked, and integrated with another collection of nearly 22,000 books shelved at the site since 2005. Northwest Arkansas volunteers and librarians spent three months unpacking and shelving the books alphabetically.

From June to August of 2011, Backstage Library Works project leader, and six locally hired technicians worked tirelessly at the staging site locating, labeling, bar coding, and re-shelving in LC order nearly 30,000 items.

In late August, 2011, the books were moved— in classification order. It took four days and seventy-eight rolling carts full of books before they were on the Museum Library shelves. At Museum opening there remains a backlog of approximately 20,000 - 25,000 items.

Building the Library Facts

• There are a total of more than 55,000 items in Library collections.
• Collections were electronically located in three different databases in four different physical storage areas.
• These materials were brought together for organization in a 3,150 square-foot staging space prior to installation in the Museum Library
• Total collection comprised over 1,800 boxes and crates of books, weighing nearly 75,000 lbs.
• The project involved two Museum librarians, a special team of fourteen programmers, librarians and technicians, and twenty-five community volunteers.
• The project's timeline from start to finish, including planning, creating data, labeling, bar coding, and classification was sixteen months.