2012 Best Practices for Government Libraries

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BEST PRACTICES 2012
popular program grown. This may be my most critical task. It is vital that the
library continue to provide service to its user base, and equally vital that higher
management see (and believe) that the service is important. Happily, the
managements at all levels have been quite consistent in supporting the CARL, both
before and during the project. Almost the first thing we heard from the leadership
when the project was funded was that the CARL must stay open.
The first book to be moved turned out to be a 1978 CGSC yearbook.
As I write, the library moving company is packing our main book collection and
putting it on the truck to the caves. The process is a lesson in one of the basics of
this business. Books are intellectual jewels, sure, but they are also inventory items
that need to be warehoused properly and kept in order. The company has their
method, which involves rolling carts, with three shelves, crudely made of plywood
and painted orange. Not going to mistake them for anything we own! About forty
of these carts are being filled at any given time, forty are on the truck, and forty
are being unloaded in the cave. Much of a library’s operation depends on basic,
boring clerical tasks that must be done right. Being able to actually put your hands
on a book you know you own is pretty important, and we are paying a lot of
attention to storing stuff in such a way as to be findable. Quality control checks are
necessary. A lesson learned from another Kansas library that did a similar, though
smaller, project was that we need someone responsible at the caves monitoring
what the subcontractor’s employees do. Are the manual laborers leaving enough
space on each shelf, adequately spacing out the collection, handling the materials
respectfully?