This week, we made substantial progress. The physical materials collection is almost done. We’re talking done as in, everything is cataloged digitally, everything is organized physically, and everything is labeled accordingly.
Monday I met with one of my site supervisors to discuss the input that key stakeholders had in my original organizing suggestions. We then opened up a few different company and firm’s organizational schemes I had accumulated, including Amazon’s, William Stout Books, Princeton Architectural, and DBB in New York. We conceptualized how fd2s would organize based on these and on the collection itself and devised a modified scheme. To visualize the process, I made a chart with our organization plotted aside our compariables, which can be downloaded as a .pdf here.
Tuesday, both site supervisors were in and we moved the books on the shelves to their suggested categories. To do this, we pulled out some plastic shelf labels and arranged. We had some inequities size-wise in the categories, but this week let the key stakeholders make some additional calls to the categories. Monday, they should be finalized and we will begin (and finish?) labeling.
We made a decision to pull some of the books that currently reside in the materials collection into the print collection. This was an idea I had initially since it made sense to me to keep like materials together (that is, print with print, materials with materials). The print materials were codes, which would fit far better in a reference section.
After we finish labeling the books, we’re moving on to materials. I’ve been in contact with SLA’s architectural, building, construction, and design caucus and rounded up some insight into how others have organized their materials. It actually isn’t as daunting as originally thought, so hopefully, these last few weeks will sail and there will be two useful, usable, and user-centered libraries at the firm.
