Moving Shelves, Part II

While the library staff and some of the construction crew was busy packing books and taking down shelves, other members of the construction crew were putting up new shelving in the addition.  The new shelves are a pretty whitish-gray color, and are going to be really lovely!

Here's a photo of the new shelving going up in the Junior section.

This picture shows the shelving still in boxes waiting to be unpacked and assembled.

Here's a few more photos of the shelf assembly process.

Other parts of the construction process are still progressing as well.  The redwood ceiling that we've had in the old part of the building is in the process of being assembled in the new addition.  Part of the ceiling in the Young Adult area will have this wonderful wood.

The cabinets are being worked on in the circulation area.

And they're working on the doors throughout the building.  Here, they're working on the front entrance doors.

The yellow shelving from the old part of the library now needs to be installed in the Community Room.  As these need to be bolted to the floor for stability, we will only have a concrete floor in there for the summer.  Once the Adult Collection moves to its permanent home, carpet will be put down in the Community Room.

Here are a few photos of the shelves that have been moved over thus far.

And here are the members of the library staff milling around in the Community Room at the end of a very long day!

Packing Boxes and Moving Shelves

As Ray's video showed, we got quite a bit done yesterday.  We still have quite a bit to go, however!

This first photo shows the shelves in the Adult non-fiction area, and how many we've gotten emptied.

These next two photos show our huge pile of boxes from yesterday.  We started out piling them in the space where the Idaho collection has been housed.

In the early afternoon, we ran out of space in the Idaho collection, and started having to place the packed boxes in front of the hold shelves.  Here's Amy, one of our staff members, wheeling in a full cart of packed boxes.

These next couple of photos show the empty shelves in the Adult section.

Once the shelves were emptied, we had to remove all the shelves.  The construction crew is going to re-assemble these old shelf units in the Community Room for the summer.  This photo shows the library staff and construction crew in the process of removing the shelves.  The big bin is being used to transport the shelves to the new part of the library.

This is kind of a fun photo, showing the shelves waiting on the floor.  Once they were removed from the shelving framework, the end pieces had to be removed as well.

This is a photo of Martin, our Project Manager.  We have so much to thank him for! He's been wonderful to work with.  Here he is in the process of disassembling the shelf units.

The last two photos show members of our staff removing the shelves.  Amy and Teri are still boxing books in the background.

Here's Robin removing the end pieces from the shelves.  Whew! Its been a long day!

The next post will show where we're moving all this stuff to!

Video of our Move

Here's a fun little video with one of our librarians, Ray. He's going to show you what the library looks like this morning, after much of our Adult collection has been boxed.

The Big Move Begins!

Today has been a monumental day! This morning we began boxing up books to start our move to the new addition.  We had a number of community volunteers that helped us, and this made our work much easier! 

This first photo shows Mary, one of our librarians, in the process of labeling the shelves in the Children's Section.  Our director, Judy Dewey, came up with a great system - we label all the shelves with numbers.  Then each shelf goes into its own box.  The label then goes on the box.  Once the shelves are put up in the new addition, they will also be labeled with numbers.  Then each box goes on its corresponding shelf.  That way, it won't matter which order we go in, as long as each box goes on its appropriately labeled shelf in the new addition.

Here are some of our staff members working in the Audio books area.

This shows the beginning of the box pile.  We decided to put them in the area where our display tables were, as this was a fairly large, empty space.

Here are a few photos of librarians labeling the shelves.  First we have Melissa:

Then Lorna and Terri:

Then Robin:

These kiosks were where the VHS tapes were housed.  Our wonderful volunteers boxed those up for us.

And here are a few of our hard working volunteers! We would never have been able to get as much done today without their excellent help.

Here's the view toward the end of the day.  Most of the Adult collection is now boxed and waiting to move to the new addition.

Here's a few more staff members still moving boxes.  You can see the huge amount of boxes we need for this project!  Thanks to Artco and other local businesses for their donations!

CLOSURE DATES ANNOUNCED

The Madison Library District will be closing for three weeks in order to move all the current library items into the new addition. Our closure dates will be Monday, May 17th through Saturday, June 5th.  No library items will be due during this time, and no overdue fees will be charged.

