Book Sale Setup!

Daily Hours: 6
Total Hours: 11

Today I jumped right into things, baking a batch of rhubarb lavender muffins in the morning to bring in for the Book, Bake, and AV sale the Friends of the Goodman Branch group is putting on tomorrow and the next day. I spent the first part of the afternoon making signs for the sale, and then the rest of the time with the Friends volunteers and Chris (the Friends group liaison) sorting through the many boxes of books that had been donated since the last sale in December.

What I enjoyed most about the experience, besides getting to interact with the lovely ladies from the Friends group, was doing mini-"aboutness" assessments of each book. I was brought back to LIS 551, having to do some quick thinking about how to categorize each book. It was interesting to see that our organization system was based on the BISAC subject heading system, which had me thinking more about the advantages of public libraries switching over to the system for their entire collections. I don't want to say that I've jumped on that boat entirely yet, but I am currently on the dock thinking about getting on board at this point. One thing that I really liked was the fact that Chris made a point of separating out Street Lit from the rest of the Adult Fiction and Spanish-language materials from both the World Languages section and the Children's section. Just another way she's always thinking of the community's information needs!

Sidebar: I've been to quite a few library book sales in the past; I once even ended up buying a bag full of books at one in Napa, CA while I just happened to be driving through town on a road trip. But I have never been to one that is also a bake sale. It made me think of this NPR article from their series on libraries last summer:

"Vermont, for instance, brags that it has more libraries per capita than any other U.S. state. Some of them are remarkably quaint. In Ludlow, one library is a white clapboard Victorian, slightly frayed, ringed by lilies and sitting by the side of a brook.

'It's very small,' says Julia Baldwin, a volunteer with the local Ladies' Aid society. The group is the one and only reason this public library exists, even though it's open just two hours a day, and only in the summer.

'No paid librarians,' she points out. 'We function on donations, book sales, bake sales ...'"

Well, I sure am glad that the funding for the Goodman Branch isn't reliant on our book and bake sale, no matter how delicious all those sweets looked and how many Janet Evanovich and John Grisham books we have for sale...