Settling in at the University of Arizona

It's been a busy week.  The Arizona Geological Survey moved to the University of Arizona, physically  and administratively.   On Monday, we packed up the Arizona Experience retail store and AZGS library shelves [right] to  move to the former mining and mineral museum in Phoenix for temporary storage until that facility is re-opened and we set up a library and gift shop/store.

On Wednesday, movers loaded office files, about one-quarter of the AZGS geologic library, and selected equipment for the new offices in the former Arid Lands building just east of the UA campus.

On Thursday, AZGS moved in, started unpacking and setting up computers, email, and internet connections. 

Simultaneously, the moving trucks unloaded in Phoenix, and set up the Tucson library shelves. Next week, volunteers will be there to unload the dozens of carts of library books on the shelves [bottom].

 We were pretty successful in finding homes for much of the materials we could not take with us.  About half of the library was taken by state or university libraries, professional organizations, companies, and individuals.   The least critical library materials that were disposed of (seen on the floor in the above photo) probably amount to less than a quarter of the total inventory.

We had a steady stream of individuals grabbing copies of the more than 21,000 topo maps in our sales inventory.  The Arizona Railway Museum collected a complete set of nearly all 2,000 titles, along with historical versions.  The remaining ~15,000 maps were packed up by a sportsmen's organization for outdoor recreation users.

The AZGS state websites will continue in the interim while we move everything to arizona.edu addresses.

Our new space has only about one-fourth the size of our former state office space requiring a dramatic downsizing.   We are still identifying what costs we are responsible for at the university as well as counting the costs of the move.   That will impact our resources to fund staff positions for the rest of Fiscal Year 2017 which began July 1.