"By the time it gets out here, all we are dealing with is the bar code," Schneiter says. "All materials transferred to the [depository] are handled equally carefully, it doesn't really matter what the bar code is attached to."

"It actually ceases to be a book," Lane jokes. This time, it's Schneiter who rolls his eyes.

Depository staff sort the books by size and place them in a tray.

Then it's just more bar codes, as the bar code on the book is linked to the bar code on the tray, and then to a bar code on the shelf that is its final resting place.

"It's like an address," Schneiter says.

Playing It by Ear

In the years since the depository was founded, this basic scheme has undergone some revision. But because the facility is one of the first of its kind, Lane has had to play it by ear and employ some good old Yankee ingenuity.

"Most of the procedures Ron Lane has developed from his years in the warehousing business," Schneiter says. "He's one of these people that ideas just spin off."

The software for all the bar codes, for example, was originally used for commercial archives management, but Lane had to rewrite it for use with book storage.

The man-aboard motorized lifts were another innovation, which welded a framework to hold materials to the top of the machine. Lane also modified several storage containers to better transport various types of materials. Waxed shelves have reduced friction and made it easier to slide out heavy boxes of books.

"No one wants to retrieve materials from the unwaxed shelves now," Lane says.

At the moment, the first two of the six modules are being emptied so that the shelves can be retrofitted for the special localized sprinklers that would put out a fire without unleashing water on all the books at once.

"We keep working at it, making it better," Lane says.

Putting Books Out to Pasture

Harvard's libraries generally only send seldom-used books to the depository, so as to reduce the number of trips needed to retrieve materials requested by patrons.

The depository, then, which shares a suburban tract of land 30 miles from the Yard with the Harvard Medical School's New England Primate Research Center, is essentially a retirement home for books that haven't been checked out for several years.

"The client [library] decides which books to send to the depository," Schneiter says. "My operation just takes care of the material that's sent out there. Generally, though, the operating principle is that the book will be seldom used."