Yes, I have been away for quite some time. Why is that? My library is getting a major renovation this summer and we’ve been preparing. The entire library will be gutted, completely reconfigured and we’ll have all new furniture. We should be moving this week and all of the books on the first floor have been boxed up by a moving company. They will start upstairs, which is where most of the books are, probably today. So what I did for four straight weeks including some weekends was packing up Archives. Our Archives was really just three storage rooms of stuff, over 100 years worth. Nothing is catalogued, there are no finding aids, and there is very little order. We are talking total chaos. Think of the show “Hoarders.” It was almost that bad, only we couldn’t rent a dumpster and throw stuff out. Just about everything had to be kept. Here was the main challenge. Everything needed to be organized and placed in proper archival boxes. To make it more challenging, our Archives room in the library on campus will be about one third the size of what it was before. So that means a large number of stuff needs to be stored off-site. Thus, I had to organize the items according to what will stay on site and what will remain off-site. This all had to be done in a month. That meant long tiring days on my feet, doing actual physical labor. I liked that, but it did get exhausting at times and also stressful given the time restraints.
So the plan for the rest of the summer? Move to an off-site location which is a large room where all the books will be located so that we can do some major weeding. We’ll have to do that in order to fit all the books upstairs when we move back in. Plus we’ll need to provide a certain level of library service which will be challenging. The details on al that are still being worked out. Oh, and I have a presentation to prepare for at the ASEE Conference in two weeks. I am thinking I will have to work on that in the evenings at home.
