Celebrate before the event!

Take some advice from me, before you start on a big project like managing the refurbishment of a library make sure you have some quality fun a couple of days before so you're still on a high for the Monday morning (though hopefully not too hungover). I had a fantastic time at a party hosted by two fabulous friends of mine: The theme was "Eurovision" and everyone had to go in fancy dress - The invitation read "... Work your special magic to represent the European Nation of your choice, and please make it as outrageous as you like", so I did. The more observant readers may recall me mentioning the party in an earlier post, and I hadn't decided on what costume to wear. Finally decided to go as France, though the picture may be too shocking to include in a blog as gentle and innocent as this, but will e-mail anyone a picture who's interested in a Librarian looking very silly and who also ended up being a dead ringer for the Ukrainian entrant in this year's contest... (Counteracts the usual image, doesn't it, such as the one above? And no, I'm not moonlighting for Pickfords removals but want photographic evidence that I can pack books as well as shelve them!)

Anyway, I have digressed. After the festivities of the weekend I was back at work this morning in jeans and a t-shirt and we have seriously made progress with dismantling the old library. I've had my worthy volunteer in to help too - we have closed completely for 3 days, so there won't be any library service in school at all, which is a rarity - but acceptable considering the work that has to be carried out. Today we have managed to...

• Pack the fiction stock into crates ready for the skeleton library service
• Packed up the non-fiction stock into boxes - all numbered so it is easier when it comes to the unpacking
• Started removing all the posters and paper from the walls, though we have discovered hundreds of old staples embedded into the walls - it's handy when you have a team of student library monitors, as they can't really mess up this task... Though I did have to watch the amount of plaster coming off the walls... Oops!

The site manager and caretaker have done a sterling job dismantling most of the shelving, and we are really ahead of ourselves now... I didn't think they'd be available until later in the week. I'm hoping the worst is over with now and over the next few days everything will be cleared ready for stage 2 of the project, and that's when the builders come in. On Wednesday I'll start to set up the skeleton service and on Thursday it should be open for business offering a basic service of fiction stock and reference titles being available. Unlike for most of last week, that I found to be extremely stressful and fraught, today has been fine and has gone very smoothly - The main reason is that this day has been organised for a while and last week I ended up trying to tie up all the loose ends of other small projects, and of course run the library at the same time.