Thursday, July 24, 2008

Children's Room Renovation

BHPL's Children's Room closed Monday for the duration of the renovation of the lower level of the library. The lower level will be closed for about two months. Those of you who have ever renovated anything will know that time estimates are just that, optimistic estimates. However, services to children and their families will continue being offered: a small collection of juvenile books, CD's, DVD's and other materials as well as the Summer Reading Program prizes have been brought upstairs and are located in the (adult) Fiction area.
The BHPL's children's librarian is now armed with a laptop and sturdy walking shoes, but no desk. She has become a roaming librarian, which happens to be a fad in library land. Her "reference rovering" is due to lack of desk space rather than idealogy though. She and her staff and teen volunteers and pages have done a yeoman's job of organizing the move and this involves carrying lots and lots of books upstairs. Imagine moving thousands of books, and recataloging them so that the location says upstairs (JUP) so that patrons know where to find them. In a nod to new signage and patron service training, a small, stuffed yellow dog (or maybe bear) has been plopped on the end of the children's bookshelves so that we can point and say, "see the yellow dog, hang a right to find the children's books." There are also conventional signs.

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