Experiences with the Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS) in Mo i Rana Helén Sakrihei, Head of The Repository Library, The National Library of Norway

The Repository Library Established in 1989 Staff: 17 employees Interlending per year: 100,000 documents Aquisition per year: 100 – 200,000 documents 2

The Repository Library Collection: 780,000 monographs 1,5 million issues of periodicals 50,000 microfilms Audio books Music CDs 3

Why Automatic Storage and Retrieval System? In 1996 the NL started to plan a new storage for The RL, and investigated the possibilities for building an ASRS Advantages Traditional storage would cost more to build (15 – 20 million NOK) Operation expenses would be lower ASRS would require 20-25% of the base area of a traditional storage 4

Why Automatic Storage? The ASRS would be based on a well known tecnhology used by companies such as Lego, Husquarna etc. etc. 5

Why Automatic Storage? Disadvantages: -The mechanics would make The ASRS vulnerable -Would it be noisy? -Operating The ASRS would be monotonous? -Books could disappear when they didnt have a permanent place on a shelf? 6

Moving into the ASRS In 2000 The Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs accepted our plans for building an ASRS with a maximum cost of 100 million NOK. The RL closed temporarily in October Within 15 months we moved most of the collection into The ASRS. Reopened June

The Automatic Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS) steel boxes folders Three gangways Three Automatic Miniload Cranes 200 boxes in/out per hour Random storage 8

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No permanent box or folder No permanent location Each location has an coordinate Barcodes Attached to each other in the Warehouse Management System (WMS) 10

How does it work? Every morning loan orders are sent from Bibsys to WMS. The cranes fetch the boxes which contain ordered material The boxes are brought to the pick up stations in the Retrieval Centre 11

How does it work? The operators read the barcode on the publication, and both WMS and Bibsys are updated Some orders require manual work: - microfilms - article copies - multi-volume publications 12

Operation stability 160,000 items out and 220,000 items in to storage per year High operation stability Automation engineer who maintains the hardware Four of our co-workers have been special trained in ASRS/WMS Service on Storage once a year 13

How has The ASRS changed the way we work? The need of manpower to carry out our loanorders has been reduced to 1/3. More capacity to other tasks, such as cataloguing New tasks: - books to digitization 14

Collection control Coordinated shelf lists from Bibsys and Swisslog In order to find books in storage that arent registrated in the catalogue, and books in the catalogue that arent in storage 15

Problems… When errors do occur, we often manage to solve them klarer vi som ourselves Depend on a good support agreement Hardware problems – the RL Software problems – Swisslogg Spare parts 16

Conclusion The ASRS has given us easy access to our collection and made us able to carry out all loan orders within 24 hours From time to time we do have shutdowns, but all in all the operation stability is high Books can disappear, but more seldom than from traditional bookshelves 17

Plans By 2012 todays storage is filled Now we are planlegging the next storage known technology use existing infrastructure easy to build 18

Kiitos… 19