A Move That’s One for the Books : Services: Six companies are maneuvering for the lucrative contract to transport the Los Angeles Central Library’s volumes and equipment.
When Bill Overton casts an eye toward California and thinks of “the Big One,” it’s not an earthquake. It’s a library--specifically, the Los Angeles Central Library.
With its two million volumes--enough to fill a bookshelf stretching from Los Angeles to Mt. Baldy--and thousands of films, microfiche, audio tapes and compact discs, the Central Library presents a rare and lucrative opportunity in the moving world, one that has surfaced only twice in the past 20 years.
When the library goes to new, permanent quarters on Grand Avenue next summer, someone will have to move it.
Competitors for the job--an elite group of six large specialty movers--are already jockeying for position. A job of this size will be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and untold amounts of prestige, say movers.
“It’s very rare, especially if it’s two million all moved at one time, and not over one or two years,” Overton said. His company, National Library Relocations Inc., New York, hopes to be front-runner for the job.
The library’s new quarters, constructed to replace buildings destroyed in a 1986 fire, are expected to be finished next summer. Only the University of Chicago and the Lansing, Mich., Public Library moves match the Central Library’s in size. Landing the contract would give National the biggest library move it has ever handled.
Overton and a partner formed National in 1988 after splitting off from another moving company. While most of National’s competitors are special divisions within large moving companies, National moves only libraries.
The company, which moves 40 to 45 libraries a year, has sales of about $1 million. Its most recent triumph was the transfer of 200,000 books and periodicals into temporary quarters for UCLA’s Powell Library.
Overton’s competitors are a small group--Hallett Bros. of Chicago, William B. Meyer of Stratford, Conn., Apollo Movers of Minneapolis, Compass Library Relocations in Brooklyn and American Interfile and Library Services on Long Island. Overton considers Hallett Bros., a third-generation family business, his main competition.
“We know each other, we see each other at meetings,” he said. Hallett is better known in the West, he said, and regularly comes to American Library Assn. meetings, where representatives of both companies schmooze with library officials.
The field is small, say movers and librarians, because library moving requires an expertise that involves extensive pre-move planning, a love of complicated logistics, and the same dedication to keeping order that librarians have.
Movers also must work within tight budgets, often going through a bidding process to land jobs. They estimate the library moving business, including smaller moves where special expertise may be unnecessary, to be worth about $8 million a year.
“It requires an awful lot of supervision and coordination,” said Thomas K. Fry, librarian for the Powell Library at UCLA. “The consequences can be pretty gray if a few books are out of order. We can spend hours and hours shifting books if some are misfiled.”
To save time and money, most movers have color-coded labeling systems so their workers don’t have to read call numbers when they re-shelve. Library movers also use their own moving carts, literally bookshelves on wheels, to move collections and keep things orderly.
That’s why people like Betty Gay, the Central Library’s director, are adamant about having a company with library moving experience. The Central Library’s move, she said, is “logistically very complex.”
New shelves and shelves from the temporary location have to be installed in the new library, which will entail a complex shuffling of books between the two locations. The library will be closed while the move is in progress, perhaps as long as three months.
“Their ability to move in a tight time frame is critical,” said Pat Kiefer, acting department manager for general library services. “We don’t want to be closed an inordinate amount of time.”
Kiefer said the companies check periodically with the library to see when officials will call for bids, something the library expects to do in the next few months.
Charles Myers, librarian at the Martin Library for the Sciences at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania, said hiring a mover with library experience definitely makes a difference. A few years ago he had to merge his library’s five collections, housed in different buildings, into one new building. He hired National for the move.
The company handled 50,000 books and 25,000 bound periodicals, moving and integrating the collections without losing a single item. “From the minute they started, I was glad I hired them rather then doing it myself,” Myers said.
Sometimes movers have to take extreme measures to transfer collections. William Hallett of Hallett Bros. said his company had to take out the windows of the University of Chicago’s main library to move card catalogues.
In another library, the company had to load books onto a hydraulic crane through a window because the library didn’t have elevators. “Each move is unique,” he said.
The companies also move other types of collections, such as the 22.5 million files kept by the Veteran’s Administration Records Processing Center in St. Louis. That move, the largest of its kind to date, is in progress now. It is expected to take 11 months, according to Gary Hall of American Interfile, which is doing the job.
How is the company handling such a big move?
“Carefully,” said Hall. “It takes a lot of measuring, a lot of calculation, and time.”
Companies rely on their past library moves as references for new work, so if a job is botched, word travels along the library grapevine.
Overton doesn’t slow down between jobs. Even though the UCLA job went well, he is busy filling National’s schedule for next year and keeping his eyes peeled for more opportunities.
“We’re generally booked about six months ahead,” he said. But like the most ardent of earthquake watchers, he keeps at least one eye on California for the Big One.
