TOBUNKEN Library Stack Room Reform Completed
The Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties (TOBUNKEN) maintains materials, including books and photographs collected by TOBUNKEN’s departments and centers, mainly in the TOBUNKEN Library. The library itself consists of a reading room and stack rooms; however, the aforementioned materials can be accessed by external researchers at the Library, which is open three days a week.
Almost 24 years have passed since TOBUNKEN moved to its current building in 2000. During these years, TOBUNKEN has continuously been collecting materials through its research activities, including books and photographs,. Furthermore, it has recently had more opportunities to receive donations of archives from the collections of ex-employees and related researchers. Through these activities, the Library has been able to accumulate many more materials and enhance the quality of those materials. At the same time, we foresaw that the bookshelves would be overflowing in the near future. Therefore, we reconstructed the bookshelves as part of a framework entitled “Projects to expand archive stacks and optimize the storage environment.”
In 2022, the fixed bookcases in over a quarter of the floor space of the second-floor stack room were replaced with the electrically operated bookcases. During this recent reconstruction, which was started on January 11, 2024, the fixed bookshelves in the remaining three-fourths were so replaced. After removing the materials from the fixed bookshelves, removing the bookshelves, laying rails for new bookshelves, setting-up the new electrically operated bookshelves, and placing the materials onto the new shelves, the renovation was completed on March 27. The space that was previously home to 16 fixed bookshelves (1,900 shelves; 1,615 m in total) now accommodates 29 new electrically operated bookshelves (3,500 shelves; 2,975 m in total), with almost double capacity.
We apologize for any inconvenience that resulted from the Library’s temporary closure during the reform. We continue our work to collect, pass down, and utilize materials valuable for research and conservation of cultural properties. We hope that the TOBUNKEN archives can serve your research activities well.