Connecting Librarian

As promised, here is the update.  Its quick.  Check out the previous blog post for the details of what happened, and for Monique (Branch Managers) update in the comments.

The cleaners did a great job and the carpet was dry and library staff were able to put all the shelving back to its normal places by late Friday afternoon.

Children's area as it was and is again

Although there was close on 100 items affected by water, only about 12 had to be withdrawn, mostly magazines and humour which were on fixed shelving.  The rest of the affected books were dried out, the minor damage noted and returned to circulation.

Eighteen interior roofing tiles will be replaced, due to the water damage.  The cause was the amount of rain – it was too much, too quickly and the gutters and drainage just couldn’t cope.  Barring another such storm, it is not expected to happen again.

As of yesterday, the Council Offices were still drying out sections of their carpet affected by the flood.  The shopping centre mostly returned to normal operations by Monday just gone, although the cinema complex, where 9 out of the 10 cinemas were flooded, only reopened yesterday.  ( the noise of many wails heard from teenage girls not able to see New Moon locally, finally abated).

We were very fortunate in terms of where the flood hit us – it was not near electronic equipment and in the only part of the library where 90% of the collection was on wheels.  So between placement and fast acting staff, we got off very lightly.  Now its as if it never happened.

Business as usual.

It could have been a lot worse, but with so many people expressing their empathy, I thought I would take the time to blog the story of my library being flooded.  I will blog later about the implications further down the track.

Yesterday in Melbourne (Thursday 26th November), a severe thunderstorm came through, causing widespread damage across Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.  I had seen the warnings via Twitter and had warned library staff, but we didn’t expect the impact that we got.

At about 3pm, the sky went so dark that our carpark lights came on automatically.  The area also went very still – trees stopped moving, as did many birds. At 3.05pm the wind started really moving and a few minutes later the rain came down. The best way I can describe it was cyclonic. I was watching from the staff room and it reminded a little of those TV reports you see live from cyclone affected areas.

The children's area at the time of recarpeting

Moments later, we heard the fuss out in the library and raced out to discover a waterfall running down from the roof, near the windows  in our children’s area – along a length of about 20 metres.  You can see the windows in the background of the picture here, this one taken at the time of recarpeting.

Fortunately, most of our children’s shelving is on wheels, so staff had quickly moved it out of harms way in just moments.  However, rain was still pouring outside and still waterfalling inside.  Every bucket and bin we could find was placed under the downpour, but it didn’t make much difference, the amount of water coming in was too great.

Fortunately, 10 minutes after the storm had begun – it stopped.  The storm front moved on and we began the process of assessing the damage and clearing up as best we could.  We dug around for equipment to help, finding a couple of mops, a stiff brush and a long armed window washer (which is great not only for windows, but only for squeezing water out of carpet tiles).

Calls were made to the Council and to our HQ for assistance and direction.  Unfortunately, due to the state of other Council buildings in the area, there was not much assistance available from Council, so we got to work ourselves.

We were concerned about the state of our roof tiles, especially after hearing the news of roof collapses in the nearby shopping centre, Council offices and swimming pool.  Ours held.

Flooding at Narre Warren Library

The clean up involved sopping up the extra water, which had spread close to our front desk, with the mops and using the brush and squeegee to push as much of it out the emergency exit as possible.  Once there was no longer a flood on top of the carpet tiles, the next job was to try and squeeze the excess water out of the sopping ones.  Fortunately, as we had only been recarpeted a year ago, the tiles were still relatively clean.  Still it meant, shoes off and pants rolled up – not the usual library staff look.

In the meantime, other staff were checking for other leaks (none fortunately) and removing stock which had been affected by the downfall.  Much of it just needed a quick wipe down, but even with the speedy response by staff, there was some stock damaged (I’d estimate up to 100 titles), so they took them out the staff area to remove the excess water and set them up to dry, in the hope of saving at least some of them.

Drying out water affected stock

The library did not close at any time during this whole affair and we were able to provide access to at least part of the childrens collections during that time.

