Giant Strides at the Library Storage Annex

Construction is complete at the long-awaited Library Storage Annex, UT Libraries’ offsite depository for rare and unique collections. The official ribbon-cutting ceremony will take place on November 10.

The Library Storage Annex is a long-term solution to a long-standing problem: modern, climate-controlled, high-density storage for the Libraries’ special collections, University Archives, and other library materials that require long-term preservation to support the research, teaching, and service missions of the University of Tennessee.

High-bay shelving has been installed — 164,205 linear feet of shelving, in fact. That’s the length of 456 football fields! The facility can house 2.4 million volumes. An order-picker guided by a wire embedded in the floor can safely elevate a staff member to the top of the 32-foot-high shelving.

The Annex consolidates collections that have been scattered among several stopgap storage sites around campus (some with poor temperature and humidity controls). Moving materials to this permanent location — in addition to providing ideal conditions for preservation of irreplaceable collections — frees up space on the central campus that can be repurposed for other uses.

Transfer of manuscripts and archives to the facility is well underway. The Modern Political Archives, which have been in storage for almost three years, were recently rehoused at the Annex. The Modern Political Archives comprise over 4,000 linear feet of archival material representing the careers and legacies of select Tennessean members of the U.S. Congress, the federal judiciary, and presidential cabinets. Items from the Modern Political Archives will soon be available by request for use in the Special Collections Reading Room.

Special Collections staff have been engaged in preparing and moving collections to the new facility for several years. The Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives, which has been closed to accommodate those processes, is scheduled to reopen on October 7 with limited access to manuscript and archive collections. Full services and full access to collections will be reinstated at the beginning of the Spring 2027 Semester.