I went through a partial move last month. We had an outside, bonded moving company move about 140 map cabinets across campus.
Moving the cabinets with the drawers saves time IF you have enough people to move a full map cabinet, which can weigh about 700-800 pounds. AND if you can get the cabinets through a doorway.
My moving company kept some cabinets full but had to tip them up to get through doorways. In those cases, I required that they stuff broken-down boxes within each drawer, which generally provided enough pressure/weight to keep the maps from falling back in the drawers (our map drawers have the leather cover inserts which helped). They did have to remove the drawers from some of the cabinets during the move.
Additionally, before the move, I labeled and numbered each map cabinet and drawer to create a map cabinet index using Excel. Yes, that was a time-consuming process but I found it was really necessary in order to keep track of the large number of map drawers being moved, some of which had to be removed from their cabinets, some of which did not. It looked roughly partially like this:
| Cabinet No. | Drawer No. | Collection Area | Drawer Label | LCCN Range |
| 01 | 01 | Historical Maps | Los Angeles | ... |
| 01 | 02 |
Historical Maps |
Los Angeles |
... |
|
01 |
03 |
Historical Maps |
Los Angeles |
... |
|
01 |
04 |
Historical Maps |
Los Angeles |
... |
|
01 |
05 |
Historical Maps |
Los Angeles |
... |
| 02 | 01 | Gov Docs | California, 1:24,000, A-M |
... |
|
02 |
02 | Gov Docs | California, 1:24,000, N-Z |
... |
| so on and so forth |
|
|
|
|
A nice bonus to this
process
was this index is now really
helpful to find materials within our
large collection. Using the Excel filter/sort feature I can now see where all our gov docs maps are, or where all California maps are, or what's contained within a certain cabinet number, etc. I'm a library nerd, so I think that's cool.
Hope this helps.
Chris
Sent: Monday, June 19, 2017 9:53:59 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Moving map collections
Hi Dennis,
We’ve moved our entire maps collection back in 2007, then again in two stages about five years later. We had too many map cases and too little resources to do the move ourselves, so the first time, we used a professional local moving company. The last two times, we used in-house facilities. Both did a good job, but the professional moving company did a better job since this is what they do for a living. I’d be happy to help answer any moving related question that you have. Just email or give me a call.
Regards,
-Greg
Gregory H. March
Map & Government Information Librarian
Associate Professor
University of Tennessee
152 Hodges Library
Knoxville, TN 37996
Research Guides – Anthropology, Earth & Planetary Sciences, Geography, Maps, Government
Tennessee Committee on Geographic Names
From: Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc. [mailto:[log in to unmask]
EDU] On Behalf Of Rick Grapes
Sent: Monday, June 19, 2017 11:49 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Moving map collections
Dennis G. Matthews, et. al.
We here at BYU moved our whole collection between floors about 18 years ago, and again partially last year. We did it ourselves, in house, both times. No matter if you do the move yourselves, or have professionals do the lifting for you, there’s one issue you’ll have to keep in mind.
You cannot mix up the various drawers from their accompanying map cases.
In our “case”, because of elevator size, we had to disassemble everything, transporting the contents, drawers, and outer shells separately. We had room to move the contents of 2 cases per trip, followed by 10 drawers, and then the 2 boxes. Resulting in 9 trips to assemble 2 stacks, 3 cases high. The problem arose when we lost track of which drawers went into which of the boxes. The map cases and their drawers are set in the factory to work specifically together. If we mixed them up, the drawers would slid into the case too far, drop in the back, and lock shut. Another issue is, during manhandling and transport, sometimes the little rubber bumpers on the back of the drawers would drop off. Before we realized what had happened, custodial vacuumed them up. Which again, resulted in the drawers locking shut. So once in your new location, test the drawers before you fill them. If the drawers do lock shut, have someone thin and young enough, Not Me, crawl under the drawer, and in back push up and out. You can also lean thru from above, and grab the back of the drawer, up and out. But leverage can be an issue. If the drawers continue to lock shut, take a vice grip and at both back corners of the drawer, gently bend the metal tabs outward. Just a centimeter or so. This may result in the front 5 drawers looking uneven, but the alternative is…
Sorry for rambling. Hope this helps.
Rick Grapes
BYU Map Cataloger
From: Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc. [mailto:[log in to unmask]
edu ] On Behalf Of Dennis Matthews
Sent: Friday, June 16, 2017 1:54 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Moving map collections
Hi all,
We are moving our map collection to a different floor in our library and we’re considering hiring a professional moving firm to relocate the collection. If anyone has done this I’d like to know the name of the firm, what was the experience like, would they recommend, etc.
Thanks,
Dennis
Dennis G. Matthews
Library & Archives Paraprofessional 6
Western Washington University
Western Libraries
516 High Street
Bellingham, WA 98225
Telephone: 360.650.3098 (Collection Services--Cataloging Dept.)
360.650.3272 (Map Collection)
Fax: 360.650.3044
--
Collections Manager | Map Library Manager
National Geographic Society Library
202.807.3139
1145 17th St., NW, Washington, DC 20036
