How many billion bucks?

Some $65.5 billion was spent on the Australian government's Building a Better Future program; more than $16.2 billion on the national Building the Education Revolution (BER) program. "More than" $287 million was to be invested in the state of New South Wales public school's National School Pride (NSP) program - with "up to" $200,000 per school. Figures to make your head swim, no?

So, one high school built in the 1960's - for which the planned purpose-built library was never built - uses with three classrooms with the walls knocked out as a library. They had this:


Costing out at less than 500 bucks - including signage - they asked for this (image generated using the Arcsoft graphics program):


Read that top bit again, will you? This is what this library got after about $50,000 had been spent on painting "selected bits" the school

image coming soon ....

So how's the new gig going?

Pretty good, and thanks for asking.  Although it couldn't be called - in the mythological sense - actual 'library Elysian Fields' (that would take at least two more zeros added to the end of the budget allocation), it's at least the holding pen to the field entry.  

Please forgive the AACR2-related pun.  

As the school year winds up, with only one more day to go before the 5 week break, the entire cataloguing backlog has now been cleared, with just a few problematic resources needing attention.  The annual library report is close to being finished; the major highlight is a three-fold increase in library borrowing.  Nice, but my work here is not yet done.  Geez, is it ever?!

Planning and resourcing is finished for next year's Library Orientation program.  If it wasn't so twee, I'd almost be tempted to publish it.  Let us all be thankful for small mercies.

The Shoestring Refurbishment has temporarily stalled, awaiting advice as to how much longer next year's shoestring might be.  And people say I'm not an optimist!

More cheap ideas: Library Seating

Now here's another great idea from the MAKEZINE blog. Not only do you get more furniture for no additional cost, but you recycle without having to go through the tortures of wondering whether or not traditional recycling consumes more energy and materials than just creating new materials.

There seems to be many great ideas out there in cyberspace for re-birthing old library junk (including culls and weeds) for other purposes.


If you've got a spare moment or 30, check out the Instructables website. There's also information on the Inverted Book Shelf (see right), which would be a great gag for libraries on the next April Fool's Day. Mind you, to do this to a whole library is just asking for a whole lot of extra work, if not something a tad more serious in the disciplinary area.

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Shoestring Budget Library Renovations

Having wasted the last few nights trying to get images to upload in some sort of visually acceptable layout, I've moved them to the WLW website.

The 'table' area has been replaced with the large tables that used to house the computers; the defunct computer area has become The Briefing Room (now trying to source a humungous flat-screen TV for nix - wish me luck!); the photocopier has been relocated to the back of the library; and all the tatty old signs have been removed.

See also: http://warriorlibrarian.com/LIBRARY/shoestring.html for more pix.

Some of the daggier bits have been covered up with bookstore/publisher promotional posters - which had an interesting and unexpected outcome. Today a library user wanted to borrow the book shown on the poster in front of the main entrance. OK, I lied ... I said the book was on order and hadn't arrived yet. It will indeed be on order by COB tomorrow.

Be careful what you ask for?

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Just another day at the office ...

You know how when you get inspired to "dream no small dreams" (either Victor Hugo or Gothe, depending on the infallable Internet!) and you just have to go roll your sleeves up and get stuck right into it, and then the whole thing sort of snowballs?

I'm sure that it's not "just me", but I could be wrong. I often am.

Stage One of the Library Refurbishment Project is well under way. Sure, I seemed to have spent a lot of time under desks with a screw-driver, but then who doesn't? They teach us how to do all that stuff in Library School, right? Not. Sure would be helpful though ...

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Predictive Humor

It's almost scary! Almost seven years ago, I wrote the infamous satirical list of Thin Books for Busy Librarians - which included "Successful Introduction of Beowulf to Reluctant Readers". Sitting on the shelves of my library now are two books that are achieving just that; one a graphic novel and the other a 'picture book' version. Mind you, the reasonably recent release of the movie of the book didn't hurt, either.

Today I attended one of the most worthwhile Professional Development activities I've been to in literally decades - Kevin Hennah's Visual merchandising and space management for libraries. Not only were the ideas brilliant, but also achievable, budget wise. But the scary bit was the fact that I wrote another satirical piece ages ago (as in years, not geological epochs), on how to tart up a daggy library with sticky tape and library glue.

Fortunately, today's event wasn't a presentation about tacking up your basic bits of paper, with tragic layout, onto already cluttered walls and noticeboards. In a strange sort of a way that was a bit of a shame, really - that's one of my areas of speciality.

Words cannot describe how a very impressive change can be achieved, with the expenditure of only a few hundred dollars. Actually that's not quite true. Words could describe it ... but its been a long day, and I haven't had my afternoon Power Coma yet. [Power "naps" are for whimps.]