The Tulane University Libraries Annex serves as an off-site library storage facility and, on its own, is the third-largest library in Louisiana in terms of collection size. In addition to Howard-Tilton Memorial Library collections, the facility also holds materials from The Latin American Library, Tulane University Special Collections, the Newcomb Archive, the Newcomb Art Museum, the Turchin Business Library, and the Amistad Research Center. At least 800,000 volumes from the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library's general collection of books and journals are stored there, as well as a similar number of manuscript folders and other archival collection items.
The facility is located about two miles from campus. Items are available to library users via a courier retrieval service that operates each weekday.
First opened in 2003, the Tulane University Libraries Annex occupies most of a 70,000 square foot renovated warehouse at 900 S. Norman Francis Parkway that formerly served as a Coca-Cola distribution center. The space was first acquired through a lease, but the property is now owned by Tulane University. Its library collections are housed on more than 100,000 linear feet of shelving that represents a mix of traditional ranges of shelving, each separated by aisles, and tall high-density mobile shelving units designed to conserve floor space.
The facility is staffed full-time by an Annex and Special Projects unit, as well as staff who work in the facility's Conservation Lab, which has been set up to repair damaged physical items from the collections. While not generally open to the public, the facility does have a reading room in which staff can supervise occasional researchers who need to use materials in hands-on ways that cannot be accommodated by courier retrieval.
