Thursday, September 17, 2009

It's Raining, It's Pouring...in the Library

Not good. The deluge that flooded much of town last night overloaded our old ceiling as well, right over such unimportant authors as Eric Carle and Lauren Child. As turtles, we think all that excess water is great, but apparently it's not such a good thing for books.

Quick action on the staff's part saved a great many books from being ruined, but come morning we were faced with very squishy carpet under what was becoming very squishy wood shelves. We (and by we, we mean we watched the YA Librarian and Custodian) moved three ranges of shelves to the program room - then made quick signs cancelling programs - then dismantled shelves, extracted water from carpet, and answered the same questions twelve times from the patrons who missed the cancellation signs.

Well, we needed to shelf-read anyways, right? And hadn't we talked about painting those walls? Always try to look on the bright side. While holding your breath, because that carpet smells worse than the teens' feet did Tuesday night.

Hopefully, tomorrow we will be back on track with some new reviews. In the meantime, a side note to all those publishers we have been contacting about review copies: this would be a REALLY good time to send us your surplus picture books. Especially if the author's last name starts with a "C".

3 comments:

  1. Oooh, that's bad. Our basement flooded last year, but we "only" lost book sale donations. Make sure you tell everyone on the kidlitosphere listserv - they were really helpful last year when I ran out of books for our summer reading at the last minute! Some of the bloggers who get tons of review copies may be able to help.

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  2. Thanks! Good news is, we may only lose 3-4 books after all. The shelving is dismantled and drying, hopefully a coating of poly will seal mold away. Now if we could just get the city to spring for new carpeting...not holding our breath (actually, we are, because it still stinks).

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  3. Thanks for including me on your list! There are some great ones here indeed, a few that I haven't visited before so I'll have to check them out!quick signs fort lauderdale

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