Moving process completed, internal demolition begun

We are now fully moved into our temporary location for the library renovation.  All books were moved out of the library by professional movers.  Not all 80,000 volumes were able to fit into our temp location.  About 10,000 had to go to another facility along with the Archives.  Light demolition of the interior of the library has begun (ceiling panels removed, furniture removed, networking equipment removed).  Hopefully the contractors will begin work next week.

Meanwhile, five miles south of campus, the staff of Logan Library have taken up residence in Box City, a large room in a with over 4,000 boxes of books.  The weeding process has begun amongst all the chaos of settling into a new place full of books.  Two of us are located in the front reception areas, and the rest of us are wedged into various crevices of boxes stacked 4 and 5 high.  Numerous obstacles have been overcome in the past week including a wireless option that didn’t work.  With a very weak Internet signal, not only was it almost impossible to do our work, but our phone option was also a bust (Voice over IP).  So we now all have wired Internet connections.  Then yesterday the air conditioning was fixed.  We had temperatures in the 80s on Monday.  They needed to fix the fix today because this morning the temperature was 60 degrees while the thermostat was set to 73.  Brrrr!  That is now fixed.

I finally have a handle on things and am able to plan a little for my ASEE conference next week.  I am presenting a paper for the Technical Papers session.  My paper title is “Using LibGuides as a Web 2.0 Content Management System & Collaboration Tool for Engineering Librarians.”

Been away…Been busy

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.

Logan Library to Celebrate National Library Week with “READ” Poster contest

To celebrate National Library Week ( April 11-17th), Logan Library will having a “READ” poster contest.  The “READ” poster project is a program that the American Library Association created and attempts to promote libraries and reading by all segments of the population by showing celebrities reading or posing with a book that they like.    Libraries have tapped into this program by either displaying these posters in their libraries or by creating their own of people in their community.  For example, colleges and universities have created their own posters but by using their own staff, faculty and students.

This week, Logan Library has kicked off a contest to see who can come up with the most creative poster.  Anyone in our community is free to send us a picture of themselves or student group reading and we will place it within a template that shows a standard “READ” heading made from Rose-Hulman lettering, “@ Logan Library” and their name or the name of their group.  The winner of the most creative poster will win a prize.  These posters will not all be printed, but rather placed on our Facebook page where our “fans” will be able to vote for their favorite.  The winner of the contest will be chosen by the poster with highest number of “likes” by our fans.  So far we have two posters, one of the entire library staff posing around a Civil Engineering “sculpture” and one of myself.  Mine shows me in the library, leaning on my congas (yes, I lugged them into work for this picture) and reading “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac.  We hope to use this as a means of promoting the library at Rose-Hulman, promoting reading, and increasing our Facebook page membership.  Details can be viewed at http://www.rose-hulman.edu/drc/library_contest/

In addition to the poster contest, on the afternoon of Friday April 17th, we will host a “Library Rocks” celebration at the library.  We will have music and food outside and inside we will have several workstations showing off what we do.  For example, our library director will be demonstrating a new tool we have subscribed to “Noodle Tools.”  I will be either showing off LibGuides or our Digital Archives project.  I will post more information about this event as it develops.