Report from the Library - Reference is Moving!

     As I posted last month, our Reference collection is being integrated into our Main collection, now that a goodly portion of the books have been converted to circulating status. Today we began the laborious process of moving and inter-filing the remaining reference books into the main collection. Why on a Friday?  Because we've got new furniture coming in next week to take the place of the vacated shelving, and the furniture delivery can't be pushed back or put on hold. We should have it done in time for the guys from buildings & grounds to tear them down and put up the new stuff.  Many hands make light work, so they say, but I say encyclopedias are heavy no matter who lifts them. Our team of staff and students pitched in with gusto, and made a good start. We've got a quarter of it done, and I suspect that this quarter will prove to be the hardest. First, because we were developing our processes as we went, so there were bugs to work out, and secondly, classes A & B, which cover General Works, Philosophy, Psychology and Religion, have a lot of multi-volume sets in them, which have to be filed as sets. This means that we have to open up entire shelves or more to fit these sets in, which means we have to shift as many as 30 shelves away to make room. Once we get into the History classes (C, D, E & F) there will be fewer sets and less mass shifting. I'll report back on our progress next week.