Sharon Tibbs has been spending a great deal of her time lately surrounded by mountains of books in the basement of Sixth Street School until the renovations at J.W. Walker School are complete.
“I’m the troll in the basement,” she laughed of her long hours in the bowels of the school.
Tibbs is a librarian for the Rainy River District School Board, and her job is to amalgamate the books from three libraries—Alberton Central School, Alexander MacKenzie School, and J.W. Walker—into one in preparation for the closure of three schools here this fall.
Alberton, MacKenzie, and Sixth Street all will be closed and their students transferred to the revamped J.W. Walker. Included in the new wing of the school will be a library, which will contain books from all the schools.
But Tibbs’ job isn’t a simple matter of alphabetizing books. The goal is to have a fullly-automated library, with each book in the collection entered into a large database where students can search by subject, author, or title—much like the system at the Fort Frances Public Library.
It’s a big job, and requires more than just sticking bar codes onto the books.
“In order to automate a library, everything has to be handled manually,” Tibbs explained. “By the time we’re done, each book in this room will have been handled at least five times.”
The first step in this long process Tibbs refers to as “weeding,” which involves inspecting each book first to see if it is in good condition. Books requiring minor repairs Tibbs fixes herself.
“I think I’ve used more than 400 yards of tape already,” she noted.
The second step is to ensure each book isn’t out of date. “Libraries in schools evolved from teachers having books in their classrooms to larger libraries for the whole school,” Tibbs remarked.
The books teachers had in their classrooms often were used as a starting point in creating school libraries. New books were purchased over the years and were added to the original collections, but out-of-date material was rarely sorted out.
Tibbs spent several weeks weeding the collection—and she found plenty to weed out.
“You try to make sure students have access to relevant material. For example, anything that refers to the U.S.S.R. is useless,” she noted. “It’s a good thing. It’s like housekeeping.”
The next step is to sort the books by genre. There are non-fiction, hardcover fiction, paperback fiction, picture books, and teacher reference.
Once a book is sorted, it can be entered into the database, with all its information, so that when a student searches for information on a specific topic, the computer will be able to list all the relevant books.
The information that needs to be entered goes beyond the author and title. The publisher, the year of publication, the country where the book was published, the ISBN, and a brief description of each book must be entered into the system.
The non-fiction books are Tibbs’ first priority since students need them for homework and to research various projects. Non-fiction books are organized through the Dewey decimal system, with each one given a number based on where it fits in that system.
“It’s a challenge. It takes a tremendous amount of organization,” Tibbs admitted. “It has to be consistent so kids are going to be able to find the stuff.”
For instance, a book may have been listed under one section at its previous school library, but now may need to be re-categorized in the new system. Tibbs said there have been a number of books that need to be re-categorized, and this has been time-consuming.
“It’s a jigsaw puzzle with no picture,” she noted. “Sometimes the pieces of the puzzle don’t fit, but you have to make them fit.”
Despite some complications, she and her assistant—Hue Eldridge, the librarian an Alberton and F.H. Huffman schools—are making good progress.
“The project is moving as well as it can move. That has a lot to do with our principal [Donna Kowalchuk] and the administrative staff,” she noted. “They’ve been tremendously supportive in giving me the time to do the job.”
But the sheer size of the project may mean one year won’t be enough to get it done.
“Will we get it all done before we get into the new school? I would say not likely,” Tibbs admitted. “Never having done this before, you have to work on guesses.”
But she remains confident most of the books will be entered in the system before the move, and those that aren’t can be entered on a daily basis in the new location once everything is set up.
“The wonderful part is you’re getting the best of three libraries, which is the best way to start a library,” she enthused.
(Fort Frances Times)
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
