New warehouse to benefit Georgia Southern departments, grow South Campus

May 16, 2016

  Seven departments at Georgia Southern University will benefit from a newly constructed central warehouse storage facility that is the first structure on the University’s South Campus property. The new warehouse, located at 375 Lanier Drive on the new South Campus property, will eventually house the University’s Purchasing Department, Archives and Records Center, Equipment Transport Services, Central Receiving, Property Control, a new archaeology repository, the Department of Communication Arts’ costume shop and the Georgia Southern Museum’s Project SENSE storage. Project SENSE, or Science Education Network for the South East, is one of the Museum’s school outreach projects for Pre-K through 8th grade educators. The Museum began moving earlier this week, and Director Brent Tharp, Ph.D., said the new space will only enhance what the Museum currently offers. “The new warehouse will greatly enhance the Museum's education, preservation and outreach missions. The space will support the efficient and effective development, storage and delivery of school outreach kits and our traveling exhibits,” Tharp said. “It will provide us with the proper facility to curate and preserve oversized artifacts, such as the Museum's 1920s turpentine wagon and a recently donated 1850s cotton gin, and it will provide us with appropriate space to store exhibit cases and materials allowing us to provide better exhibits at the Museum and around town.” The warehouse will also be home to a curation repository for some of the University’s archaeology collections. “Archaeology is mostly shown as ‘the dig,’ but rarely do we see what happens afterward to the artifacts and excavation records each project generates.  Federal and state regulations, as well as our field's professional ethics, mandate that artifacts and records from archaeology projects have a permanent, safe home, managed by a curator,” said Jared Wood, Ph.D., RPA, an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology. “The archaeology repository in the new Central Warehouse is a curation space; essentially, an archives for collections,” he continued. “Curated collections generate modest income (for the upkeep of the collections themselves), raise the profile of the University - and our program - by drawing in visiting researchers, and also provide materials for student and faculty research for decades to come. This is truly an exciting development!”

This building will greatly enhance the efficiency of the University services provided by the Division of Procurement and Business Services by having all operations in one location.