Moving Day

Princeton's new $6,000,000, six-story Firestone Memorial Library would be the world's largest open-stack collection: anybody could get at the books by just walking to the shelf. All Librarian Julian P. Boyd had to do was move in the 800,000 books, waiting 30 yards away in the overcrowded old library. He had promised to do it in such a way that no book would be hors de combat more than four hours.

Boyd considered using conveyor belts and moving vans, decided instead to rely on raw Princeton manpower. He hired 35 undergraduates for $1 an hour, eight hours a day. For ten weeks, in sunshine or showers, they would push book trucks down a covered ramp, connecting the old and new buildings.

By last week, the first 378,000 books had been shuttled across—at a daily average of 27,000 books, as much as still unfinished Firestone could digest at one time. By Sept. 15, all 800,000 would be resting on 60 miles of Firestone shelves.

Barely an hour after the shuttle started, Shakespearean Scholar Gerald Bentley wanted to lay his hands on a book about Charles I right away. He got it from Firestone in ten minutes.