Seed Vaults Now This?! Museums Closing For Refurbishments? Salt Mine Storage, Museum Resignations........

Huge Underground Food Storage Cave - Undisclosed Location







Manchester's Central Library



A million library books to be sent down the mines

ONE million books from Manchester's Central Library – including valuable volumes dating back to the 15th century - are to be put into temporarily storage with many going deep underground in the Cheshire salt mines.

Experts say the mine's caverns – the size of 700 football pitches - provide the perfect environment for preserving the manuscripts, which include the works of eminent academics.

Central Library will re-open in 2013






Vatican Library

Vatican Library closure irks scholars

It is not expected to reopen before September 2010






Environment Protection Agency (EPA)


In summer 2006, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) moved swiftly to implement a plan to close large parts of its network of 27 libraries, potentially putting decades worth of valuable information beyond the reach of government scientists and independent researchers.¹







The Fresno Metropolitan Museum of Art & Science





The Denver Museum Of Nature And Science

the Denver museum of nature and science is closing up in a month. They say they are moving to a new building but not till mid 2012. The thing is ,is that they already have been packing everything up and closing its doors within the next month, and they said they are putting everything in " storage " till 2012





University Of York

the JBM Library is undergoing a major refurbishment which is scheduled to last for approximately two years.


The refurbishment will be completed in the academic year 2011/12 and will follow a phased approach with work commencing on the second floor.








University Of Reading

Library Collections Project 2009-2013

Aims

* Provide better long-term protection for stored books

* Enable Bulmershe Library to be closed

Some Special Collections need more suitable accommodation, as their current home is being redeveloped for other purposes






Ligatus

In the next year the library will be rebuilt. The books will have to be moved and stored during building work. This programme will ensure that the moving will be done with the minimum risk and in the fastest possible way.






Belgium

Here's another underground repository being built NOW in Belgium (in a time of economic turmoil, no less).

From meticulous and repeated counting and measuring, we now know that no less than 48 km of books, periodicals and special collections are stored in the tower. And these will have to be taken elsewhere during the restoration. Various options were scrutinized, but the most daring also turned out to be the most feasible: an underground repository beneath the courtyard, where heritage material can be stored safely and in optimal conditions, not only during, but also after the restoration. Three air-conditioned floors below ground level, the lowest of which will have a sprung floor and doubly high shelves, will offer room to 40km of compact book shelves. The underground repository will be constructed during the first phase of the restoration, presumably early 2011. It should be tested and ready for use by the summer of 2013.





Chicago

Chicago books going underground, too. Due to open in 2011

New library combines underground storage, automated retrieval, and glass-dome top

To keep its growing collection of rare research materials readily accessible and yet safe, the University of Chicago chose a unique design for its new Mansueto Library.







Scientologists building yet another underground vault in Wyoming

As many as 20 heavy trucks a day hauling construction materials and equipment rumbled down the valley’s main gravel road, passing into a gate marked with a “No Trespassing” sign. Helicopters flew in sling loads of cargo. Powerful work lights lit up the valley at night.

Public planners in southwest Wyoming’s Sweetwater County – a sagebrush expanse roughly the size of Massachusetts – say the contractor hired for the project has told them it intends to build a 22,000-square-foot underground storage vault to store documents.



Underground Vaults Corporate Video



Prague

Prague’s New Library to Check Out Books Underground






Deepstore

DeepStore was established in 1998 to take advantage of a unique storage space – the underground void that was created when millions of tonnes of salt were removed from Salt Union’s rock salt mine in Cheshire, Britain’s largest salt mine.

The mine, 150 metres underground, has consistent temperature and humidity levels and is naturally free from the dangers of ultraviolet light, vermin or flooding. It is the size of 700 football pitches and continues to grow as a million tonnes of salt is mined every year.

Treasured paintings, historical records and architectural models are among the items on our underground shelves. We also manage up-to-date archiving for financial institutions, police departments, universities, architects and hospitals.

It's a whole city! 138 miles of roads!

The UK National Archives are there too.








Underground physics labs

similar to the one at Soudan but with different experiments are located in mines in South Dakota, Ontario and Japan. There are also deep underground physics labs in Russia, France and Italy, which are located underneath mountains and accessed by long, horizontal tunnels.





Paris' Picasso Museum

has closed for a 30-month (some think longer) expansion. The Musee d'Orsay is also doing major renovations. ...





Florence's Uffizi Gallery

The construction and reshuffling may affect your visit in 2010. Paolo Uccello's "The Battle of San Romano" may be out for restoration





Otago Settlers Museum New Zealand

Otago Settlers Museum to undergo renovations

The Otago Settlers Museum is touted as New Zealand's most important social history museum and is an institution Dunedin can be proud of.

