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Moving a Seminary 
Library 400+ Miles
By Bob Phillips, Gateway Seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention, Patsy Yang, 
Gateway Seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention

ABSTR ACT This poster session summarizes the librarians’ role in 
Gateway Seminary’s relocation of its main campus from Northern 
California to Ontario, California, four hundred miles south. The move 
affected both staff and the library collections. The poster is available 
here. The Proceedings submission includes lessons we learned from the 
move that will be helpful for any library planning to move to a new or 
renovated space.

Poster available at https://schd.ws/hosted_files/atla2018/78/Moving-
a-Library-400-Miles.pdf

This poster session summarizes the librarians’ role in Gateway Semi-
nary’s relocation from Northern California to Ontario, California, 
400 miles south. This was not the library’s first move. Two of us had 
participated in other moves earlier in our careers—much like the 
Golden Gate library move in 1981. The original campus library was 
moved from a smaller space on the upper floor of the administration 
building to its new building a few yards away. That move was done by 
students and staff, one book truck at a time. Those who were a part 
of the move remember it as a lot of walking, but not much else. The 
advance planning focused on design, construction, and furnishing.

The 2016 move was different. The poster describes what was done. 
What did we learn that might help those facing their own possible 
campus move, should the school decide to keep its library mostly intact?

 1.  Take time to plan. Fortunately, we had two years to wait before 
the new building was ready for occupancy. 

 2.  If you have not moved a library before, it is not too different from 
moving a household. Decide what to take and dispose of what is 
left. Set a timeline using approximate dates and adjust as you go.

https://schd.ws/hosted_files/atla2018/78/Moving-a-Library-400-Miles.pdf
https://schd.ws/hosted_files/atla2018/78/Moving-a-Library-400-Miles.pdf


336  ATL A 2018 PROCEEDINGS

 3.  Find an experienced library mover. Separate the furniture move 
from the materials move. Anyone can move furnishings, yet not 
everyone can keep tens of thousands of books in shelf order and 
remove and re-install library shelving.

 4.  Moving the shelving increases complexity. New installation 
needs to meet local building codes.

 5.  Know how many linear feet of material you will move. It is not as 
difficult to determine this as it seems. We used a 25-foot length 
of string to measure the empty space on each shelf.

 6.  Dispose of “low hanging fruit” first. The seminary had closed its 
NASM accredited church music programs over ten years earlier. 
The books, journals, and sheet music were still on the shelves. We 
also disposed of journal back-runs for which we had full-text online. 

 7.  Recognize that it takes effort to dispose of unwanted mate-
rial. This may become more difficult as more printed mate-
rial morphs into electronic format. We were fortunate that 
New Orleans Baptist Seminary took our music scores, North-
east Baptist College took our music books, and several Chris-
tian colleges were able to use our bound periodicals. Despite our 
generosity, we still sent thousands of books to the Marin County 
landfill because we could not find a recycler for hardbound items.

 8.  When you relocate a campus, you are also relocating faculty and 
staff. Some may choose not to move to the new location. Two 
librarians found other employment before the move. Two retired 
once the move from Mill Valley was completed. New staff were 
hired and trained during and immediately after the move. 

 9.  Once the movers complete their tasks, you are on your own. The 
whole campus moved into the building the same week. Everyone 
was busy. It was a great time to build community with everyone 
else in the building as all worked together to help each other to 
prepare the building for opening day. Once the furniture was 
reassembled and placed and the boxes of supplies and other 
material were distributed, the library staff was on its own. It took 
another six months to shelve and re-organize our special collec-
tions and archives room, and it took two years before we orga-
nized our storeroom.



Posters  337

 10.  Expect everything to take longer than you think it will and be 
ready for the unexpected. When we moved into the Ontario 
building, we learned that there would be no intranet, internet, or 
phone access for several weeks, and some important equipment 
took several months to be available for use. Because the IT staff 
had larger issues to resolve, the library’s KWIC scanner was not 
available for several months.

 11.  Remember that you are part of a faith-based organization. Keep 
the institutional mission in mind. What you are doing will have a 
lasting effect.