After all that, a reassessment of the flooded area and some more judicious shelf rearranging, staff were able to reopen access to all of the children’s collections, whilst leaving the flooded areas and a good safety margin, roped off to all access.

When I left work at 6pm, the cleaners had arrived, with equipment to sop up even more water, before putting the blowers to work on drying out the tiles.

We were very lucky.  Even though it was a short storm, because of the leak’s  location and the quick action of staff, major damage was averted.

Will report more on the aftermath next week, when I know more about what we’ve lost in terms of collections and the condition of the roof.

Last week, our biggest library was recarpeted and repainted and I was part of the moving team.  Narre Warren Library is a 1300 sq mt building, comprising the library, a meeting room, family history space, local history archive, workroom, staffroom, foyer and amenities – the majority of which had to be emptied to allow the makeover to happen.  Apart from some recarpeting around the circulation desk a few years ago, this was the first makeover in the building’s 16 year history.

The moving team comprised 6 core staff, including myself, who worked full-time (or close to it) from Sunday night to Friday afternoon, in varying shifts, ranging from 7am to 3pm, to 1pm to 9pm.  A further 4-6 staff were involved in big moving times and on the last 2 days when we were getting everything back on shelves and into place.  A contract company was hired to assist with heavy moving of shelving and boxes, but the majority of the work was done by the library team.

Over the course of 5 1/2 days, we moved 60,000 items, much of that in boxes and their shelving, twice.  The first move was half of the library’s collection, packed into the other half. Sunday night we began after closing by moving the children’s and young adult areas, whose shelving was on castors.  We then also boxed up and moved the AV collections, magazines, genre fiction, adult fiction and large print collections, as well as the shelving they used and all the furniture that comprised those areas.  Took a few hours, but was fairly straightforward, especially as we were able to just roll some of the shelving, still fully stocked, out of the way. This was the easy part.

Monday was an early start, for all involved.  The painters and carpeters started their work, whilst the moving team started packing up the reference and non-fiction collections we could reach between boxes and shelving.  It took all of Monday for the old carpet to be ripped up on that side of the library, so laying the new carpet didn’t happen until Tuesday.  We were concerned that this would put a big dint in our plans for reopening to the public on Saturday, but were pleasantly surprised when we arrived at 1pm on Tuesday to find that they carpeters had nearly finished and that we were able to start moving things back across to that side of the library.  Which we did.  We finished boxing up non-fiction and moved all 60,000 items, boxes and shelving across to the newly carpeted side of the library.

Wednesday was another early start, with the library team starting to reshelve large print and fiction, whilst the other half of the library was recarpeted and painted.  This left the last 2 days to do the final moving of everything back into place and onto shelves, in preparation for Saturday reopening.

Thursday morning was another early start, but within a couple of hours we had all the non-fiction and reference shelving back in place and it was the start of a major haul, with all hands on deck, to get everything back on shelf and in place throughout the library by Friday evening.

Add to this the fact that we were accepting returns and phone calls from patrons who weren’t aware of the closure and that our daily courier run from other libraries was still happening, there was a lot to still manage in terms of circulation.  So apart from the moving team, we had 2 staff on desk and were open to the public (at least to the edge of the desk), from 10am to 5pm each day.  Amazing how many people, even on seeing the chaos that was the library during this time, asked if they could come in and use the internet, or find a book etc.

Only adding to the interesting times we were experiencing was the opportunity we were taking to tweak some of the collection arrangements.  Although most of the shelving was going back to its original location, some wasn’t and would need to be recreated and reorganised as we started reshelving.  We were also changing some shelving arrangements, including totally redoing adult fiction and large print and changing the sequence of non-fiction.  All to give a better flow for the collections and all for the benefit of our users. Nothing like a bit of spice to keep us on our toes!

So Thursday had the shelving back in place, reference and the adult collections in place and the beginnings of non-fiction reshelved.  New shelving had been creating from the skeletons of old and new homes had been found for our Italian and Basic English collections.

