So, you are getting ready for a major library renovation? Let me know where to send the sympathy card! No, seriously, you have a golden opportunity to chart your own future (if cranky school administrators, spartan budgets, diva designers, and delays don’t derail your destiny)! Here are 10 tips for effective library renovation.
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1. Visit Other Libraries
You MUST visit other libraries that have been renovated in the last century (or at least your lifetime). Get inspired! You may not end up with cathedral ceilings, brocade draperies, a revolving readers theater stage, or NASA-worthy robotics lab, but think big! Most people’s idea of a library is the one they visited in third grade. Have a vision for something greater. You may not have even thought of some of the innovations that are out there.
2. Learn From Other People’s Mistakes
Sad, but true. Sometimes people make miscalculations that you can avoid. (Our local public library built a free-standing computer building blocks away from the main facility just before the explosion of personal devices. No one ever used it and they have been trying to unload the white elephant ever since). We have three elementary schools in our district. I was so miffed that they did the other two schools a whole year before mine. But, I was able to see some mistakes the architect made, and I threw a hissy fit so they would not carry over those mistakes to my library! Case in point: the circulation desks at the other two schools were so high, the Kinders and Firsties could not reach it! I insisted they lower mine (by a foot or more). I don’t need to be sitting behind an imposing desk like the Wizard of Oz. I need my kids to hand me their books at their level.
3. Plan Ahead for a Flexible Future
You need to plan for future changes. Yes, I know they just spent 10 million dollars on your fancy new library (as if!). But they have to integrate potential change in the design. Although we were doing major renovations to our libraries, we still had not automated our card catalog or circulation system (that’s right…us and the librarians of Jurassic Park). We begged them to automate now (NOPE) or to eliminate the floor space devoted to the card catalog (NOPE) or at least put in accommodations for future OPAC computers (NOPE). When did they automate? The very next year (SIGH!). Please plan ahead.
4. Weed. Weed. Weed.
Before you pick, pack, or shelve anything for your new library, do yourself a favor and weed heavily. I was quite shocked by the ancient artifacts I had inherited in my library. Books that were published before I was born. (Some before my mother was born). The 48 States of America. No, wait, a half dozen musty old books on Alaska (the 49th state). Why? It had just become a state in 1959! Books whose subjects were: now that Mother has electricity, Mother can get a washing machine; man will never go into space because space is not man’s natural element; 500-page biographies of Catherine the Great (with no illustrations…also never checked out)! I had walls and walls of VHS tapes and (I kid you not)…filmstrips! I mean, filmstrips, really? So, find out what your district’s policies are regarding ditching obsolete items and GET RID OF THEM! (And no, starving children in Africa do not want your castoffs. They also know that Pluto is not a planet and Yugoslavia not a country any more. Do NOT donate them).
5. Obtain Adequate Supplies.
Please measure your collection’s shelf spans and obtain an adequate supply of packing boxes, labels, and tape. I’m not sure who in the administrative office shipped my boxes and rolls of tape to me, but I had to run out to the office supply store several times and get more (at my own expense). You can see from my red face and the airplane hangar exhaust fan behind me that I had no air-conditioning in my old library! Label your boxes carefully with the range of call numbers of the books inside. Remember, you have to reshelve all these materials when the renovation is finished.
6. Be Vocal about Your Needs.
Insist that plans for the new library accommodate the needs of your students and curriculum. Some architects think they are designing the next Library of Congress, but you need to be concerned that five-year-olds can find the Curious George books. Make sure the picture book shelves are deep enough, but the chapter book shelves are not too deep (do you spend hours now shifting the books to the front of the shelf, where the spines can be read or cramming cardboard behind them?). Wouldn’t it be great if the shelves were the right depth? Will you need a Smart Board or other technology? Where is it going to go? Can the kids reach it?
7. Get Help.
Get help! (No, not mental help…although you might need that before the renovation is over). Enlist help to pack the books, label the boxes, unpack and reshelve when done (and in my case…bar-code 10,000 books when the powers that be decided to finally let us automate)! Now is not the time for your “I’m a librarian, it’s my super power.”
8. It’s Not Business as Usual.
You are lucky if they let you close the library for a couple of weeks to pack. Or, if they pay you during the summer. Most likely, you are going to be expected to just cope for most of the renovation. You cannot do your usual, super-duper program! Maybe you can go around to the classrooms on a cart, reading books to the little ones and showing databases to the older kids. Limit circulation to (a) one book per student and (b) the same crummy old books week after week that you salvaged from the packing crates. Bring coloring sheets and worksheets (no, sorry the robots are packed, no, sorry the iPads are packed, no, sorry the maker-space is packed).
9. Take Time to Recover and Get Back to Business.
You might be able to get back in the library before all the finish work is done (my cinder-block walls have all the ambience of a correctional facility). Still, take it slow. Lessons might be limited. Resources are still scarce. You have to slowly reshelve all those books you packed so many months ago. Rome wasn’t built in a day (not sure about the Library of Alexandria). Just think how happy the kids will be to have ANY books on the shelves after the restricted diet they have been on.
10. Celebrate with a Grand Opening.
FINALLY! It’s time to re-open the library! Have a birthday party! My teachers got their heads together and had each class donate a new book to the new library (tired of those tattered tomes, eh?). The PTA presented a cake. The chorus sang the school song. The county executive declared a proclamation. School district administrators held a ribbon-cutting ceremony. What fun! Of course, I reciprocated by giving the children goodie bags (lollipop bookmarks) and posting an oversized Thank-You note. Good luck!
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