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Thank you all for your advice! I got over 50 responses in two days! WOW! You are GREAT!! Here is the summery of the tips offered : LIBRARY PACKING TIPS from Sharon Gonzalez Try to get the 18" boxes rather than the 22" boxes With some exceptions for oddly shaped or unusually large or small books, you can figure about 1 box per full shelf of books. Packing books: 1. WEED as much as you can! If there is time, do an inventory before packing. You might want to have all of the books checked in first, or you might prefer to have as many checked out as possible (less to pack!). Make sure you have your overdue/missing/lost lists with you while packing, just in case you come across some of those books. 2. Before you begin packing, label each bookcase with a number, and label each shelf within that bookcase with a letter. Use old call labels or pieces of masking tape, and label each shelf. That way you will help prevent errors when others are helping you pack. 3. Make a written list of each shelf of your library, noting the number/letter of the shelf, the beginning and ending call number of books on each shelf, and whether the shelf is full, half-full, etc. This will be a big help when deciding the layout of your new library. This step may seem tedious, but it works. It is also valuable to do if you are not packing into boxes, but just moving books over on book carts. This list becomes an index for your library. 4. Instruct all packers to write, in the upper left-hand corner of each side of each box the number/letter of the shelf that will be packed in that box. If there are already numbers in that spot, black them out first. It is best to write on the box immediately before beginning to pack it. 5. Helpers can "make up the boxes" well ahead of time. Do not interlace flaps--leave them flat. Place one strip of tape across the seam, overlapping the ends of the box by a good 4 inches. Then place another strip of tape on the right and parallel to the first strip, overlapping the first strip, and another strip on the left and parallel to the first strip, overlapping the first strip. In this way you are using 3 strips of tape for the bottom of the box. It is best to seal the top of the box in the same way, since you do not know which way the box will be stacked. This is especially important for long-term storage and variations in temperature and humidity. Do not use any boxes that appear to be weak or damaged. Save them for lighter things or do not use them at all! 6. Pack the boxes right next to the shelves so that you do not have to carry them anywhere. First label and pack the bottom shelf, with the box on the floor to the left of the bookcase (so that you can reach the books easily). Seal that box, and then place the next box on top and pack the next shelf in it. Stack boxes no more than 3 or 4 high, depending on how tall you are. Always begin with the bottom shelf and work your way to the top shelf of each bookcase. You will probably end up with two stacks of boxes for each bookcase. You might have a couple of books that do not fit in the box. Just pack them in the next box---you will notice it when you unpack and shelve. If you have several books that need to go into the next box, be sure the label the next box accordingly. 7. Nestle the bookend in amongst the books. That way you have a bookend to use for the shelf when you unpack it, and you do not end up with some very heavy boxes filled with metal bookends. If you have permanent signage that you intend to reuse, pack that in the box, also. 8. Use common sense and follow some safety procedures when packing. Eliminate back strain by sitting on a stool for packing the bottom boxes. Wear wrist braces if you have them. Use a back brace if you need it. (Ask your custodians---they either have them or can get them). Gloves help save your hands and nails from wear and tear. Cotton gardening gloves with "traction beads" are wonderful to use while packing (and your hands will stay cleaner, too). Divide up the work amongst several people, if possible, and take plenty of breaks. Plan your packing space and stacking space carefully so that you do not have to move any of the boxes you have packed! Packing other items: 1. AV: I packed the AV collection in the same way, because mine were shelved in Dewey order. I labeled all of the shelves, just as I did for books. You might want to make adaptations, according to how your AV is shelved. 2. Periodical storage: If you have cardboard periodical boxes, make sure they are stuffed full so that they will not collapse. Plastic boxes can usually be packed as is. Use the newsprint whenever you can to fill the gaps. 3. Lightweight items (stuffed animals, etc.) may be packed into larger boxes. Make sure that they end up stacked for storage on top of the heavier boxes. 