Modernizing old community libraries often requires moving furniture, equipment, books and other materials. Negotiating timelines for such a move should involve the director and staff since a great deal of planning needs to go into preparing materials. If your community is considering remodeling an old library building, develop a procedural timeline well in advance of the work. Here are some steps to take that will ensure the task goes efficiently.

Gather Moving Resources

Lockdown a contract with the storage facility or warehouses spaces where you will park your items during the remodeling. To avoid damage to books and computers, these rooms should offer climate-control features, especially those designed to reduce humidity. Order boxes uniformly sized for both equipment and books. Rent or purchase rolling carts to move the heavy cargo; these should sport heavy duty wheels that can handle the weight of books and roll effectively over various surfaces.

Weed Your Collection

Even if you have consistently reviewed your material collection over the years, now is the time to approach deselection aggressively. Go beyond your collection-development policy and remove books that you may otherwise leave on the shelves for another two or three years under other circumstances. The more items you can donate to other institutions or recycle, the less you will have to move and store; you can apply some of the savings toward purchasing new, more relevant materials for your new space.

Inventory and Tag

Getting started early on your transition will give you time to take a full inventory or complete one in progress, once you have completed weeding. While scanning your materials, use stickers to organize and easily identify their location during unpacking. Because during this active time books can become scattered, colorful dots can help you quickly find a home for a tome that has wandered from its group.

Mark Boxes

You have seen the blueprint for new shelving, and you need to make certain your books, CDs and various software return to their previous layouts by doing the following: First, compare new and old shelving measurements. Second, estimate how many items will fit in each new section. Third, fill your boxes with numbers of items that fit consistent calculations. Finally, mark the boxes in the order that their contents will be re-shelved so that you can leave consistent gaps for temporarily misplaced boxes.

If you are systematic in your preparation, relocating a community library collection can be a smooth process. Because information access is a central tenant of the library, your careful planning will allow you to maintain an uninterrupted information flow upon the library’s reopening.