220 You can go back

You can go back!

After I retired from Handley Regional Library, many people asked me if I was going to volunteer there. My answer was an emphatic NO! I thought my presence might be uncomfortable for the new director--and for me.

But then, when I go to Florida, I have no desire to volunteer at a library there.

However, I have found a library volunteer job that I am enjoying greatly--starting a library from scratch.

The Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation had a large collection in the basement of its headquarters building in New Market. The foundation owns books, artwork, manuscripts, relics, and books that have been donated over time.

Craig Morin, a member of the SVBF Board, was concerned about the health of the collection since the basement was damp and occasionally flooded. He solicited my help and that of other volunteers to find a better solution.

The board, led by Executive Director Keven Walker, purchased a home a few blocks away that had been a church parsonage and was in good condition.

Voila! We had a library & archives! Actually, a lot of work went into checking that we could maintain good security, temperature, and humidity before anything that could be moved. Shelves and boxes of books had to be moved from several locations. The books were placed on the shelves by the donated collection from which they came--not a good way to figure out what you have.

We sorted the books into rough categories to search for duplicates. It seems that almost every old-time collector had to have all the basic books by Catton, Nevins, etc., from the Civil War Centennial. 

Huge numbers of magazines were donated and one volunteer has devoted himself to putting them in order and pulling out the duplicates. We had a huge book and magazine sale in August that was quite successful.

Meanwhile, we were inventorying the collection using a telephone app. When the person who was listing all the books changed from an android to an Apple phone, she had to find a new app. Other lists of donations came to us on Excel spreadsheets.

Right now we are working on merging several formats of lists. So far I have pulled together four different lists into one and we have a total of 1,015 books listed with many more lists to add in--a very tedious job! When we are close to a list of everything, we will inventory and then place the books in order by call number. Eventually, we will have full cataloging information but we will be happy just to have one master list!

We have three to four volunteers that actually work but we are having fun. Sometimes Tootsie comes to provide entertainment to the group. I enjoy everything--the manual labor of unpacking and packing books, shelving books, shifting collections of books from room to room, and alphabetizing titles in each book collection. We can now find most books by figuring out what category we placed it in and then finding it alphabetically--this helps until we have the collection fully classified.

The building is not yet handicapped accessible so the books collection is available to only staff and board members. There is no deadline to finish the library, but we have to get it in order before we begin on the archives collection, which will be a MUCH bigger task.

I have become much more knowledgeable about the bibliography of the Civil War. Our collection is somewhat haphazard since all the books are donated, but some of the donors had amazing collections, which we are lucky to have.

One reason that the work is fun is that as the only librarian, everyone assumes I know what I am doing--which is true most of the time. Plus, I work just one day per week!

So you can go back again and enjoy it--if you set your own schedule and are your own boss! 

Library Savvy Trish