Book Sorting Update

Still seven boxes (out of 23) left at the end of the week.
The sorting system was using chairs at the back of
the room.

Last November, my school was a part of a Books for Africa delivery that supplied us with 23 boxes of children’s and young adult books to add to the school library. When the books arrived, it seemed best to wait until the new school year so that I could train people from the community to help sort and catalogue everything. At least that is what my principal suggested – and I agreed. If I did all the work, there wouldn’t be anyone who knows the system when I leave. But when the school year began in the middle of January other things seemed to take priority and before I knew it, it was the middle of February and the books were still in the boxes, sitting in the computer lab, almost completely untouched since they arrived three months ago. The first few days of the school year, when the learners came to pick up their stationery, I sorted a few boxes, since there was not much else going on. Since then, however, nothing has happened. It was also hard to say if community volunteers were ever coming to help. Although several CVs had been collected, no one had yet to be contacted by the principal.

It is going to take a few more months
before all the books are catalogued,
labeled and ready to be checked-out.

At the beginning of this week, I decided it was time to take the plunge and get things going, with or without others involved in the process. I figured if I got through four boxes a day, I would be done by the end of the week. Turns out that was a totally unrealistic plan, as it took at least twice as long as I anticipated to sort through all the books in one box. I seemed to forget that children’s books are rather thin. And even though it was not difficult work, it was draining. At best, I got through three boxes a day, and for a couple of days, I only managed to sort two. The good news is that what we received is fantastic and has practically tripled the size of our collection, it is just going to take another week of sorting, and then likely a few months of cataloguing and labeling to actually get all the books on the shelves for the kids to use. In the mean time, since we are short on storage space, the books are being kept on the empty shelves in the library with tape in front of them to indicate that these books cannot yet be checked out. And while it is a shame that I didn’t have anyone around to teach the system, I did things so quickly, I couldn’t say that there was a very exact science to the process anyway. In the unlikely event that the school secures another donation of books after I leave, they can put them on the shelves in the manner they think is best. Otherwise, I want to make sure that this batch of books is available for use as soon as possible.