CCA Library Log

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Community Christian Academy Library, Lowell MA

Even though areas a few streets away from the school are under water - we are still dry...I was particularly concerned because we are partially in a basement...but so far - so good...
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Community Christian Academy Library, Lowell MA

See the recent posts for details of shelving needed for each type of book. There are various arrangments possible but one that makes sense is:

1. use bookcases with 4 shelves - 36" wide
2. this will require 2 for fiction/non-fiction/bio and reference
3. this will require 3 bookcases for easy readers and picture books - easy readers on top two shelves and picture books on bottom two shelves (technically picture books require one more shelf but we will ignore that for now...)

this adds up to 5 bookshelves, 36" wide with 4 bookshelves
typically these are 9 to 12 inches in depth

lacking enough wall apace 2 sets of bookcases could be put back to back



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Community Christian Academy Library, Lowell MA
It is used shelving from college libraries that are upgrading. http://www.booksforlibraries.com sells them for cheap if you are going by shelf inch/dollar and they can carry a lot of weight. It's not the most appropriate for a school library but it could work for some of our books. Materials for teachers could go on the top shelves as could the books we are still in the midst of processing (getting into the catalog etc.) Non-fiction and Reference - typically hardcover and thus more heavy would be a good match for these shelves. One disadvantage is their height and bulk which would dominate a room unless placed wisely- we certainly wouldn't want it blocking our precious New England sun!
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Community Christian Academy Library, Lowell MA

Two of the yellow shelving (52 tall by 36 wide) will take care of our donations of fiction, non-fiction, biography and reference. In these areas we have some growth space on current shelving. Getting two of the same height also allows us to put them back to back to allow another flat area in the library where students can place books to examine them or where staff can process books.

Books are very heavy and the typical bookshelves designed for home use cannot withstand a full load of books. When you see them in catalogs - they are always half filled with decorative items or empty space - not too heavy a load. These bookshelves (rated at 150 lbs per shelf) are from a library supply house - Demco.com - which provides metal shelves at a competitive price and gives the option of moveable shelves - a big plus. (metal is much cheaper than wood.) (This product is called atlantic metal economical steel bookcases)
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Community Christian Academy Library, Lowell MA

Note the space given over to cover out placement - most early reader spines are so small that the title is hard to read from the spine...not great for beginninig readers...so a rule of thumb is 1'' shelving per book. This will alow some combo of spine out and cover out. For CCA this means that about 6 more shelves need to be dedicated to easy readers besides the ones we already have.
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Community Christian Academy Library, Lowell MA

The idea here is the old record bins - remember those? Imagine those replaced with coloful dish bins and then filled with picture books...the shelves would still need to be somewhat high. (this photo is of product ironwood glacier media browser from demco.com)
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Community Christian Academy Library, Lowell MA

This is an example of the space needed for picture books. Note that there is plenty of room to flip through the books and that there are several shelf dividers to help keep books upright. The height of the shelves is also taller. This demo has about 25 books per shelf - we have about a 100 donated picture books in the queue which means we will need about 4 of these type shelves to store them. Our current shelf of picture books is jammed 100 to a shelf - so we should get 3 more shelves just to store those properly. This adds up to 7 picture book shelves that need to be purchased to fill our current needs. (this photo is of product Lov'n wood oxford picture-book shelving from demco.com) It is possible that some of this need can be met with clever use of shelf dividers on some of our larger width metal shelves.
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