What is it?

GEPA, Guaranteed Space for the Preservation of Access is a cooperative depository to conserve and preserve documents in use, ensuring its future preservation and accessibility immediately when a library requires.

Libraries collect, sort and store books and other documents that are useful to their users. But not all library materials are used equally. Some widely used today, stop being over time. The case for example:

• works that are updated by new editions, as the book "Art of designing in architecture Neufert Ernst, now in its 15th edition,
• converted journals in databases such as the Food Science & Technology Abstracts (FSTA), initiated in 1969 in printed and subsequently distributed on microfiche and CD-ROM and now available on line in the Digital Library of Catalonia ( http://www.cbuc.cat/bdc)
• old numbers of magazines that already have electronic version, as the magazine "Ausa" published by the Board of Studies Osonencs and included in the digital repository RACO ( http://www.raco.cat)
• textbooks that are no longer in force,
• etc.

Some documents may have a low usage, not therefore have a low value. They represent the state of knowledge of mankind at any given time. They have value to scholars of today and tomorrow and should be preserved and well maintained. But it's not necessary to do that at privileged spaces like reading rooms of libraries. We can put stores and take this opportunity to rearrange the spaces in accordance with the technological possibilities and needs and provide social spaces for self-learning of today's libraries.

Stores like the GEPA, while freeing up space, create a collection of common stock. Do not keep indiscriminately, but better preserved. Instead of a passive policy of preservation make it active, choose the copies in better condition and keep them in optimal conditions. The GEPA uses a compact storage system that was first used at Harvard University and consists in keeping the books by size and not by subject.

The GEPA gets improvements saving:

• spaces in the centers of the campus and cities,
• unnecessary costs of holding more books than necessary,
• space storing documents compactly.
• etc.

In 2002 CBUC raised the goal of making a cooperative depository to ensure the preservation of low-use materials and to do so with maximum effectiveness. The GEPA streamline retain copies and keep under optimal environmental conditions. As in other cases, the GEPA shows that to act together allows saving improvements are made.

The GEPA equipment is not unique but is outstanding:

• has 5.400 m2 with 12 storage modules,
• currently equipped eight of the twelve modules, with more than 2,000 meters of corridors and 17,000 meters shelves shelves
• this capability is expected to be so compact you can store about 43 miles of existing library shelves,
• has a consultation room with ten reading places.
• the world there are only 18 cooperative stores similar function (14 in America, 3 in Europe and 1 in Australia) and only 60% of the storage of low use books that are in the world use the compact storage system GEPA.

The GEPA equipment has been through:

• the initial report made by Dr. Joan Roca, Dean of Library Services, the Minnesota State University, Mankato,
• the location of architectural spaces by rqp sl,
• the transfer of former barracks made by the Lleida City
• the commitment to the future of CBUC member institutions that have supported the results of collective work,
• the financing of the rehabilitation work of the ministries of Culture and Media and Innovation, Universities and Enterprise of the Generalitat de Catalunya,
• the rehabilitation project of building Albert Benet i Ferran
• the job of many people who have work, ideas and encouragement.