Looking back over the post and the pictures I realized just how far we have come over the past week. We have all the books categorized by genre and are now in the process of putting them back onto the shelves. 

Today we got the rest of the YA done, and all the Romance, Historical Fiction, Sports and Adventure books back onto the shelves. It was a time consuming process because of the fact that we also had to make sure that the books were in alphabetical order before we put them back on the shelves. 

I will admit that there were times during the day when I was so tired and achy that I did just consider throwing them all on the shelves and letting the kids figure it out... 

The biggest thing I realized today, was just how much of a toll this works takes on your body. Michelle (my aide), Barbara (my students teacher), and I were really feeling it everywhere. My legs hurt from the constant bending and up and down. My arms hurt from lifting the books and putting them on the shelves. My shoulders and my hands hurt from holding all of the books. Muscles I never knew I had ached. Barbara and I spend the day alternating which hand and side of the body were using to help ease the pain. 

If you want a good workout move the fiction area! 

Today was a lot all about the repetitive movements, pick up the book, scan the book, hand it to Barbara who places the book on the shelf. Over and over - we had to do over 1000 books just today!

We only had one parent volunteer and Michelle was only with us half day, so most of the work feel to Barbara and I. I am impressed with what we were able to accomplish.

On Monday we have to alphabetize, scan and put back on the shelves our biggest sections, Fantasy, Science Fiction and Mystery/Thrillers. I am not sure if we will get it all done but we will try. 

I did realize that we need to order a few more signs because some of our areas span a wide area and/or turn a corner and having another sign or two can only help with the navigation. For $7.50 a sign it is well worth the extra money. 

One week done- tons of things accomplished -but more to go.

Now off to a nice long bath and bed. I am exhausted!
 
Thank god for acupuncture tomorrow my back is killing me :-)
 

Day 4 is upon us and late last night I got an email from my principal saying it was OK to keep the library closed next week. That made me feel a lot better about the process and not so overwhelmed. 

Today was all about finishing figuring out where all the books go. Thanks to some great parent volunteers, an ex student who came back before school started (CHS had a delayed opening) and my amazing aide Michelle we were able to finish the process by around 11:00 am. 

It was so odd to see the entire fiction area with no books. 

Next up was putting the books back on the shelves. After some thinking and consulting some of my students, I decided to go with the idea of similar topics going next to one another. So Realistic Fiction is next YA and then Romance will come next. I then needed to figure out which section to put first, after to put first and after careful consultation with my top reader in the school it was decided that Realistic Fiction should be the first area in the fiction section. 

Next, we needed to put all the Realistic Fictions books in alphabetical order by authors last name and put them back onto the shelves. But before we did this, we needed to make sure to change the location in the OPAC. Thanks to Destiny we were able to do a Batch Update so I decided to change the Prefixes to show where they are now located. This way all the Realistic Fictions say FIC(Realistic) and then the first three letters of the authors last name. Being able to just scan the book put it on the shelves and then hit batch update made things so much easier! 

Today we got all of the Realistic Fiction area on the shelves and part of the YA area. We still have a long way to go but I see the end in sight. I am exhausted and really did not take into account the fact that I now need to go trick or treating with my son. Ugh! At least I can steal some of his candy!!

Tomorrow will be all about scanning the books and putting them back on the shelves! I can't wait to see how much we get done tomorrow!