The New York Botanical Garden constructed a new building, the International Plant Studies Center, to house its growing library and herbarium collections. The new state-of-the-art building was fastidiously designed to house its vital collections, and included features such as ideal environmental conditions and Spacesaver compact shelving.
The New York Botanical Garden Herbarium, the fourth largest in the world with 6.5 million specimens in all plant groups, was greatly in need of improved conditions. With a growing emphasis on plant studies in medical research, the center expects continued growth in the size of the plant collection as well as increased research activity.
“Our only option for expanding the storage space was to build a new building. We knew that we couldn’t have afforded the construction cost or land space to build a building large enough to house the proper amount of storage if we used stationary storage solutions. Instead, with compact storage in mind, we built the new building with the structural integrity needed to hold the weight,” she explained.
Compact storage had been used successfully on the ground floor of the old building and was the obvious solution to the storage problem. The herbarium was able to minimize the size of the new construction by installing more than 150 carriages throughout four floors. New and old herbarium cabinets were mounted on carriages to provide a cost-effective compact storage solution. Also, liquid-preserved specimens are now stored in pull-out bin drawers. The mechanical assist system that was selected provides easy maintenance and is a sufficient solution for the low retrieval rates. To accommodate the heavy weight loads of the cabinets, Spacesaver designed the system with a six-to-one ratio, making it easy for researchers to move the carriages. Automatic aisle locks also were added to maintain user safety. The locks make it necessary to clear the lock of the open aisle prior to moving a carriage. This encourages users to check the open aisle prior to moving carriages. Between ranges of mobile storage cabinets, Spacesaver shelving and countertops accommodate counter-height cabinets and make ideal workspaces for scientists to review specimens.
On the fifth floor of the new building, a mobile system with cantilever shelving was also incorporated into the new library for storing books and research manuscripts. The system was designed with specially louvered end panels to encourage airflow throughout the collection. Also, range finders were mounted to the tops of the end panels for easy aisle referencing. “The equipment went in very smoothly considering the amount of stuff we had to coordinate,” explained Kallunki. “The installers worked closely with the science staff and we were able to make asuccessful transition.”
"The equipment went in very smoothly considering the amount of stuff we had to coordinate." – Jackie Kallunki, Associate Director of the Herbarium