EARTHQUAKE!

We had a little excitement the other day when an earthquake rolled through central Virginia.   I am sure you have heard about it.  I happened to be standing next to the shelving in the Ivy Stacks facility with a couple of the guys when we heard the train coming (yes, it sounds exactly like a train).  An earthquake is a really unusual event in this neck of the woods so we weren't sure what was going on at first.  Then the 10 ranges of 30 feet high and 190 feet long empty shelving made of sheet metal began to vibrate and shake.  It made quite a racket!  I probably should have stepped back a little bit but I was so amazed that we were experiencing an earthquake I was kind of frozen in wonderment and curiosity.  It never occurred to me the shelving might come crashing down and thankfully it did not.  It didn't really even sway or teeter, it just shook and made noise.  After what seemed like a pretty long time the earthquake passed and everything settled down.  The High Bay Xtend Shelving System from Spacesaver was put to the test early in its lifespan and passed with flying colors.  And to think that up to this point my main fear has been a water leak or power outage.  Now I have a whole new universe of disasters to keep me awake at night.  Oh, and Hurricane Irene is on its way here in a couple of days.

But we keep trudging along, doing well with accessioning materials onto the very stable and solid shelving system.  So far we have processed over 120,000 items and I am pretty pleased with that result.  Absent any more quakes, 'canes, or who knows what else I think things will continue to go along swimmingly.

Big Progress

The Ivy Stacks crew has been working hard in transferring materials from boxes into trays and accessioning them onto the shelves.  It is very physical labor and taking its toll on my 50-something arms and legs.  But my back if fine, so I am happy about that.  Thanks to Renee, Ray, Steve, Daniel, Tyler and Tim for their efforts. 

In an earlier post I stated I hoped we could process 5000, or even 6000 items/day.  I am very gratified to report that we are definitely averaging around 5500 items/day and our record for one day stands at over 7900 items shelved.  That's tremendous especially since a lot of these were the very heavy and clumsy DL size books.  We still have a few hundred boxes of those to get through, but then we will be looking at a bunch of AH and BH size items and they are smaller and lighter.  I think we can sustain a rate of 120,000 items shelved/month which would mean we would be very close to our goal of having these materials available for circulation in January 2012.  Please, everyone, keep your fingers crossed for us.  Thanks.