4. Continue the numbering system for all boxes, and continuing making an index of what is in each numbered box. Do not count on your memory! By numbering the boxes rather than labeling them with what is inside you have less to write, will be less confused by whatever else is written on the boxes by people who used them before you, etc. If you later have to find something, you merely have to look at your index and find the right box number. 5. Keep a box (or more) for those extraneous books and items that are returned during packing and cannot be shelved in the proper place. Number it, and write the info on your index. 6. Pack a box (or more) of your essential items that you need at your circulation desk. Of course, number it and write it in your index, but you might want to keep that box very handy. It might be the first thing you need when you unpack. For example, I had such a box with shelfmarkers, barcode cards of the patrons, essential library processing materials, etc. 7. You might want to have a plastic storage box with a snap on lid to become your portable desk. In it you place pens, pencils, markers, scratch paper, stapler, scissors, tape, etc.---everything you need to use every day. 8. Keep another small storage box with your back-up disks and essential library software. This is something else you want handy! 9. Pack everything else any way you want. It is important to get your supplies and sundry material organized, and number your boxes, and keep a list of what each number means. Suggestions for possible long-term storage: 1. After labeling all of the shelves and writing up your index (so you will know how much space you will need for the items in the new library) you might want to talk to teachers about units of study for the future. 2. You can make boxes of materials for those units, give each box a patron barcode, and check out the materials to that barcode. You can then make a list of which person is responsible for each box. 3. If yours is an AR school, you can make grade level collections of AR books in the same way. 4. If you run a Bluebonnet program or any other special program, you will probably want to separate those materials before general packing, also. 5. Find out, before packing, whether you will be responsible for a continuing library program and separate your materials before packing. MAKE COPIES OF YOUR "INDEX". HAVE ONE AT HOME, ONE YOU CAN CARRY WITH YOU IN YOUR PORTABLE DESK, LEAVE ONE IN THE FILING CABINET, AND GIVE ONE TO YOUR SCHOOL SECRETARY. YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN SOMEONE MIGHT NEED IT, OR HOW MANY COPIES WILL GET LOST! If your boxes will be stored in various places, make a note of which box numbers are in each place. Moving into the new library: 1. Use the list that you made at the beginning to label all of the shelves with the box numbers that will go on those shelves. If some of the shelves were very full, leave extra shelves for overflow and growth when labeling. If you have many more shelves in the new library than the old one, plan out which shelves you will leave empty. 2. It should be easy for anyone to look at a box number and place that box near the shelf of the corresponding number. The books in that box can be unpacked and placed in order on that shelf, and you already have a bookend! 3. If you are moving books over on carts, take the label off the old shelf, place it on the corresponding shelf on the cart, and the cart can then be taken to the corresponding shelf in the new library. In this way, it does not matter in what order books are moved. Congratulate yourself! You moved the library with ease! One thing that helped me A LOT was to have the boxes clearly marked with what was in them. Not just FIC but FIC, Anderson, P - FIC, Anderson, W. It saved lots of time on the reshelving part after we were all rearranged. Also, be sure your volunteer helpersknow exactly what you want for boxing books--not just dumping them into boxes. Have a timeline, show it to the principal and ask for HELP. My advice is to make sure you put books in the books in shelf order. I've had friends who moved libraries and the thing that helped them the most was to make sure that each box held one shelf's worth of books only -- even if the box wasn't full. This makes reshelving a snap because you can line the boxes up with the shelves and simply take them out and put them up. Be sure to give yourself time and take care of yourself. First, be very careful what size boxes you get. We chose 21x14x14. The boxes of books get very heavy and will break easily. This size wasn't too heavy and were easy for one person to handle. We measured how many books would fit in that size of a box and ordered accordingly. Label each box on the sides and top with the call numbers. Keep a separate list of what is in each box. That way when unpacking you can easily see which box comes next. Do the same with all other library materials. Advice: -Label, label, label every box with contents -Number every box -Place books in boxes in order - example - FIC ABA through FIC BAR -You don't want the boxes too large - for your sake and the movers -Encourage teachers to check out lots of books for the summer - they can keep them in their rooms if they aren't moving - or take them home, if they are moving. -Try to supervise moving the boxes to the gym to make sure they stay in some sort of order - if this boxes are numbered this will help -Use a bright color label for the number Be sure to label the boxes well, and I found it helpful to not only put the Dewey range on it, but also number them--1-whatever. 