I consider the library of Congress to be librarian heaven. This week I was introduced to one of its sub-heavens...the surplus room. This is where all of the books that filter through the LOC that were not chosen to be part of the collection end up. Its rows and rows of thousands of freebies! They make the surplus books available to the staff to take (though they cannot leave the building). They also allow nonprofits to come select to add to their collections. So free books for schools and libraries! Woohoo! They also told me about going through your Congressman to get them shipped for free. Another thing I learned which is pretty amazing is that they do an exchange program with other countries using the surplus. If a country sends the LOC say 100 books, they have credit to basically online shop surplus to have 100 books sent back to them. Pretty neat!
So today I went with my supervisor to search the children's section for any books to add to the YRC. It was so fun! we found a few goodies to take with us.
Otherwise this week has just been working the center...greeting people, telling them about the YRC, talking about books, keeping things straightened up. We still don't know for sure what my project is going to be, so tomorrow's intern meeting about projects should be interesting. We're going to pretty much make something up for the meantime, until the gift collection comes in.
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