Yep. It’s Construction SNAFU Time

This is my fifth school and my fourth library construction project. Granted, the first school/project was mostly over when I started, but I did reap the aftermath of having had everything rewired (essentially ripping out the job we'd paid for and used without a hitch for a few years, turning the system into something that…

Up from the ashes (part eight)

As I've been going through the process of rebuilding the collection and the facility (neat pictures of our "permanent" temporary space to come next week), attending meetings and so forth, one question keeps coming up: what does a 21st-century library look like? How do we plan for what students are doing today and think ahead…

Up from the ashes (part ten)

(parts one through nine here) One of my Spring Break chores is to finish the insurance claim. If I haven't mentioned it before, MPOW has a full replacement value insurance policy. This means that assigning value to the items lost is critical: it's not enough to just print out a list of the catalog and…

Up from the ashes (part seven)

Ok, I'll admit it, I have a thin skin. In addition to rebuilding the collection and providing library service at MPOW, I've also been participating in a series of meetings designed to elicit parent/alumni opinion regarding the rebuilding of the physical space. There were questions about whether the library should go back into the space…

Up from the ashes (part six)

I'm almost done sending reports to our insurance company regarding the items lost in the fire - it's a great reminder to me (and my staff) that we need to be far better in our cataloging habits.What do I mean by that? Prices are critical: too many (almost 2/3) of the items did not have…

Rising from the ashes (part six)

I've spent the better part of the past week ordering books and checking in new books. In between that, and since the fire, I've been thinking about the way forward (or, as Chris says, not standing still).In the midst of all this came the whole Cult of 2.0 controversy. Annoyed Librarian said, among many other…

Up from the ashes (part five)

I'm pondering a much larger post on the whole Cult of 2.0, but for the moment I'm involved with creating a Big Book Order.MPOW has two libraries: this is new as of this year, and prior to September, we had one K-12 library. When the fire happened, all the K-4 collection was actually stored in…

Up from the ashes (part three)

A 100-year-old library burns down and nothing remains (which seems to have eluded many people volunteering to help restock the shelves: we have no shelves -- we don't even have a roof! -- so where are we supposed to put the new books?). The "to do" list is immediately overwhelming:Find out what the replacement value…

Up from the ashes (part two)

Very Important Idea: 100% replacement valueSeriously, if you don't have 100% replacement value as part of your insurance policy get it now. We have it and it's going to help us with our rebuilding. What does this mean in practical terms? It means that I have until I leave work tomorrow to re-create POs for…

Up from the ashes (part four)

Choices... choices... that's what it's all about these days. Our initial decision was to reorder the books we'd ordered over the summer - seemed a "duh" since we knew they were wanted. But what next? Luckily, the catalog server was in another building and so we can retrieve circ. data from the past two years…