Day 4 & 5 of Boxing

Since most boxing had been completed, I set my new librarians to work on drafting new book and opening/closing procedures while former Perry Hall staff continued to pack their desks. We'll probably have time to go over these drafts with all librarians next week while we're waiting for our desk furniture and the truckloads of new material to arrive. By Thursday afternoon, only my desk and the manager's desk still had to be boxed. We also left a few things in the kitchen available, such as napkins, coffee, tea bags, etc., as well as everything in the refrigerator.

Thursday our manager attended a regularly scheduled progress meeting with the contractors & the county on the new building. They discussed the issue of the incorrectly laid linoleum, among other things. It looks as if the contractors may only redo the floor in the cafe area because it will clash with the furniture ordered for it. We also have some concerns about one section of carpet in the new books area. Our assistant director came out to see the progress and echoed our concerns. She also mentioned that the shelving in the adult magazine room seemed rather high (units are 78"H) and suggested we might want to lower the shelves. On Friday the manager and I took some magazines over and played around with various arrangements of the shelves until we had one unit the way we wanted it. We showed the Duron installers, and they will take care of setting up the rest of the units to match that one. We also checked the spacing of shelves for the J and Y magazines and worked with the installers to set up a unit in J that they could follow and also use in Y.

While inspecting the stack shelving on Thursday, our assistant director also noticed that most books on the top shelf would extend above the shelving frame. She thought we might not like the way that would look so when I went there on Friday, I also took some material over to put on a top shelf. The assistant director was right; it didn't look very attractive. I'm really glad she thought of that. We were able to set up a configuration for the shelves that still allowed most tall books to be shelved upright rather than on their side (all shelves 12" apart). I felt badly that we were changing the spacing after the installers had already set things up, but we haven't worked with shelving this low before. Unfortunately, the shelving installers don't think they'll have enough time to readjust all the stack shelving for us since they still have a lot of shelving to assemble and install. The manager & I decided this is a job our staff will work on next week with help from our Facilities staff, if necessary. I was also able to discuss one or two other misunderstandings regarding the type and spacing of shelving for specific collections. One thing I realized this week is that I should never go to the new branch without my shelving allocation floor plan. Every time I've gone without it, I've needed it to answer a question.

While the manager and I were at the new branch working on the shelving issues, the most of the rest of the staff were at the old branch planning our two big opening events: the preview tea and a community day. The manager & I returned to the branch in time to meet the head of our Human Resources department delivering sweet treats to all Perry Hall staff. What a nice surprise! After lunch we had a fairly long staff meeting to bring everyone up-to-speed on the issues with the flooring, Verizon, and the shelving. The two groups who had worked all morning on planning our events reported on their ideas. The manager gave an overview of where we'd report to work the following week and what would be happening. One of my main tasks next week will be to arrange for marking where all the collections will be shelved and how far to shelve material on each shelf before moving to the next one. The other major task for me is to develop the schedule for unboxing and shelving our 120,000 or so volume collection. The head of our Collection Development department has instructed us to shelve new material purchased for our opening day collection first, and then fill in with our "old" collection where needed. Our assistant director alerted us that we need to leave some material boxed so we have plenty of material to refill the shelves as they are emptied once we open.