Additionally, the book drop will be closed from May 17th through May 31st. Please do not bring back any items during this time, as there will be no place to deposit them.  The book drop will re-open on June 1st.  Watch for signs posted on the building as to where the new book drop will be!

Good-bye to the Old Library

Before we begin our big move on Monday, I thought I'd take a bunch of photos of how our library looks today, so we can remember the old library.  The first photo is looking back through the Junior section to the Young Adult section.  You can see the tree branches we've had up as decoration for most of the year.  They will come down first thing on Monday morning.

Here are our ever-popular children's computers.  Our children's and Young Adults sections won't be moved until the last, as we will need to move all the Adult collection into the Community Room first.

Here is a closer view of our Young Adult section, with the Young Adult computers.

This next view shows most of the Junior collection.  We're looking north east, with the Young Adult area behind us.

This next photo shows the view as we look down through the Junior section, past the Backpacks, and see the Audio Books in the distance.  We're looking almost directly east.  You can see our Children's Librarian, Vivian Millius,' displays, and the cute rugs we've had in the story time area.

This is where the board books have been shelved, and the Junior Emergent reader's are on the back wall by the emergency exit.

This picture shows the story time area, with the Junior Emergent readers on the back wall.  We're standing in front of the Reference Desk looking almost directly south.

I had to get a photo of the cute book arch we've had in our library.  It's marked the entrance to the Easy books.  Its getting a bit beat-up by now, but we've really enjoyed having this fun decoration in our Children's department.

 

Here's a closer view of our Easy section.  This is where we've shelved the picture books.

This is a view of our Magazine section.  You can see the newspaper carousel on the left hand side.  We'll have the same type of shelving in our new library - the shelves lift up to house the current year issues underneath.  The Junior and Young Adult Magazine sections will also have this type of shelving.  The one difference will be that the new shelves will be a pretty grayish-white color.  In fact, all our shelving in the new library will be that color, and will match throughout the entire building.

This is a view from the lobby area looking south to the audio book section.  You can see our display tables (now empty) and the Easy books section to your right.

This view is also from the lobby, but looks west towards the Reference Desk.  You can see one of our librarians, Robin, just peeking out behind the self check out on the left.

Now we've traveled to the Adult section of the library. The non-fiction section starts here, by the public access computers.  This area is to the north of the Circulation Desk.

And here's our current Circulation Desk.  One of our librarians, Mary, is manning her station.

This photo shows the rest of the non-fiction Adult section.  We're looking mostly north over the New Titles display tables.

Here are our Catalogue Computers, which have been located directly to the east of the Circulation Desk.

This area is where we place patron's Hold items.  It's located to the south of the Catalogue computers, behind the display case.  In the new library, the holds will be located in the lobby area, before you get to the Young Adult section.

Now, we're looking north east down the center of the Adult section.  The VHS movies are housed in the kiosks down the center aisle.  The last of the non-fiction and the fiction books are in the tall shelves to the left.

This is the same section, only now we're looking south east.  You can see the DVD baskets to the right, and the last of the fiction section is beyond that.

This is the back corner of the Adult fiction section.  This has been a much-used table!

This is the back wall of the Adult fiction section, by the east windows.

These next two photos show the Adult section in its entirety looking from the east to the west.  This entire collection will be temporarily housed in the new Community Room over the summer.  We'll have to pack all the boxes up, as we will be using these existing shelves to house the books. We've got a big move ahead of us!  The new shelves for the Adult Collection won't arrive until the fall, when the remodel of the older part of the building is finished.

These next few photos show a side of the library few member of the public see.  This is where all the processing of the books has been done.  You can see how cramped we've been! This view looks from the south east through the processing area to the north west.

And this is the same room, only from the north east looking to the south west.  We couldn't get more stuff in here if we tried!  Our new processing area is much larger, and will be greatly appreciated by all. 

We're heading back toward the Circulation Desk now. This is the area where the shelving carts wait until their full enough to go out onto the floor.

This area is behind the Circulation Desk, and has more shelving carts.  The pink boxes you see on the right are the Scrapbook Supplies Collection.

And, lastly, we'll end here behind the Circulation Desk with Mary, who's a multi-tasker.  Not only is she on the phone with a patron, but she's also checking in books and posing for the camera! 

Our next blog posts will be after we've started our move.