I had a long, lovely phone call with my best friend last night, and one of the things we talked about is how anxious I am to just get started already(!) in grad school – but how, actually, I’m going to need every bit of the 22 weeks I have to get things done that I won’t have time to worry about later. I was thinking of domestic things, but it’s heating up at work too.

I’m up to my eyebrows in the biggest collection development project I’ve ever worked on: selecting and stocking for a 5,000-volume bookmobile, which at least for the time being will be a stationary operation in a village 25 miles from the county seat where I live and work.

I’ve done research, and run statistics, and studied, but in the end, it’s really a fly-by-feel process, going into the stacks and looking at every book. I’m pulling about 10% of our current collection and a large part of our current cataloging backlog, and it’s a balancing act. Size is a factor – I can build a bigger collection if I focus on trade paperbacks and slimmer volumes, but more comprehensive works also means the need for fewer items in a subject area. The two communities are pretty different, and looking at what hasn’t circed at home but we hope will circ out there is a factor, but it’s certainly not all castoffs – rather the opposite. It’s a tiny collection but it needs to be excellent – diverse, elegant, relevant, and robust. Self-contained and perfect in itself but dependent on the parent operation, like an infant.

I need to do more technical writing on the process, and may write up a proposal to present a conference session on it, but I just wanted to capture the emotional, experiential aspect of it.

I presented a report to the Board of Trustees tonight, and after some discussion they settled on a May 2 opening event date. That’s… not a lot of time. Our Director is retiring at the beginning of May as well, and there’s a lot of upheaval around that as well. The next five weeks are going to be very intense.