Budgeting is Advocacy

Much of the information in this post was gleaned from an informative session led by Dr. Sandra Andrews, Director of Instructional Technology & Media Services for Lincoln County Schools. I attended her session at Gaston County School's Summer Media Institute earlier this month. You can find Dr. Andrew's blog at Dr. A's Comments on the Digital World. Resources from her presentation are at Power of Data.

Budgeting truly is advocacy or, in other words, you won't get what you don't ask for. It's a simple task really; find the money and ask for it. I know that you are thinking there is no way they will give me what I want. My response to that is, "How do you know?" Even if you have submitted requests in the past and they have been turned down, the answer may change at any time. More money could be coming in. Someone may have retired. Hey, maybe your principal had some really great coffee that morning. You really never know what is going to change.

So what do you ask for? Hopefully you have a collection development policy already so you have something to work with. If not, do that first. Look at your school & your community. Analyze them & figure out what makes them tick. What kind of people live there? What education do they have? How much money do they make? You can't know what people need without knowing who they are first. 

Once you have that, move on to creating a plan for what you will buy. I looked at major gaps in my collection, figured up how many books I needed for each section this year & multiplied that by $20. That really isn't the correct number to use because it isn't the average cost of a book but it's easy to multiply & gives nice round numbers. If you want to use real numbers, you can look here: SLJ's Average Book Prices.

I factored in a loss of 2% on my collection that would need funding to replace which ended up being $4,000 for my collection of about 10,000. I also listed what I would like to spend on replacing my old, ugly, rusty metal shelving each year. Since I had the information on what I was given last year, I included that & subtracted that amount from my total to give anyone reading it an idea of what my deficit is. This is my very simple budget that I shared with my principal & PTO president Proposed Budget 2014-2015. When I sent it, I let them know they could share the document with anyone they wanted.

This is obviously a work in progress & I plan to add to it to create a 5 year plan. This budget was submitted as soon as I created it but I plan to revise & resubmit in Dec/Jan as this is when principals and others are looking at how to spend monies for the following school year.

Now, getting down to the advocacy part of this blog is simple. When people see how you are spending your money or how you would spend money if you had it, they realize what you are doing and how important it is or could be. My budget is simple at present because I am just starting it but I imagine it will blossom into a document that evolves with me. Have faith and ask for what will make your library spectacular. They might not give you the full amount but you never know!

Book Repair 101

So, I felt inspired by @mistisikes on Twitter today to finally begin my blog that I've pondered writing for longer than I care to admit. I've been tweeting about my experiences at my county's Summer Institute: Library Evolution for the past 2 days & after sharing that I was attending a book repair session, she tweeted that she hoped I'd share my tips I learned. I am horrible at book repair which is probably why my books in my book hospital quietly suffer for months on end. That, and I spend all my many hours of free time just sitting around reading (yeah, right). 

The session was led by Robin Jordan @rejnc, book repair expert extraordinaire & apparently font nerd as well. She brought out all the necessary tools and a pile of broken books and told us we were going to be hands on with this class which I loved because I think that's the best way to learn this stuff. One of the best things I learned was some of the essentials to have on hand to help with repairs. Some of these things are stuff you're probably throwing away. Start hoarding it.

Some Essential Tools

Edge Trimmer

Cardstock in white & colors

Cardboard backing from notebooks, etc.

Scrap laminate

Transparencies (not the thermal kind)

Kapco book jacket strips

Book Saver glue

Bone

Tape dispenser with weight

Book Tape

Kapco covers for pbks

Kapco Easy Trim

Hinge tape

Wallpaper wrapped bricks

Binding tape

Book jacket covers on a roll in a variety of sizes

We started by reattaching spines. Pretty simple: book glue, stick the pages back in (make sure they are not upside down), close it, slap a brick on it to weigh it down. Bricks wrapped with wallpaper samples are much cheaper than book weights you can buy. (Side note: I won a brick as a door prize!) 

Next was tipping in a page. I vaguely remembered hearing this phrase in school or at a meeting or conference and knew it had something to do with putting a page back in a book but I've never really known how to do it. It's pretty easy but the key to it is using some scrap laminate to protect your other pages from the glue. Place a piece of laminate in the book where you want to tip in the page, drag the edge of the page to be put in through the glue, stick it in aligning it with the other pages, put another piece of laminate on the other side, close it, brick it. Once the glue is set, the laminate will peel right off. I was floored. Yes, I have a low thrill threshold but this is exciting stuff for a book repair failure like me. Same process can be used to tip in a replacement page (photocopied from another copy of the same title) when the original page has wandered off.

Repairing covers was our next obstacle. This is where spare cardboard backing comes in. You know, the thin tough brown piece that helps products from getting wrinkled but you have no use for it after unwrapping whatever paper thing you bought? Save that stuff and cut up a piece to replace the edge of that cover that some kid's dog ate but didn't destroy the rest of the book. Cut it to fit the cover or spine that needs repair & slap some book tape on it. You can get fancy & photocopy another copy of the book's cover or spine if you want it to look a bit nicer. Or you could be like our font nerd Robin & search the interwebz until you have the exact font they used to make your own.

The last thing we talked about was book covers for dust jackets. Robin recommended buying them on rolls as you can cut exactly how much you need. This is better than laminating your covers because the cover won't peel off. She also recommended the kind without the paper backing on it so you can do this trick to give extra protection for the corners of your book cover. I would explain it but I have no idea how to type what I saw. Maybe we can beg her to video it so you can watch. The book jacket strips come in really handy for this as they are precut & you can just grab them as needed without having to hassle with a tape dispenser while holding a book jacket on. 

It really was common sense tips but apparently I'm lacking in common sense. My parents were right! Ack! So, there you go. That's pretty much what I remember. I wish I had taken pictures or even video of some of this stuff. Feel free to comment any additional tips or questions. I'm not saying I can answer them but I can ask Robin what the answers are. That's the beauty of being a librarian. We don't know everything but we know how to find it. My next blog post will be about budget proposals and how they help with advocacy which was my other big aha moment I took away from our summer institute.