And the real move begins . . .

So the office was all moved and staff was settling in.

It was now time for the collection to be moved. We have a collection of some 50,000 items and the movers had loaded up rolling shelves with the first part during the prior week.

Now that the new shelving was in place, bolted to the floor (did I forget to mention the day of hearing the shelving assemblers drill bolt holes into the concrete floor for 120 stacks of shelving?) the collection could be moved over.

Of course we picked the hottest week of the summer - moving from a semi-airconditioned space to an un-airconditioned space. And it was hot, hot, hot! We moved a lot of books that Thursday and Friday. All the carts had to be carefully loaded following the way the books, etc. are shelved, carefully labelled to indicate the start of the load. The shelving in the Beaver Ave. facility had to be labelled to indicate where to shelve the various collections: fiction, paperbacks, picture books, etc. etc. Well, about halfway through Friday it was obvious that there was at least 2 more days worth of move ahead. Not a problem? Not exactly. I was going on vacation - couldn't change the plans - leaving Saturday. So the rest of the move would have to go on without my trusty supervision.

As it turned out, the move went on pretty well without me. There was only one more glitch - you knew that had to be another, right? It was one of the very last trips over with the moving van. It was that really really hot day - 98+ degrees and humidity off the charts. Something went wrong in the moving van on the trip over - the cases of books broke loose and fell over. Hundreds of books spilled out on the floor and were now totally out of order.

Luckily, a librarian at the ACLA office - Debi Ryder - was kind enough to brave the heat and the challenge and came over to get things in order. Thanks again Debi!! The move was complete. The computers were now online, and we now had the time to address the challenges of getting a place for everything.

It was tough seeing our old home base empty after all these years, but our new facility is focusing us all on the new challenges and views of the future. Something unexpected happens everyday! After all, this isn't the end, it's just the beginning . . .

Movie: Grease

Music: Abbey Road, by the Beatles

Book: Everything happens for a reason: finding the true meaning of the events in our lives, by Mira Kirshenbaum