Reference Inventory Underway

Electrical wire to power the laptop

The library at City Park has been operating since 2007 with the vast majority of its print collection stored in trailers on the other side of campus. The Reference Room in Building 10 provides access to about 4,500 reference items--dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks, guides, and almanacs on all topics. With succinct yet comprehensive essays on all topics written by specialists, usually ranging in length from 1-7 pages, these truly are the best place to start one's research. But in addition to the 4,500 volumes readily accessible in the Reference Room, we also have about 10,000 more Reference items in storage.

One of two Reference storage trailers

Because we are in many ways still getting the collection back into order since Hurricane Katrina (the old library was destroyed after the storm and we are still waiting for a new library to replace it), we decided to undertake an inventory of the Reference collection this summer in the hopes of refining our holdings. The first part of the process has been to scan every item, one by one. First we did the Reference Room (appx. 4,500 volumes), then we moved on to the trailers. Just yesterday, we had the honor of scanning item number 4,000 in the first of two reference storage trailers.

The 4,000th item being scanned

The inventory work station in the trailer