Which left Friday to bring it all together.  Which we did. The last book was reshelved in non-fiction at 2.35pm (not bad as most of the staff were working 7am to 3pm that day).  The last 1/2 hour was spent moving the last of the shelving into place – AV and childrens etc, getting the furniture back in place and then leaving the remaining staff to clear the desk area of its boxes, trolleys and more, ready to reopen on Saturday.

So that was the process.  You can check out the photos on Flickr for a fuller account of proceedings and for a better idea of the size of the job. However, I wanted this blog post to be more than a reflection on the work that was done.  So here goes.

I would highly recommend that any library who wants to do some team building, do a recarpeting project like this. The 6 of us on the main carpeting team, had a wonderful time working together all week.  We all worked very hard, doing exhausting work (the last minor aches disappeared by Monday), working unusual shifts and had an absolute ball doing so.  We had a great team of people, both the core team and the extended team, who were determined to make it happen.  We bonded in a way we couldn’t doing normal library work for several reasons I believe, including – spending so much dedicated time together, being away from the public and the demands they make, being able to be more relaxed and more ourselves as a result of that and also because we genuinely liked and respected our team mates before we started the project.

We were able to share the achievements (applause and much congratulations once the last book was in place), the amusements and the mishaps.  Amusements included finding a 1945 penny in a building only 16 years old and under one bay of shelving finding a fruit tingle, a tic tac, a mint and a nail file (someone’s secret stash!!!).  The mishaps included various cuts from various tools and accessories, including scissors, utlity knives, table legs, tape dispensers and the ultimate of an attack by a drawing pin, which jumped out from a display board and got entrapped in the wild hair of one of our team.

Extra weekend staff helped clear the boxed up backlog from the courier, as well as dealing with the enthusiastic library users who poured through the doors, although it will take several weeks to get the stock reorganised on shelves properly, as we were in such a hurry to get reshelved that we ended up with very full shelves in most cases, but with room to expand into unused bays.

However, it has been all worthwhile as the library is looking great and the feedback from users has been overwhelmingly positive.

From my point of view, the week was a roaring success.  We achieved our goal of getting it all done in 5 days (I’m so task oriented) and was able to do so in good company.  I learned a bit about myself and a lot about my workmates, which has given me greater respect for them personally and professionally.  I am really happy that our users are taking to the new look and shelving changes well, as it adds that nice bit of icing to the cake.

It was a physically taxing week, but I am more than happy to be involved in such a project again if it ever arises, because it was fun.  They say a change is as good as a holiday and I couldn’t have done much different work that usual in this week, but would be happy to do it again, as long as its only periodic – I couldn’t do it everyday!

Today is Anzac Day, a public holiday in Australia to commemorate the men and women who fought and those who died for our country in armed conflicts around the world. Its a time of reflection, of thankfulness and of gratefulness and I truly am grateful for what those men and women gave – not only those that died, but all those whose lives were changed dramatically by being involved in these events. They have made our country a better place to live and I am one of the beneficiaries, with opportunities I could never have imagined otherwise.

Jerry Segraves, of http://jerrysfoto.com

So I felt it appropriate, to stop in the middle of all the busyness which is my life at present and reflect. Its funny, my husband and I were commenting the other day, that things have been a bit off lately – things weren’t disastrously bad, but they weren’t going right either, in pretty much everything except our family (thank goodness). We have recently celebrated our 15th anniversary and I am grateful for this strong, supportive and funny man who is my rock, my anchor, often my small still voice reminding me of what’s important and who is so supportive of all the things I have been doing and wanting to do, moreso in the last year with all the opportunities that have arisen. The rest of the “off” stuff we will work through as best we can.

Work is also getting exciting. We had 2 meetings this week, with the first we have now expanded our main library blog team to 5 people, with contributions to come from 2 of our senior managers. I’m really excited about this for a few reasons, one is that I don’t have to try and come up with something myself all the time, two is that we will have a range of voices and viewpoints, with more content coming on a regular basis and finally it is good to get some concrete support for what I think is becoming more important to my library.

