Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Books! Books! Again with books!

Longtime readers hereabouts know that one of the hats I wear is that of the volunteer librarian at a public elementary school library. Beyond the day to day librarianship, I'm also one of the folks who helped build our collection with a budget of (drum roll, please) zero dollars! See, it turns out you can actually open a public school WITHOUT a library, since money is so scarce. Didn't seem acceptable to me three years ago when I first started building the collection, and it still doesn't. And that "still" matters, as this coming year, we're forced to split our campus into two locations. Ahhh, the life of a charter school. Anyway, what this means to me is that...

We're starting up a second library!!!!!!!!

The focus of this library is early elementary -- think kindergarten and first grade (and, of course, books for the non-readers and advanced readers among them). Yes, we're still working to grow our existing collection (getting new books with no budget isn't so easy!), but I just can't imagine September coming and our second campus not having books, books, books. So....

As before, I'm open to any ideas y'all might have, be they grants, folks to beg from, buried treasure troves of books, whatever. And if you happen to be in Los Angeles, feel free drop off donations!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

NO BUDGET??? Oh my. I must have known this at some point and forgotten. A double woo hoo to you for managing it!

Greg Pincus said...

Yes, Adrienne... NO budget. It's not an ideal method for collection building, let me tell you, nor, for that matter, for staffing/organizing. But what can you do? This is the hand we're dealt, and I gotta say we play it pretty well....