Ask and ye shall receive. Not 24 hours after I lamented our challenges in covering school libraries, I received an e-mail from an employee at a private, K-12 school in New Jersey:
I am running a non-profit private school and I need some help in setting up my library. The main help that I need is to find out what kind of software I should be buying to launch the library. What initial things do I need? We have at least 1,500 Books and we want them to circulate to the students.
Initially, I wasn’t sure how this question ended up being sent to us. I felt unqualified to answer and wanted to refer the question to someone else…to an “expert”. Then something occurred to me–I can ask the several thousand experts who read this blog! If you have questions about setting up a library like this school administrator does, who better to ask than an open forum of librarians?
A bit more information about the situation: the school is equipped with a high-speed Internet connection, and has already ordered furniture for the library. They are working on a small budget (who isn’t these days), and want to put most of it towards an ILS and barcode-scanning technology.
TechSource readers, I put to it you–please help build this library! Please send your suggestions via blog comments or Twitter and we will keep you updated on how things unfold. As the comments pile up, the school administrator in question will be weighing in herself with questions.
We’re looking forward to hearing your suggestions and engaging in this Library-building 2.0 project!
If you can help with insights and suggestions, please chime in!