It turns out that we will have to scrap the plans to dig tunnel "Ernie" through the book sale boxes. The problem, as always, is what to do with the spoil from the dig.
The plan had been to borrow the method employed in the last unpleasantness (see fig. 1). The spoil would be deposited surreptiously around the library by our tying string around our trouser legs, filling our trousers with booksale books, wandering over to an unfrequented patch in a studiously nonchalent manner and then, when we were sure nobody was looking, releasing the string and dropping the books.
The plan foundered because having looked at the state of the booksale books none of us wanted any of them anywhere near our lily white skins.
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Cow was just chatting with the head of the local chapter of the "Friends of the Library" at her book club meeting.
Seems the "Friends" have a surplus of $15,000 and need suggestions how to spend it.
They've already bought the library new furniture, a complete new bank of computers and printers, an entire security system (door security goes off if someone tries to walk out with a book) and that is the money they still have left over.
Cow's suggestion of "buy some more books" brought a treatise on: the Director has to use the book budget for that, if we give him money for books it will cut into his appropriation request.
So they can just buy ancillary stuff. Cow would like them to buy her a new car, she promises to keep it in the parking lot several times a month so it can add cachet to the library.
But seriously. All these riches come from the twice-yearly "Friends of the Library" book sale, consisting of books donated, gathered and placed on tables, then sold for a dollar each two Saturdays a year.
Guessing your book sales don't go so well?
Moo!
The booksale pays for our new counters and enquiry desks, despite a humongous income target.
Unfortunately, we haven't edited the book stock for a decade and have national performance targets requiring that 17% of lending stock should have been bought this financial year. Which we could do, as we have such a big book fund we can't spend it (at some stage I may tell that particular story, perhaps once I've moved jobs). But we only have small library buildings.
I'll leave you to imagine what a toddler's board book looks like after twenty years in a public lending library.
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