Gearing Up for the Move to the West Bank

Looking good in the picture above are the new officers of Bookmarked, the high school library book group, for 2013-14. The group has always had sort of a love/hate relationships with officers. The current members decided that they really wanted officers and wanted to give each job a special name.  This is the first time in six years that the group has had a full slate of officers. The president is the Author, the vice president is the Book Binder, the secretary is the Publisher and the last office which is not treasurer (not sure what their role will be). I am looking forward to some intense book discussions during our Monday lunch meetings. 

Preparing for the big move to 701 Churchill Pkwy, Avondale, LA. I still can't believe it is going to happen. All 6700 books had to be packed. That part is done. Now I am down to the what do I keep, what do I give away and what do I throw away. I put two big boxes of give-aways out in the hall. Every time I throw some books in there, the students grab them. I have some really good titles that I need to make disappear from the library. I had lots of duplicates that I just don't want to put on the new shelves. It felt good to give the students some good reads for the summer break.

Packing and handling all the other jobs that I do at the end of the year was causing me extreme stress. Once graduation was over and all the AP tests had been administered, I could really begin to pick up the pace of my packing. I had started inventory in March and packing the professional collection. However, I just knew that if I started packing the general collection way ahead of time, invariably that would be the section of books that the students needed. So this week I was able to enlist the help of a couple of PFTSTA alums who had finished college for the semester. They were happy to come to school and give me a hand. It gave us a chance to catch up while actually getting something constructive done. In the picture above are Chad Landrum, who recently graduated with honors from Loyola University New Orleans, and Enjoli Gilbert, who just finished her sophomore year at Loyola. Both of them are former members of Bookmarked. They spent lots of quality time in the library while in high school. I think that they might have been a little sad to see the end of the postage stamp library. I could never have done it without them. I really hope that they might have some time at the end of the summer to help put books on the new shelves so that they get a chance to get a feel for the brand new space.