Thursday, May 10, 2012

Heading Down the Stretch

You know how, when you move your household to a new home, you know it will be a lot of work  so you get off to a good start with energy and enthusiasm.  You move the couch, the dressers, the tables and chairs, the beds and all the big stuff.  You move all the boxes you have packed up and you begin to think you are about to finish up.  Maybe you need to pack up the kitchen, a few clothes, the pet, etc...and you find that the final 5% of stuff you need to move seems to take up about 95% of your effort.  I'm feeling a little like that now.  We've moved a mountain, then moved it back, and all we have is a few things to put back in place but it seems like it is never ending.  For the past several months I have been telling my staff to put off to the side those boxes or items that will be out of the routine and we will get to them later.  Well, now is later and I am surrounded by loose journals, rivers of government documents, microforms in various formats, oversized materials, and all the stuff I said we would get to 'later.' 

But it's all good.  The crew remains dedicated to seeing the project to the end and there is light at the end of the tunnel and it is getting brighter.  The guys at Ivy Stacks are managing to process a lot of different types of materials and get them onto the shelves and that requires a lot of attention to detail and focus on the task at hand which is no longer nearly as routine as it was when all we had were books (aka 'bound volumes').  We are able to fill our retrieval requests for items that are supposed to be in Ivy much more reliably now that there is so much back in the facility and we are getting good at putting items back where they belong after they have been returned. 

Now for the numbers as of May 7, 2012--

Item accessioned:  826,379
Number of trays:  53,632
Number of shelves used:  4,281
Total number of shelves:  12,160
Percentage of shelves used:  35%

Not all shelves are created equal so I don't immediately jump to the conclusion that we are just over 1/3 capacity, but this is looking pretty dang cool from a collection management perspective.  Now I just need to pack up the kitchen, get the cat ready to go, sweep the floor, turn out the lights (did anyone tell the electric company we were moving?), lock the door, and, wait a minute, what is all this stuff in the yard?  Really?

Peace, everyone, and thanks for your continued good thoughts and positive waves.  Keep it up for just a little while longer.