1st box on the shelves, etc. That way, it was easier to put them in order or find the correct box to put on the shelves. Plenty of boxes and computer generated labels that tell where the box goes. Sometimes it helps to put three identical labels per box. The first time I did it I used different colors of spray paint on the boxes to discern between fiction, non fiction, biography, and reference. It was useful because they were all mixed up when they went to the new room. Different colors of labels might be just as well because spray paint might be dangerous to have around juveniles in certain cases. Be sure to have safety belts for your volunteers to wear to avoid back injuries. Get twice as many boxes as you think you will need because you will need all of them. Get smaller boxes than you think you will need because they will be twice as heavy as you think they will be. When we moved our library of about the same size, we labelled every shelf and then labelled the box with the same number. At the 'new' library we had labels on the empty sheleves corresponding to the labels on each box so that when they arrived, even if they got out of sequence, we knew exactly where to put the books inside. This is especially good if you are using volunteer labor! Here is what I did: 1. Weeded the collection down to the bone. 2. Contacted a box manufacturer in the area, and got them to donate all the boxes we needed. ( They were actually glad to have them taken off their hands, and the administrators were thrilled with the cost.) 3. I printed out numbered tags for each shelf, and duplicated the tags,so that each box had a corresponding tag. I kept a record of the range of call numbers in each box. 4. I recruited volunteers to help pack the boxes. I think we had about 10 people. 5. I made a list of the shelves that each person would be responsible for packing, for example, person #1 was responsible for shelves 1-20, person#2 shelves 21-40, etc. As each box was packed, the volunteer sealed the box, and taped the tag to the box. It took us less than one school day to pack the entire library. 6. When the shelves were empty, I collected all of the tags, and saved them along with the record of the boxed books. I kept this record at home in a safe place over the summer. 7. When the shelves were finally installed, I determined where the books would go, and I placed the numbered tags on the shelves. I had the custodians put the corresponding numbered boxes of books near the right shelves. The same volunteers came back, unpacked the boxes ( again, in less than a day) and we all ate pizza. It was actually a fun process, and the staff and students were thrilled to finally get into our beautiful new media center. Label every box carefully. Also, try to be in on the actual moving so you can supervise and lay them out according to how they are shelved; otherwise, the movers will just dump the boxes anywhere and trying to find what goes next on a shelf will be time consuming. We used chicken box crates as they have handles and were easier to carry. I would also suggest taping the lids shut in case any get dropped. My suggestion (and it was THE most helpful thing) is to put the books in their boxes in shelf order and then mark the outside of the box with the Dewey range that is inside. I did not worry about packing the boxes in the most efficient manner but rather concentrated on putting them in, spine up, in shelf order. When it was time to unpack, I simply had the boxes moved to the corresponding shelf, opened the box, and put the books back up without having to rearrange or re-order. Number each box and keep a notebook of the numbered boxes and their contents. Egg cartons make great packing material. Empty Xerox paper boxes w/lids are a wonderful size for packing books. Pack your essential supplies, documents and personal items yourself and take them home and bring them back yourself to be unpacked. Take home your barcode wand, manuals, etc. It is work but you will have everything you need right away at your fingertips and YOUR STUFF won't get misplaced or damaged! Keep a heating pad and Advil handy. Take a hot shower each evening to relax your muscles.Ask for help. Hire a company that specializes in moving libraries, law offices etc. They have a system for measuring the collection and tagging both the old shelves and the new ones. This costs money but is by far the best way to accomplish the job. Supervising and marking boxes is enough to keep you very busy. Here are a few tips we learned. 