In this case we were weeding for damaged, dated, inappropriate and just plane 'not wanted' books in the junior school categories (under 13 years) at HCL Mount Pleasant Library. We started at 9am today and there were 6 of us. This expanded to 8 over the course of the morning with some coming and going. We cleared 5 shelves and used a simple colour coding system for 6 and under (orange), 7 to 9 years (green) and 10 to 13 years (blue). We separated the fiction and non fiction (an extra silver sticker on top of the age categories).
Tina, our intern/student at the branch came to help and hopefully will be able to continue with the system during her working hours. You see we have no fully qualified librarians in the system due to very limited financial resources. There are a couple of certificate level but experienced individuals at the main building only. Even then, the whole system needs a senior librarian with an understanding of modern library systems and new roles in the community. As an ex-VSO volunteers myself, I am hoping that VSO will be able to help. Let's see.
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| Chipo and Deborah helping us pack up |
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| Some of the shelf space being cleared and reloaded |
In the 60s and 70s children read differently. Much more serious tomes, dense wording, small print. Nowadays we are so layout and language concious that it is easy to see what age groups read what (often they are labelled so). Sadly we have to keep then until we can get new modern readers :-(
Anyways, we will not have got it all correct. Now, if you visit the four shelves we started on you will be able to see the books (way hay) they are better displayed and have colour dots...so putting them back will be easier.
To manage a library I have learned, you have GOT to read books :-)
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