However, for the next 3 years, the Museum is going to be doing things differently.





Charles Hayden Planetarium

The Museum of Science, Boston today announced it will undertake a year long physical and technological renovation of the Charles Hayden Planetarium starting January 4, 2010.





Museum Director Resignations


This is just a few of how many resignations are on the first page of a Google Search



Jan 7, 2010 Michael Brand, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, says he is resigning.

Feb 16, 2010 The former RISD Museum director, whose abrupt resignation last summer sparked weeks of protests and recriminations at the Rhode Island ...

January 08, 2010 ...The sudden announcement Thursday that Michael Brand was stepping down as director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, one of the top jobs on the nation's art scene, caught the museum world by surprise.

Brand, 51, will leave his post at the end of this month, 10 months shy of the end of the five-year contract he signed in 2005.

February 5th, 2010 JOHN LENNON’s widow YOKO ONO is to close the museum she dedicated to her late husband in her native Japan.

PRAGUE, Czechoslovakia After 10 years as artistic director of the Czech National Gallery, Milan Knizak, has announced that he is leaving the position.

January 13, 2010 Australian Museum Director Resigns Over Funding Levels

February 10, 2010Seaport Museum president Dillard Rech resigns

OCEANSIDE: Museum director to retire Skip Pahl has led the Oceanside Museum of Art for 12 years

Moderna Museet Director Lars Nittve, to Retire in October

February 11, 2010 David Brown resigns from Taubman Museum of Art

February 22, 2010 The Carbon County Museum Board unanimously accepted the resignation of Museum Director Denise Patton

20th January 2010 Royal Air Force Museum Director General DR Michael Fopp To Retire

February 17th, 2010 Joan Davidow to Retire from Dallas Contemporary

Director Theodora Vischer Resigns from her Duties at Schaulager.
Schaulager, literally meaning viewing-warehouse in German, preserves and stores artworks from the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation that are not being exhibited.


The tenure of Donald Bastin longtime director of the Richmond Museum of History, came to a sudden end recently over apparently irreconcilable differences with the president of the nonprofit's volunteer board.







Endangered Species' DNA To Be Stored At Natural History Museum

First Posted: 07- 9-09 08:59 AM

Officials of the American Museum of Natural History and the U.S. National Park Service have signed an agreement for samples from endangered species in America's parks to be added to the museum's existing DNA collection.

The frozen samples provide researchers with genetic materials to study and help protect hundreds of species. The first new submissions will be blood samples from foxes in California's Channel Islands National Park, followed by specimens from the American crocodile and the Hawaiian goose.

Underground in the laboratories of the museum, which was featured in the 2006 Ben Stiller movie "Night at the Museum," a half-dozen metal vats cooled with liquid nitrogen can store up to 1 million frozen tissue samples. They're stored on racks in bar-coded boxes that are linked to a computer database so they can be located in seconds.

Julie Feinstein, who heads the museum's sample collection, emphasizes that although DNA is extracted from tissue, cloning "is not part of our mission."

The main goal, museum officials said, is preservation of species.






Which collections are being moved?


The moves involve low- to nil-use material that is currently stored at British Library sites at St Pancras, Colindale, Woolwich and Micawber Street. These items are to be moved to the recently-completed Additional Storage Building (ASB), which is located at the Library’s site in Boston Spa, West Yorkshire.

Phase One of the moves includes low-use science, technology and medicine (STM) monographs, serials and patents, along with low-use humanities monographs and serials.

A full list of the shelf marks currently affected can be found in the October 2009 Collection Moves Reader Bulletin.

Other material destined for the ASB will begin to move in Phase Two towards the end of 2009. As part of the Library’s Newspaper Strategy, we plan for the hardcopy newspaper collection, which currently resides at Colindale, to move between 2010 and 2012.''

this was just on the news here in the UK, and my ears suddenly pricked up when I heard it. So I decided to look into where Boston Spa is..


As you can see, it is virtually smack in the middle of the country, at an altitude of 183 feet.

apparantley, this is a MASSIVE undertaking, that will take till 2012 (there's that year again) to complete.

Where they are relocating to, is protected by mountains in Wales, the Peak district, and the Scottish mountains to it's south west, west, and north west.

Are they expecting a wave from the Atlantic?

It's 76 kilometers from the east coast at it's closest point, with no mountains between it and the sea to it's east.







Cold Storage Facilities in the U.S.

Iron Mountain--National Underground Storage being one of them......