Week 11

This week I wanted to give a more detailed explanation of what I've done so far to map how the collection will be moved back into the renovated library.

I began by looking at the reference, DVD, juvenile and curriculum collections.  The reference and DVD collections will be housed on the first floor of the library where they will be easily accessible to patrons since these items are used frequently.  The juvenile and curriculum collections will be housed on the third and fourth floors on a variety of types of shelving designed to make it easier for education students to browse the unique items in those collections.  Children's picture books will be shelved in browser bins similar to the types of bins that CDs are shelved on in retail stores.  The browser bins make it easy for students to flip through the picture books and skim the titles, front covers and subject of the book.  Children's chapter books (books for more advanced readers) will be placed on normal shelves.  Teaching kits as well as dye cuts will be shelved on extra-deep shelves and wire bins, which are wider to accommodate these oversized materials and to allow for easier browsing.  K-12 textbooks and the remainder of the education collection will be shelved on normal shelving.  The third and fourth floors will provide a great place where future teachers can discover new teaching materials, find a quiet place to study, or meet with classmates to study or work on group projects.  The general collection will be housed on compact shelving on lower level 1 and on regular shelving on the sixth and seventh floors.

Krista Higham, the Access Services Librarian, provided me with data her staff gathered on how many linear feet of space each section of the collection will take up on the shelves.  Krista and I also spent some time in Hobbs measuring the amount of space needed for teaching kits.  After gathering all the data I needed on how many linear feet each section will need, I looked at the plans for the new and existing shelving that will be installed in the library.  I calculated the number of linear feet of shelving that will be available in the browser bins, extra-deep shelving, the area designated for the dye cuts, and the compact and regular shelving so I knew how much space is available for each section, but also to double check the figures provided by the company installing the shelving.  Once I knew how much space was needed for each section of the collection and how much space was available for each section, I could determine how full the shelves should be filled by dividing the number of linear feet in the section by the number of linear feet available.

For the general collection I needed to combine data on how many books we have coming in from two different streams, one coming from the books that were already assigned Library of Congress call numbers prior to the move, and one for the books that were reclassified during the move, which are boxed separately from each other at our offsite storage facility.  The data breaks down how many linear feet of books we have for each class and subclass of books.  Mapping how the general collection will fall on the shelves is much more difficult than mapping the other sections, because the other sections are smaller and the items will basically fall on the shelves in the order they are unboxed, plus we don't need to allow for two different streams of material.  Because the general collection is so large and there is a tremendous amount of shelving available for it, we need to make sure that we carefully plan how the books will fall on the shelves.  A seemingly minor error of even a few inches repeated over a span of thousands of feet can become a costly, time consuming mistake.  For example, there is a bookend on each shelf, which is an inch wide.  This seems like a minor detail, but over 10,000 shelves, that's over 833 feet, or more than two football fields in length!

Right now, I am looking at the amount of space needed for each main class of call numbers.  I have calculated not only how many linear feet each class will use, but also the number of shelves each class will need.  I am trying to determine how many bookcases will be needed for each class, allowing for an extra shelf on each bookcase to make it easier for our shelvers to interweave the two streams of books.  Allowing enough space for two streams of books is complicated by the fact that the size of the subclasses within each class vary greatly.  However, we have enough information about the size of each class and subclass that we could determine how the books fall on the shelves at a fairly granular level, predicting where they will fall down not only to the bookshelf but also which shelf on the bookshelf.  The project is really like solving a giant puzzle, figuring how how and where the pieces best fit.  In the end, having an accurate idea of where the books should fall in the shelf should increase the speed of the movers putting books back on the shelves, which in turn will give us more time to work on interweaving the two streams and getting the stacks in order before the grand opening.