I had anticipated that winter weather would throw a wrench into my delivery schedules and thus my hopes for accessioning as much as possible as quickly as possible. Not so far. We have had no snow and, better yet, none of the dreaded winter mix of ice, sleet, snow and rain. Therefore, things are going along well. Actually better than in the past. I don't know if it is because we are getting really good at this or what, but for the past few weeks we have been arranging for two deliveries/week instead of one. We are quickly removing boxes from both Orange and Richmond. I would estimate we are maybe 70% finished at this point.
Which translates into 622,278 items placed in 37,384 trays over the past 6 months. This falls short of my fantasy goal of 120,000 items/month (6000/day) but is still a very respectable 100,000+/month (5000/day).
Also to my delight is our ability to retrieve materials from Ivy Stacks. When the project started we were not able to retrieve anything formerly housed at Ivy. We sent those requests to ILL Borrowing. Now we are routing those requests to Ivy staff (mostly me because I want to see the fill rate and learn the whole retrieval process using the Library Archival System from GFA). I'm happy to report we are able to fill the vast majority of requests--probably > 80%. It is still hit and miss, but I think we are doing pretty good.
Well, I have said it with my fingers crossed many times over the past several months and I will do so again now--so far so good. Even the weather is cooperating. I hope I haven't jinxed it completely now.
