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Mar. 7th, 2010 02:53 pmIn no particular order:
The "ribbon tied through the book w/name label" worked. Now that we know that, repeat performances of a library at an event should include instructions to the book owners to do that (if they can) before the event so the staff won't spend the first couple of hours processing books. Next time, though, we'll use/suggest curling ribbon for gift-wrapping rather than cloth ribbon. It'll be less expensive, too.
Co-ordinate with folks who use "Library Thing" more pre-event. And next time, maybe bring our (baronial) Library-thing scanner to record book titles. Assuming that we have Internet access, that is.
Sorting the books into "areas of interest" piles was useful, but needs to have the areas marked - since we were a tad overwhelmed by the number of books that showed up* I had not planned on needing that. I was wrong.
Having a media center for scanning and copying was a Godsend. Baroness Orianna's donation of blank CDs helped (we had sent someone out to find cheap thumb drives but none of the local stores had them in stock. Timing, I guess).
Stock library tape. One book was torn (a corner from the top of a page, savaged by the hinge of the scanner) and we had no way to repair it. Outside of the heartache of having to report that to the book owner, not having any way to effect a proper repair made it worse.
Encourage more folks to use their cameras/camera phones to take pictures of images and book covers. I saw people doing that and it had never occurred to me. I mean, I knew about Alban's use of his camera to create CDs to share but the idea of using them for one's personal research had eluded me until yesterday.
Marianna was smart enough to bring a bookshelf to the event - we didn't use it for books because we desperately need something skinny by the door to hold bags and cups/mugs - that did turn out to be important. And we learned that folks will not use the lower shelves - everything had to be set at waist or above height, to the point that one woman put her basket inside someone else's open basket rather than bend down to place it on a lower shelf. So in the future, I'll bring our "rowanwald" three-shelf unit that is taller than a table.
Marking the number of books each person brings on their labels helps at the end of the day. We had one donator (donater?) who had written "___ of 5" on each of her tags. At the end of the day, she was so tired that had she not known she was missing one book, she would have left without it. I don't think we need "___of ___" so much as just the bare number indicating how many to look for.
Having pencils and 3x5 cards available cut down on the number of (potentially staining) pens that were used to make notes.
But most of all, the media center ROCKED. Aiden of Kingswood and John (whose full name I didn't know) spent the whole day making sure that someone was there to assist people with scanning and copying, and their aid was invaluable. And Aiden brought his computer/scanner set-up (So did Addy) - someone else did too but the name escapes me - so there was no line that I could see. Not to mention all the photos that were being taken (that was so smart!)
Next time, I'll solicit extra assistants specifically to act as research aids. Over lunch today, I was mentioning one person who had said that "there was nothing really useful" for his particular area of study in the (vast) collection of books there, and Sophia looked surprised and said that the woodcut books she'd brought should have had something in them for him to study. Ten-to-one, he'd glanced at the woodcuts, thought of them in terms of clothing and maybe tents, and never really noticed the cooking equipment or other blacksmithing stuff in them... I'm sure, even if that didn't hold true for that particular guy, it was true for some of the folks who were in there. So we need helpers who could suggest areas of resource - it would be a lovely way to help teach research skills without being a club over the head.
So - what have I left out? If you went, what other things need tweaking?
*We didn't count the number of books that were available, but we went through 30 spools of ribbon, at 6 yards per spool, and had to turn books away at the end because we ran out of labelling materials. That would mark approximately 270 books.... and we ran OUT of ribbon!
The "ribbon tied through the book w/name label" worked. Now that we know that, repeat performances of a library at an event should include instructions to the book owners to do that (if they can) before the event so the staff won't spend the first couple of hours processing books. Next time, though, we'll use/suggest curling ribbon for gift-wrapping rather than cloth ribbon. It'll be less expensive, too.
Co-ordinate with folks who use "Library Thing" more pre-event. And next time, maybe bring our (baronial) Library-thing scanner to record book titles. Assuming that we have Internet access, that is.
Sorting the books into "areas of interest" piles was useful, but needs to have the areas marked - since we were a tad overwhelmed by the number of books that showed up* I had not planned on needing that. I was wrong.
Having a media center for scanning and copying was a Godsend. Baroness Orianna's donation of blank CDs helped (we had sent someone out to find cheap thumb drives but none of the local stores had them in stock. Timing, I guess).
Stock library tape. One book was torn (a corner from the top of a page, savaged by the hinge of the scanner) and we had no way to repair it. Outside of the heartache of having to report that to the book owner, not having any way to effect a proper repair made it worse.
Encourage more folks to use their cameras/camera phones to take pictures of images and book covers. I saw people doing that and it had never occurred to me. I mean, I knew about Alban's use of his camera to create CDs to share but the idea of using them for one's personal research had eluded me until yesterday.
Marianna was smart enough to bring a bookshelf to the event - we didn't use it for books because we desperately need something skinny by the door to hold bags and cups/mugs - that did turn out to be important. And we learned that folks will not use the lower shelves - everything had to be set at waist or above height, to the point that one woman put her basket inside someone else's open basket rather than bend down to place it on a lower shelf. So in the future, I'll bring our "rowanwald" three-shelf unit that is taller than a table.
Marking the number of books each person brings on their labels helps at the end of the day. We had one donator (donater?) who had written "___ of 5" on each of her tags. At the end of the day, she was so tired that had she not known she was missing one book, she would have left without it. I don't think we need "___of ___" so much as just the bare number indicating how many to look for.
Having pencils and 3x5 cards available cut down on the number of (potentially staining) pens that were used to make notes.
But most of all, the media center ROCKED. Aiden of Kingswood and John (whose full name I didn't know) spent the whole day making sure that someone was there to assist people with scanning and copying, and their aid was invaluable. And Aiden brought his computer/scanner set-up (So did Addy) - someone else did too but the name escapes me - so there was no line that I could see. Not to mention all the photos that were being taken (that was so smart!)
Next time, I'll solicit extra assistants specifically to act as research aids. Over lunch today, I was mentioning one person who had said that "there was nothing really useful" for his particular area of study in the (vast) collection of books there, and Sophia looked surprised and said that the woodcut books she'd brought should have had something in them for him to study. Ten-to-one, he'd glanced at the woodcuts, thought of them in terms of clothing and maybe tents, and never really noticed the cooking equipment or other blacksmithing stuff in them... I'm sure, even if that didn't hold true for that particular guy, it was true for some of the folks who were in there. So we need helpers who could suggest areas of resource - it would be a lovely way to help teach research skills without being a club over the head.
So - what have I left out? If you went, what other things need tweaking?
*We didn't count the number of books that were available, but we went through 30 spools of ribbon, at 6 yards per spool, and had to turn books away at the end because we ran out of labelling materials. That would mark approximately 270 books.... and we ran OUT of ribbon!