1. When you pack the books in boxes start at the end or last of the collection. In other words pack 999.999 first so the higher numbers are always at the bottom of the box. That way when you unpack the books, 001.00 will come out first and you can judge the spacing on the shelves easier! If you can keep the books somewhat in order when they go in the boxes, they come out alot faster and easier. 2. Label boxes clearly on tops and sides with the Dewey range of the books in the box. 3. Label your shelves with approximate locations of fiction and Dewey numbers before the boxes are moved into the new space. Then try to get the movers to put the boxes under the correct shelves when they bring them into the new space. It won't be perfect but it will save some lifting and sorting. 4. If you have a core of good volunteers already, recruit some to help you even thought school might not be in. If you don't use volunteers for anything else, try to get some for this - even dependable students will be good if your administration will let you. 5. Leave plenty of space on the shelves for new book over the next several years - then its easier to rearrange if you have to. 6. Be sure the gym doesn't have any leaks before you move the books in there! When you pack your books in boxes, in addition to marking them something like 336.8 to 419 or whatever, also mark them numerically; for instance Non-Fiction # 2, Non-Fiction # 3 and so on. It is MUCH easier to get them in order to reshelve this way. I learned the hard way! Also, when I unpacked, several of my wonderful faculty came in a few days early to help me. We got it done in just a couple of days. If you can't get faculty, try PTA volunteers. Here is what I would have told them as I set up my media center in the new building 1. Weed the collection before you move 2. organize the books by library sections as you box the books (ie 100's,Reference materials etc.) 3. Clearly label the boxes on all sides LMC and what the content is 4. Try to move all of the boxes at one time to eliminate missing boxes of materials 5. Ask for help in packing and unpacking 6. try to put the computers in computer boxes for the move to help protect them I've done it twice--once with the books stored for a year before we got in the new facility. I'd say the main key is to locate boxes of the same size so they can be labeled and stacked in order as you take things off the shelves. Our district was not willing to buy boxes so I used some from the local grocery and had the janitor pick up and store weeks before I actually started packing. The first time we used milk boxes that didn't have lids but had great handles and no wording on the sides so easy to label. The next time, those boxes were not available so we used produce boxes (bananans, lettuce) with lids and I used wallpaper to write the labels on that we attached to the boxes. Be sure to securely tape the boxes. Movers are not as careful as you would be in transporting boxes by hand trucks. Be sure to label the outside of the boxes on at least 2 sides with the contents of the box, i.e.. "520-521 A" or "F A-FAsh". (Three sides is better for the box always seems to be turned the wrong way!) It takes more time in packing but pays off in unpacking because you can more easily place the boxes at the approximate location where they will be shelved. What ever you do don't let anyone else put the books back on the shelves without you being present. My mother had to move her library (back in the early 70's) and the custodians thought they would help her and they put all the books back on the shelves for her. It took forever to get the books back in order since the custodians didn't understand the Dewey system. She had fiction and non-fiction mixed together. All the non-fiction was put on the shelves in no order at all. They didn't leave room on the shelves for additional books -- they were packed tight. Plan on it taking longer to put everything away than what you planned. 1. Start organizing volunteers. 2. Organize as you pack. 3. Keep your sense of humor. 1. Label the boxes in large print. I made colored sheets that said PHS Library and had a place to write the contents. You may also wish to label one side. 2. Make SURE you keep the books in order in the boxes, even if this means some boxes are not completely full. 3. Books are heavy! Use small to medium boxes, and use packing tape to seal the bottoms. 4. Any book turned in or located after you pack its shelf should be put in a box labeled "strays." If there are a lot of them, you might label one "stray fiction" and one "stray nonfiction." That way, you only have two possible places to look for the book someone must have "this minute." 5. When you move into the library, get the boxes in their approximate unpacking locations first. You should have a pretty good idea of what will go where. 6. Leave empty shelves for the stray boxes that are bound to turn up. If you have room, leave all the bottom shelves empty, unless you're an elementary school. 7. If you have a movable table, use that to unpack. 