When Paula started at the library in November, she pointed out to Sharon and me (fairly early on) that the library was fairly dark. We've got a decent amount of windows to let natural light in, but many of the shelves, the carpet, and the ceiling were all dark colours. Painting the ceiling would be a huge job that would probably require the library to shut down for a few days. Replacing the carpet (which hopefully will happen in the future) is another huge undertaking. That left the shelves.
Paula asked a friend of hers to paint the library's green shelves a lighter colour to brighten up the library. In the process of doing that, we rearranged a few things, and discussed rearranging more. Ultimately, we removed one shelf section from the adult paperbacks, added more shelves to the remaining sections, and spaced out the remaining paperback shelves so they aren't as cramped. When the paint dried on the first set of paperback shelves, we prepared to move the shelf to its new home against the front wall of the library.
To move that shelf, however, we needed to move the final shelf of junior paperback. The discussion of how to move the shelves resulted in a plan to completely rearrange the left side of the library. So last Friday (January 21st), Paula, Chris, Sharon, and I spent pretty much the entire day moving shelves.
As long as I've been here, we've had shelves in the children's section that stuck out from the wall and left a series of dead end aisles. We changed it, and now we've got two long aisles of children's books running down the left side of the library. There are still two shelves sticking out from the wall holding the junior fiction and most of the junior paperback, but they're spaced out better.
We moved the study carrel to the blank wall opposite the magazines, and it fits much better there.
So here's the view of the children's section along the front wall of the library. The picture books run along the back wall and wrap around on the front left, the junior non-fiction run along both interior shelves, and junior paperback series run along the outside right shelves.
These shelves are the end of the children's books and hold the non-series junior paperback and the rest of the junior fiction.
All the rearranging opened up the left corner of the library further, giving us room for a larger reading area and a new place for our sale books.
The library is brighter, more spacious, and no staff members suffered noticeable injuries in the process (though Sharon did complain of a broken nail).
We're still in the process of doing inventory, so I doubt we'll be doing much more rearranging in the short term. But anything is possible, so stay tuned!
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