Moving the deck chairs - well at least the shelves

Old VCR boxes as flexible shelf labeling

A huge amount of progress has been made by Ms. Sheryl who has managed to get rid of the boxes cluttering up the floors and to start sorting those books which have any type of DDC number on the spine into DDC number order.  But there still are piles and piles of orphan textbooks that no-one appears to particularly want to use.  We've been lugging them from shelf to shelf it seems each time trying to find a logical space while we sort out the rest of the library, when actually the only logical place for them is ANYWHERE but the library.... which is why I titled this moving the deck chairs...

Yay an empty wall

In order to make the library shelves a bit more accessible physically we decided to move the magazine shelves out. Another factor was that due to the humidity, anything displayed on them started to have curling corners.  Since we wanted it done sooner rather than later, we just rolled up our sleeves and played moving ladies ourselves.  As you can see from the photo it's looking good - albeit empty. These are the shelves where the NLB books which arrive next Thursday (whoopee) will be located so they don't get all mixed up with our own collection.

Shelves ready and waiting for NLB delivery

We managed to finish sorting and shelving the 000-300 DDC sections using the old VCR covers kindly donated by Ms. Katie.  It's looking like a real library - at least on those six shelves!  Did I mention that the library is really quite dusty and everything has to be cleaned and wiped down as we go?

Progress:100-300 in Chinese sorted and shelved

delicious Monster 3.0 as a temporary solution

 The biggest issue right now is the arrival of the NLB books next week and we still haven't managed to locate the old catalogue, nor the cataloguing system, nor does it look like anything will be in place on time.  That called for a quick meeting with the HOS to talk about a plan B.   Which had to be quick and easy and cheap.  I brought along my laptop with my home system - yes ironically at this point, my home books and CDs and DVDs are better catalogued than the schools.  I've been using Delicious Monster 2.0 and quickly upgrade to 3.0 in order to show the potential for doing something, that would be better than handwritten lists and checking.  At $25 it was somewhat a no-brainer, but it had to happen and be confirmed. I also broached the question of cleaning ... (captive audience) and got permission to exchange some of the duplicate Korean and Chinese books with Ms. Katie for some of her surplus donated books that were needed, particularly in the primary section.  At this rate of shelf and book and box of book moving I'm going to be able to cancel my subscription to the gym!