| On the main level, new wood shelving has been added to
maximize capacity and to house new collections of videotapes and
large-print books, as well as the regular book collection, which is also
housed on original wood shelving that lined the walls seventy-seven
years ago, at the time the building opened. There is a growing
collection of large-print books for older or visually impaired
readers. The new shelving for new collections has presumably
supplanted reading seating space and open space. There is no space
for additional adult shelving. Weeding of the regular book
collection is ongoing, to make room on the shelves for new titles.
Children's shelving is completely full, despite weeding, and no shelving
can be added, except at the cost of precious floor space now used for
story hour.
Within the past five years, the library has also added small
collections of books on tape, videotapes for children and kits for
children. These alternative formats are very popular and represent
an additional resource the library can offer patrons. However, the
growth of these collections has also required the addition of new
shelving for display, at the cost of very finite space. The
fireplace is now completely obscured by shelving for videotapes.
The library is really on a collision course, where soon every new
item will mean the discard of another item, no matter how carefully
selected and weeded the collections are. (This has been called the
"scorched-earth" approach to collection management. It
is typical in libraries that have early twentieth-century physical
plants.)
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