Saturday, July 28, 2007

It's my Saturday and I'll whine if I want to

Ever the busy bee, I go caught up in my current project and managed to work through my lunch break. Not worth the time and effort, I'm having a snack and blogging in lieu of lunch. Today is the last Saturday the library is open during summer term; classes are finished middle of next week and we move to summer hours (M-F, 8:00 am to 5:00 pm). I was lucky enough to pull today as my requisite summer weekend. With the resource center closed, I'm reference, it's possible to work on a couple of projects - slides and the juvenile collection.

Slides? You might ask. Yes, we have a small collection of slides covering a wide array of educational topics. The collection itself is dated, mostly from the early and middle 1970's, and was never officially cataloged when the library moved from cards. And similar the fate befalling the laser disk collection two summer's ago, there is not technology on campus to utilize the collection. I have a single projector in the resource center, but it is wonky at best. Two hours of my day was spent documenting the slide titles, number of parts, and publication dates. We'll send the information out to faculty offering opportunity for anyone who wishes to rescue them from their planned fate -- trash and recycling. All I will say about the dust and dead critters in the bookcase is, ewwww.

As to the juvenile collection project, simply put a finite space housing a growing collection causes a myriad of issues. We need more room. There is no room. Really, we need more room. Solutions to this problem include making more room, weeding the collection, or to quit buying children's literature. I have no desire to week the collection and there is no way I will quit buying children's literature, so I found a way to increase shelf space without adding to the overall stacks space. To protect the books from dust above and dirt below, when this collection was moved (prior to my arrival) decisions were made to not use the very top and very bottom shelves. That luxury no longer exists. I am in the process of removing the top shelf, replacing it with a flat shelf, and shifting all of the books within each section up a shelf to then utilize the bottom shelf. Instead of five shelves in a section, this will create six and free up room on every shelf for new books.

I have managed to adjust seven sections today (and will do two more before leaving) for a total of nine. A drop in the bucket considering the size of the collection, but it is possible to have the project completed before school begins if we have enough flat shelves ... and time. Further complicating the move is height; patrons have to be able to reach the books (go figure). Luckily I'm average height, 5'5" and figure if I can reach most patrons will be able to do so as well. Just in case I will be purchasing two library stools to place within the juvenile collection.

Back to work.

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