Friday we finally finished shifting nonfiction and realized more shelving units for fiction. Because of the layout we used for large type, though, this involved changing the flow of nonfiction and moving around some of the smaller fiction collections (westerns and adult graphic novels) as well as the talking books, for which we were able to increase space too. A few of us basically spent all day Friday shifting the entire fiction collection.

Others spent Friday shelfreading, straightening, and cleaning up the public spaces in preparation for our sneak preview event on Sunday and our opening on Monday. There are still some things to clean up in the public area, but we'll have time to take care of them when we come in Sunday before event time.

One thing we discovered while shelving our old nonfiction collection was how important it was to inventory the boxes as they were brought over from our old building. This enabled us to see if we were missing any boxes that hadn't been brought over yet. This was important because we couldn't continue shifting in a section if we hadn't shelved the boxes that contained material for that area.

This last week has been exhausting, but it's very satisfying to know that we're pretty much done except for cleaning up some things in nonpublic areas and feeding in the overflow and duplicates once material begins to go out.

Crunch Time Approaches

We finished shelving all of the 600s and have continued shifting backward so that we can give more space to talking books, adult fiction, and mysteries. We also continued unboxing the old nonfiction collection. Although we tried to weed worn material before we boxed it, we've been withdrawing quite a bit of the old collection due to condition or duplication in the opening day collection. We were finally able to begin shelving the opening day collection of easies and easy nonfiction yesterday. We shifted to even out the easies today, and we also interfiled our old easy nonfiction collection onto the shelves. The Children's and Teen areas are almost completely ready for opening day. The units for our cardboard books are due tomorrow.

There are several parts of our old collection that we won't unbox until after we open and a lot of material has gone out. Our returns room is packed with duplicates from the opening day collection that can't be shelved yet. We also have been boxing most of the material returned at the drive-up window.

Our Assistant Director asked me today if we had baskets for our customers to use when we open. She indicated that people will be selecting so many items that they will need them. We only have a few at the branch, and our Supplies department doesn't have any on hand so I guess we'll need to order some. It's unfortunate that we didn't think of this ahead of time.

I'm getting a little worried about finalizing our opening and closing procedures and having time to go over them with our staff since we only have 2 working days left before we open. We also haven't had time to reallocate jobs and team members with our expanded staff. We talked about some of this at department heads meetings in December and January, but once things really began to roll on the project, we haven't had time to revisit these topics and make some decisions.

I'm also concerned about lack of signage in some areas. We met with our Graphics department in January about our signage needs, but I've noticed some areas which we overlooked. There's no signage for our Just Arrived shelves, New Audio Books, DVD Classics, DVD Series, and other New sections of various collections (J Fiction, Easies, Easy Nonfiction, etc.). There's not even a good place to post a sign in many of these collections. We don't have our end of stack signs for the main stacks either. Since we're still shifting to see where things will be, we can't yet give the Graphics department the information needed to put on those signs.

The flooring contractor finally started re-laying the linoleum in the cafe and staff kitchen areas today.

A Light at the End of the Tunnel

We've finished unboxing all the ~PE items from offsite storage except for easies, easy nonfiction and some large type. We've also finished unboxing all the old collection that had been brought over last week. We also got our music and dvd area set up and shelved the new opening day collection. We don't have room for any of our old music collection. We still have to bring over our old collection of DVDs which, thankfully, we have room to shelve.

The only things left to do in the J area are setting up some furniture (yet to be delivered), shelving the rest of the easies, board books, & easy nonfiction, merchandise, shelfread and tweak. Science Fiction, Young Adult, and New Books are completely shelved, and the Magazine Room is almost complete. There are 1-2 more boxes to come over from the old collection. We're trying to get some sections totally completed to give us a greater sense of accomplishment. We started setting our our service desks today too.

Tomorrow we should be able to begin shelving the rest of easies and easy nonfiction. We're also hoping that our Maintenance staff can bring over most of the rest of our old collection. There are still about 24 boxes of 600s at the old branch as well as all of the 700s, 900s, and Biographies. We'll probably leave our old fiction collection there for a while since we have absolutely no room on the shelves for it. We have been shifting in the nonfiction as we unbox, and hope to gain some space to give to the fiction collections.