The above and below photos are the "aftermath" of our school library having flooded from a busted water pipe the weekend of December 20/21. The above photo shows them replacing part of the carpet where the wood under it had buckled. In this last Monday's post I had reported that we had 370 books damaged and that I wasn't finished going through all the books yet. Looks like we are now done and 596 books were damaged when the water pipe broke. Most of the books were lost in the history section of our library. Water also came down and destroyed most of our Shakespeare books and some of the poetry.
Many kids would say that that isn't a loss, lol. They'd be more worried that the books in the Twilight Saga Series by Stephenie Meyer were destroyed. Even if the water came down in the fiction section of our library, those books would be safe, as every one of the books in that series were checked out over the Christmas break! Ever since the movie "Twilight" came out, we can't keep the books on the shelves. They were pretty popular even before the movie came out. You can get some info over at The Official Website of Stephenie Meyer. Presently there are four books in the series. Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn. For those fans I found out that there is another in the works called "Midnight Sun." I need to read at least the first book, so I can see what the kids are so ga-ga about. I'm just not a vampire fan and haven't had the desire to read them. Have any of you read them and how did you like them?
Now the Harry Potter series - that's a totally different story. I'm a huge fan of that series. The first book was out a year before I finally read it and I couldn't put it down. Took me about two days to read the first book. Then as the rest were published I was at the store that day to buy it, lol. Okay, I wasn't so bad that I was at the store before midnight. My hat's off to those that were, though.
Below are more pictures of the "aftermath" of the flood. As we went through the books on the shelves, we placed the bad ones on the tables.
Below is a close up of some of the damaged books. Just today a representative of Follette Corporation (a book supplier) came out to survey the damage. They are offering us a pretty sweet deal if we go through them to get the books replaced through our insurance. We also will have a representative from another major book supplier, that we also buy our books from, come out this next week. My boss (our school librarian) wants to hear from both before he makes his decision as to which to go through to get all these books replaced.
I was crushed to see the mess this whole thing left our school library in. My hat's off to our custodial staff. They have done a tremendous job cleaning up and drying out the carpet. There were two inches of water that they had to deal with. I have been working very hard wiping down all the surfaces and it's getting there. My last big project is washing down all the shelves that the water and ceiling tiles came down on. This week I can bring the live plants back to work. I take them home to care for them over long holiday breaks and summer. I bought two of them and one of the staff donated one of the others. They add that welcoming feeling to the place.
I was hired the fall of 2007 and the previous person could care less about how the library looked. I love to decorate and slowly, using my own money, I would find bargains of nice items and plants to put on display. We have been getting lots of compliments from the students and the staff about how inviting the library now is. I had a few of the staff tell me that before I was hired the library was like a tomb. The previous person was so mean (as the kids and staff put it) that no one liked to come in. I also like to decorate for the different holidays and seasons. My next goal is to find nice/gently used furniture. We just need a matching couch and loveseat and hopefully some matching lounge chairs.
The library is really coming along and that is pretty exciting. We are recovering from the aftermath of this disaster.
Wishing you a great day in your part of the world,
Biker Betty :)
