Plans for the construction of a new book storage facility near Swindon, Wiltshire, have been unveiled by Oxford University as part of a new modernisation scheme at the Bodleian Library.

The university has already acquired a 15-acre (6.1-hectare) site at South Marston on the outskirts of the Wiltshire town for the new high-density facility, which will house eight million volumes of low-demand items. It is expected that work on the South Marston building can get underway in August, subject to planning approval, and the university hopes to have the facility operational by autumn 2010.

Once complete, work will get underway on the refurbishment the existing New Bodleian facility to create a special collections library, including three floors of secure storage developed, additional reading rooms, and the creation of new exhibition galleries as part of plans to open up the ground floor area to the public. The New Bodleian will also be renamed as the Weston Library following the four-year refurbishment scheme after the university received a £25m donation from the Garfield Weston Foundation in March 2008.

Sarah Thomas, librarian and director at the Bodleian Library, said: "With the purchase of this site, we anticipate that the new storage facility will become operational in 2010. This will enable the renovation of the New Bodleian as a special collections library and the union of a number of faculty libraries into the Humanities Library on the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter."