Thursday, October 30, 2008

A busy week

So many puzzles, so many ways to get sidetracked in the Bullis Room. It has been a busy week. We have had an appraiser here two days re-evaluating our Science and Horticulture items. (We have the collection divided into different subjects.) So there has been shelf-reading and much manipulation of the Excel spreadsheet to get adequate lists. We sent a few books out for repair last Friday. A whole lot of hands on has been going on.
We have a wonderful young woman who volunteers on a weekly basis (when life doesn't interfere) writing cards for the books. These cards list the official item ID for OWWL, the title, the author, pub. date, subject, and shelf location. We keep them right in the books. The purpose of this is twofold. One, if the item is removed from the shelf and set on the cart, we can find its shelf location by just looking at the card. And two, the item ID number can be quickly punched into our system to show that the item has been used. We can then devolop statistics on how many items are being used, what seems to be the most used subjects, etc. That's a bit down the road in the future. Our volunteer has worked through one whole side of the room. Her big love is European history and that's the section she is in now. So we do anticipate that this section might move a bit slower than the fiction section. We like our volunteers to enjoy themselves. And perhaps we can get her to write a comment or two on the items she's working with. There's so much in this collection of books. Something for everyone!

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