8. Packing is VERY SLOW. It took me a couple of weeks, with not much help. 9. Tell your husband or boyfriend you are going to need some serious massage time. I did that one year...and the biggest problem was that the new library wasn't ready on time. Kids just had to wait...also, when packing up the books, they need to be stored in air conditioning as they can get musty moldy over the summer in a humid place. It's a lot of work, but I don't have any other suggestions to make it easier...oh yes, put the call no. on the outside of the boxes. I took old catalog/book card and made two set of numbers. I put one of the numbers on the shelf in the new MC and then I used the other set to divide up the collection in the current room. That way when we moved you put the books from shelf 1 in the old room on shelf 1 in the new room. Be sure to pack books in order and make them easy to lift. I know of a local library that just used the boxes the paper comes in for the copier. They are easy to get,and should hold about 1 shelf. We packed books in the boxes from left to right - standing them as they normally would on the shelves (this way they weren't "hanging" from the spine). Each box was labeled with beginning & ending contents. For example, E ADA - E ALL. That way we knew what books (reasonably) we in the box. Depending on how many are packing your library or how fast & efficient they are...you might want to color-code sections (yellow for easy), blue for fiction, etc. Write the book information on the box in this color & you can have a "scheme" of the new library to show which boxes should be placed where for easier unloading. You may also want to number your boxes as you label the contents. Then write the box number & contents on a sheet of paper. You can cross off the boxes as they are unpacked. You can see which books should be in what box & what is missing this way. Unfortunately, I had too many people helping and wasn't able to number everything. When boxes are stored, store no more than 3 boxes high. If you have oversized books, you might use your book carts to store them or put them in diagonally. If they stand too tall & get pushed on they will bend. Out of all my boxes, only 1 book was damaged. Our district purchased the flat storage boxes you construct yourself, with detached lids. They were sturdy and we could fill them without breaking our backs. Although we NEVER want to deal with boxing again, we would highly recommend these type of boxes. The moving out was fairly efficient and well-organized. The district hired 10 "day-workers" who came in and worked from 8:00 - 4:00 with two 15 minutes breaks and a 30 minute lunch. They key to the successful move was labeling each box--FIC-Aar-Aqa or REF-099-099.9, etc. Then all the books in that box, although not necessarily in order in the box went to that area when they were returned. We also color coded themb--Blue for fiction, green for reference, red for special collections, and black for nonfiction. We packed the keyboards and cords and wires and mice in boxes and covered the computers with dust covers. Everything was totally cleared out of this library in a matter of 4 days. Moving the books back in didn't go as smoothly. The district hired the workers again, and in order to not have people standing around with nothing to do, people started in different areas of the library pulling out books and putting them on the shelves. Not a good idea. We ended up having to shift and reshelve several times to get things to fit. It took us about two weeks to get everything back on the shelves. (The day workers were only here for about 4 days again). My two aids and I did the rest of it ourselves. To make reshelving easier, I would put temporary labels on shelves so almost anyone, even my own children, could unpack books and place them on the correct shelves for arranging later. Labeling each box with section and Dewey number or author letters is a must. If your moving crew--custodians or whoever--are exceptionally helpful people, you might even get them to place boxes in the areas where they will be unpacked. Signs in those sections to match section labels on boxes would be a help. 1. To stay organized I color coded and labeled boxes by section (i.e. fiction, non-fiction, biographies, reference, professional, etc.). I split non-fiction into two sections (NF-1 and NF-2) so that more than one person could box the section at a time. For example, I made fiction red, so the first box was labeled in red marker with the designation "Fic-1", the next was labeled "fic-2" with boxes then consecutively numbered. Professional would be blue and the first box would be labeled "prof -1", etc. This helps a lot when the boxes get mixed up (and they will); it is easier to spot which boxes will go where in the new library ("put the boxes with the red lettering over there"). 2. Label each side of the box so you can see its designation no matter how it's piled or turned. 