Work! Work! Work!

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New library shelving was added to the library this month and now it is our job to move the books, and I mean ALL the books, into new locations leaving space for new books that will be added in the coming years. This is our first big task this year. I must say that so far the project is going well and much faster than either of us anticipated. In the three days we have been here we have moved the entire reference section and about 100 shelves of books. The 100 shelves are books that we are moving from the 2nd floor to the 1st floor. I suppose we can call this Phase II of the project, Phase I being the reference section. How many shelves do we have to move in Phase II? I'm not sure. However if you insist on my making a guess I would say that 300 is a fair guess. Then, time permitting, we will begin Phase III. Phase III will be moving the rest of the collection onto the shelves we have just emptied, leaving space throughout the library for the filing of new books into the existing collection. The library was very quickly running out of shelf space. With the new shelving and rearrangement of the books there should be space for, we hope, up to ten years. Well, I guess Bill told you about our Phase I and his Phase II but he forgot to tell you about my Phase II. We moved all the References since when they were first placed someone forgot space to move all the periodicals which will need to be moved in one year. We moved all the periodicals two years ago and left room for three years of new bound periodicals. One year's worth of those periodicals are now are on the shelves and this year's has yet to come in. When they are on the shelves there will only be room for next year's and then they will all have to be shifted. Now we have left an extra section to help with that task. One section had been left about 1/4 of the way into the periodical collection and now there is another at the beginning. We seriously doubt if this will be enough so someone will probably be shifting most if not all of the References again in a year. To prevent the need to do ALL of them, we left the top shelf of each Reference section without any books hoping it will give at least one more year of room. A growing library is everyone's desire but also every librarian's nightmare. After we did that Phase I together, I moved upstairs and packed all the books on an entire two faced section preparing it to be moved to its new location. Our library special projects manager Linas then moved that and another new section of shelving into place. I spent a day and moved all those books back onto the moved shelving. Then I shifted another entire section. By 9:30 last night I was finished, happy and tired! So that was my Phase II. As I was doing that work Bill was passing behind me using the small elevator and starting to shift books from the second floor to the new shelving next to the References. We are moving the most often used materials which thankfully reside at the far end of the upstairs. That will then leave room to shift books in that direction. The ones I worked on were at the opposite end. Then there will be a need to shift in the middle. He then took over the circulation desk for 4 hours while I finished the upstairs. We got all the books in order that needed to be reshelved after student use and came home to eat some delicious banana bread which our friend Cheryl had sent us with her husband Peter who is attending the intensive lectures. Thank you Cheryl if you read this blog. We NEEDED that good bread last night. It saved the day!

As you can see from the photo of Nancy giving Phil a lesson on using the library software, the moving of the books is not the only task we are doing. I ran the circulation desk last night from five until nine and also worked on labels to be placed at the end of each section of shelving. Nancy is working with several new library workers, helping them become familiar with the library as well as the software used in maintaining the library collection. Both of us are helping students needing help in finding books, articles, online searches as well as helping those who are not computer geeks with their computer "problems." All-in-all it is fun.

We are pretty well over our jet lag, but with the physical work we are doing, by the end of the day we are TIRED. Books not only become heavy when you are moving hundreds of books every day, they also are dusty. "Wow, look, my fingers and hands are gray." So far we have not stopped up any drains while washing our hands, but we have used quite a bit of hand lotion as we try not to allow our skin to fall totally apart.

Bill forgot to mention that he is also working on marking a new book which will be published here soon. He is marking in preparation for indexing the book so it will have a professional index and be more useful to readers. I did the proofreading of the chapters of this book since last September when I left here. So we are begining to see the end of the work on another good IBTS publication.

For some reason, perhaps to welcome us, the weather is not cold. The mild winter is upsetting to those who love to ski. But we are enjoying weather which I believe is as warm as last April. Last winter was dreadfully cold at times. I am sure it will get cold again before we leave but for now......

We just had a lot of fun a few minutes ago with our friend's new daughter Anna. Bill will take pictures of her asap and make a special entry to show you just how cute a little Czech girl can be. Her adopted parents Matt and Jennie are really having a wonderful time with her and I can see we will too. She and I had fun playing Etch-A-Sketch. Oh well, just wait and we will do a picture show of Anna as soon as the photos are ready.

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Photos

Surrounded by boxes and books
Nancy moving books, making room for more books.

Teaching
Nancy giving Phil a lesson on the library software.

Library research
The CAT students, learning what resources are available to them.