The other meeting was about a prototype teen blog, which has been taken up enthusiastically by 3 of our youth services team, with news, reviews, plugins and lots of widgets etc. A couple of our young library officers have provided some great feedback and we will work with them to finalise the blog before we go live, using the blog to replace our static and little used or updated teen webpage.

I was also inspired by an interview of Helene Blowers (as I usually am by Helene) about some of what she is doing at Columbus Metropolitan Libraries. The thing that really stood out for me was having a focus for their virtual services in the coming year – they were going to be particularly aiming at power users, young people and the general public. It made me realise that it may no longer be enough for virtual services to be a focus of our Information Services, but that it is now big enough in itself to have its own strategy.

So that’s my ramble and my recent reflections. Things can change quickly in a few days. For the last few weeks I’ve felt tired, discouraged and sooo busy to the point that I wasn’t even interested in blogging or much else in professional development. I’m not so tired anymore (sleep-in today helped), I am more encouraged than I have been for a while and although I’m still sooo busy, a time of reflection and those elements of encouragement have brought me back here, just a little more fired up. We’ll see how long it lasts and where it will lead!

Second day at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County. Today Helen introduced me to Charles Brown, PLCMC’s Director. That was an honour and a privilege to enjoy our short chat together about our respective parts of the world.

Helen then took me to their CheckIt Outlet, a small shopfront library at the other end of the Charlotte city centre. (Check out the flickr photos) It is a small popular materials library with 3 staff, open only during business hours Monday to Friday and they do roaring business, particularly at lunchtime. Very cool!

It was then back to the Main Library where Helen gave me a quick rundown on what they want to do with the Virtual Village. This includes changing an unused part of the service desk to a collaborative space between library patrons and staff, plasma screens to inform and engage library patrons and to be used for on the spot teaching as required and a digital display area. They are planning to pipe music into the Virtual Village to help contain the issue of noise. They will also add more equipment to a studio to enhance music creation and make it a more collaborative space and reorganise a 2nd studio into another smaller PC lab. They will hope to reorganise some unused office space for gaming.

Back upstairs, we chatted about some other things that PLCMC is doing or has done. They have an IT department of 12 staff, who do everything in house. They host 75 servers and service over 1500 PCs throughout their admin areas and 24 branches, including help desk assistance.

Their website has recently included podcasts on their Readers Place website. Book reviews are easily uploaded through a simple form interface. They have filtering on all PCs, a condition of federal funding and have found it works well, with no real issues arising from its use. They have a MySpace page (Library Loft), which includes a library catalogue search box and has over 1100 friends.

Patrice Ebert, Head of Public Services took me on a tour of one of PLCMC’s regional libraries – Freedom and one of their branches – Sugar Creek. It was very interesting seeing what their libraries are like away from the Main Library. I’ll let the photos on flickr tell the story.

When I got back, I grabbed a few quick minutes from Matt Gullett, the Emerging Technologies Director. He spoke about libraries needing to be more interactive, collaborative and having a life-long learning facet. I have copies of some plans that they have and they look awesome. They want to use emerging technologies to help develop experience and learning opportunities.

Matt would like to develop programs that attract a lunchtime crowd, appealing to the corporate culture that is their neighbour, the banking town. Ideas include a digital art exhibition, guest speakers and more.

They still have those experiencing the digital divide. They want to give them training to enable them to get basic certification, which will open job opportunities for them. Want to offer enrichment, learning and Web 2.0 tools type training to the public.

They are having a big open night at the Main Library, partnering with local restaurants who will provide food for the evening. There will be wine tasting, gaming to enjoy and speakers. Should be a ball and I’ll be there. Will blog it later.

In the meantime, thanks to Helen and the team at PLCMC (particularly Kelly), I have had a ball here in Charlotte and have a lot to take back with me about virtual services. I really appreciate the time, effort and attention you have spared for this visitor from down under.