Slice of Life Day 18: Bookshelves and More Bookshelves
A lot of people have been asking me what I’ve been doing this week at work while the library is closed to the public. The biggest project I’ve been tackling is shifting our entire adult fiction collection. To be fair, I started working on this project before the coronavirus hit, it just worked out really well not to have anyone in the library over the past few days to finish it up!
Shifting a Collection
I’d hazard a bet that most people have no idea what I’m talking about when I say shifting an entire collection. We had shifted the collection about three years and purposely left some open shelves after doing a major weeding project. Now, we want to reallocate the space and better balance our collection.
Our first step was to weed the collection again. We do this on a regular basis. But before I moved every book in the collection we pulled anything that was published over ten years ago and hasn’t circulated in the past three years. After that project, I took a look at how much space we had and what we could do with it. And then I got to work, in the past two weeks I shifted 245 shelves of books. Each shelf holds about 18-22 books, so it’s been a busy time.
Thankfully, I didn’t find anything too gross… I mean the shelves were disgustingly dusty, but that’s to be expected. A few old receipts and bookmarks, but otherwise not too bad. My back hurts from bending down and grabbing books which is to be expected. But my hands hurt the worst from spreading my fingers to wrap my hands around a couple of books at a time.
Final Results
Now, the collection is absolutely gorgeous with equal space at the end of each shelf. And all the spines are pulled right to the edge of the shelf. And sadly as a public library, our shelves will stay pretty because we’re closed to the public. Currently, we’ll be closed for at least another week and a half and who knows how much longer after that.
This is my second year participating in the Slice of Life Challenge. I’ll be posting brief posts that show a glimpse of my life in story-format. A slice of my life as a librarian and blogger that I hope you enjoy!
6 Comments
Book Dragon
Thanks for sharing a day in the life of a librarian. What a big project you undertook. It must feel great to get it accomplished.
Do individual library branches set the criteria for weeding or does it come from he city?
I teach at an inner city (title 1) school. The average age of our collection is 19 years. If we weeded with the same criteria our shelves would be bare . . .
D.A. Robb
I know from shifting my own collection what a task you’ve had. And my collection only takes up one wall! Thank you for your work during this time and the inspiration. Shifting. What a great metaphor.
Laura Arnhold
I didn’t think about the metaphor, but it definitely fits during this time when we’re all looking for what a “new normal” might be for a little while! Thanks for commenting!
Laura Arnhold
We only have one library for our community and I set our weeding guidelines based on the book The Weeding Handbook by Rebecca Vnuk. We’re at capacity for our library, so without stringent criteria, I don’t have room for new material, which is a really great problem to have! I know how difficult weeding can be when funds are much tighter!
Anonymous
It sounds like a huge amount of work, but I have to say that I feel a little envious that you had something so concrete to do this week. I especially loved your lines about what you found as you were moving the books. It never occurred to me to think about that. Thanks for the behind-the-scenes peek at a library!
Laura Arnhold
When the world feels out of my control, I love having a project that actually shows something so specific is getting done. So much of what I do is long-term planning and meetings, moving the collection was like being able to actually show I was able to cross something off of my to-do list!