3. Keep a running tally for each section of the boxes and what's in them. I just used plain lined paper with a list that read something like fic - 1 = aaa-adl, 2 = aft-amd, or nf -1 = 001aaa-023bbb, etc. In this way you will know what's missing if a box gets lost. Also, if your library isn't done in time and you need to pull something out of a box, you'll know exactly where it is. I amazed people by pulling out my list and saying "that's in box #37, let me get it for you." 4. Don't make the boxes too heavy. You and your custodians will be grateful. I actually had one of the custodians thank me for it. I was given standard boxes about 18" long and about 12" wide. I put one layer of books, one row wide on the bottom of the box, standing them with the spine facing up (the exception was paperbacks since they're lighter). The other advantage to this was that I could figure out how many boxes of books would fit into a certain shelving area so that more than one person could reshelve (i.e. I could figure out that fiction A-L would use up so many shelves and then have someone else start fiction M in the next shelves after this). Also, if you get into the same situation that I was in, you'll be moving around the boxes yourself and will be glad if they're not too heavy. 5. Tape them fairly well and instruct your workers to put tape not just in the middle where the two halves come together, but also on either side of the middle. Because of the weight of the books and being moved around it is easy for them to split open. Also tape the top of the boxes securely because they'll be stacked, and since they will not be filled to the top it is easy for them to collapse in. Be prepared to use a lot of packing tape. 6. Insist that they store your computers somewhere safe and secure and clean. You wouldn't believe what we lost during our school's renovation. I even had cpu's opened and the memory cards removed. They have a great system for labeling boxes - each section was labeled with marker on the box - each a different color marker. The outside of the box says something like this: F BUC-CAR 9 The 9 has a circle around it. This means it is the 9th box of fiction books and BUC-CAR is the range of the call letters in that box. Then when they unpack, they set the boxes around the shelves in order and divide how many shelves by how many boxes so they can get an idea of how to space them out evenly and not run out of room or have lots left over. We also have nearly 50 computers that I am responsible for (lab, library, classroom). These were packed and moved by our technology department. The main thing I'd emphasize with them is to make sure they're not stored somewhere where water could leak on them. 1. get boxes the same size (moving companies) 2. standardize the way you mark books a. Fic 1, dew 27, easy 5, ref 2 3. don't worry about the books that didn't get packed. just pack them in a different box 4. when unpacking don't get bogged down with what is this? put them to the side and get the bulk of the books on the shelves and the boxes out of the library. Then go back and start working through that mountain. 5. BREATHE 6. It will get done BREATHE 7. Keep this E-mail, so you can curse, yell, and let off steam. Packing is really important. A good size standard box, not too large that it cannot be moved when full. When packing you think about how it will be unpacked. You put the beginning and ending call numbers on the boxes. A crew of eight packed our library of 23,000 books in a day and a half. It is really hard work but it cannot be done by anybody or by one person. I got a repetitive injury the last time. Make sure you count shelves and know how they will go back on the shelves. By counting shelves you can have more people unpacking at the same time. I would highly recommend that you not pack the boxes too heavy and that you mark them clearly on the outside. I would also be VERY careful with the handfuls of books you take off the shelves and put into the boxes..the repetivie motion and having your hand stretched to hold several books at a time leads to cramping and tendon problems. Please be careful! We also numbered the boxes to help the move crew who didn't understand the Dewey system. for example E Aar-ada #1, E Aes - Ard #2. I'm sure you get the idea...I would not try to do it yourself and anyone that you have to help I would spend a lot of time training them so that they understand how to put the books into the boxes so that it's easy to transfer them to the shelf. If at all possible, hire professional library movers. They will pack up, label boxes, etc. store the stuff if you need them too, and unpack and load the shelves. A quick suggestion. Label all four sides and the tops of the boxes. When they are stacked, it is often impossible to see what is in a box without moving many boxes. We labeled the top and one side and regreted not taking the little extra time to do all visible sides. ================================ Amy Huang, Librarian Notre Dame High School 596 S. Second St. San Jose, CA 95112 (408) 294-1113 ahuang@ndsj.org =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-= All postings to LM_NET are protected under copyright law. 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