the library

As my Aunt Barb mentioned in her comment on my previous post, it turns out that I have become THE librarian for the Henderson Settlement Library.

This. Is. AWESOME.

The librarian (Elizabeth) who was running the library up until she left about a month ago did an amazing job of getting the library into shape. This is not a public library, mind you, nor is it part of any public library system. It is a two-room, backwoods library, but because of Elizabeth's expertise and some funding for the after-school program, this library is fully functional, complete with barcoded books, and OPAC, a special collection, and connections with the public school.

In the four days that I've been here, I've done the following:

• visited the elementary school to give away books for the RIF program to kids from preschool through eighth grade
• supervised volunteers (workcampers here for the week) in sorting through a massive pile of donated books
• connected with librarians from three schools within the school district so they can look through donated books to see if there are any that they can use
• figured out how to take care of Henderson's portion of the payment for the RIF books
• pawed through donations to see what would and would not be appropriate for inclusion in the collection
• downloaded MARC records and put them into the computer system
• processed books and put them into the collection

In the next few weeks, I think I'll start planning the story times that one of the staff members does for the Raising a Reader program, and eventually, I might get to do storytimes myself. This is really exciting to me! The one thing I have to work on, though, is paying attention to what sorts of materials I should include in the adult portion of the library--I've been spending so much time with children's literature, and I haven't paid any attention to what adults like.

One of the unique problems of this particular library is that the collection size is limited by weight. See, the building that holds the Community Center (part of which is the library) is very old, and the floor is not that strong. In fact, it's wavy.

Another interesting problem is donations. When I arrived at the Community Center on Monday morning, the hallway outside of the library was littered with boxes upon boxes of books that had been brought by workgroups. When I went into the library, there were about ten bins full of children's books and three tables stacked with books that had been donated to Henderson Settlement. Some of it's good--some of it's terrible. I'm learning, though, that the give-away shelf out in the hall does get picked through on a regular basis, and the school librarians are happy to come and look through the children's books because their book budgets are tiny.

Have I typed too much? I'm just so excited about this!