We recently had our entire office (county department of education) recarpeted,
including the library. This was handled by our building/maintenance department, so
I was not working directly with the carpet company.
We were assured from the beginning (four months ago) that we would not have to
remove our books from the shelves. They had machines that would lift the shelves
slightly and move/drag (?) them to allow the carpeting to take place. I repeatedly
asked how that would work, especially for the single-sided shelves around the
edges, but also for the other bookshelves and for our media shelving as well. Our
building folk repeatedly told that the carpeters assured them that it would be
fine. (No one in our office knew exactly how it would be done, but it would work.
They had done other places, including college libraries.)
Four days before the carpeting, we were told that the books on the single-sided
shelves would have to be boxed up or they would just carpet up to the edges of
those shelves. Of course we boxed. Also, our media items, except the videos,
would have to be boxed up too.
The evening before they were going to begin laying the carpet at noon the next day,
an executive from their company came and actually looked at our library and the
shelving. Only our fiction section and videos had the type of shelving they would
be able to move intact (except we did have to box the bottom shelves of those
sections). The next morning we boxed up everything except most of our fiction and
videos. Luckily the office had a great crew of 9 high school and college students
who had been moving the office furniture, etc. during the recarpeting proces. They
helped us box that morning, and we were finished by 1:00.
For this "no hastle" carpeting job, we had to box up 80-90% of our 33,000 books and
all our media except about 5,000 videos (we have about 10,000 items of media of
various types - kits, models, CD-Rom's, etc.). We used over 400 medium-sized
moving boxes. Also, when the videos were unwrapped, the contents of half a dozen
shelves fell on the floor. (Our student helpers had shrink wrapped the shelves -
something I thought the carpeters were going to do - but that's another story.)
Moral: (???)
Be as involved as you can be up front. Make sure someone in authority in the
carpet company actually inspects your shelving units (we have several types) and
have them explain to you exactly how the moving process will happen. And good luck!
Judy
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Judy Turner, Director of Library and Media Services
jturner@tcde.tehama.k12.ca.us (530) 528-7364
Tehama County Department of Education
P.O. Box 689, Red Bluff, CA 96080 FAX (530) 529-4120
www.tcde.tehama.k12.ca.us/imc.html
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