April 10, 2008

Eagle Scout project

Shane Wallace improves elementary school library

Some kids have a love of sports, some a love of music. Shane Wallace, a member of Boy Scout Troop 294, has always had a deep love of books and reading. So it really was no surprise when it came time to pick his Eagle project that he would do something involving books.

Shane Wallace

Though there were several projects that needed to be done to enhance Edenvale Elemen-tary School in South San Jose, budgetary cuts and constraints had kept projects such as updating the library on the back burner.

Wallace’s project encompassed several parts. The first involved relocating 3,000 existing books from one part of the library to another making room for new incoming books. The next pulled another 2,500 books, identified as advanced readers off the shelves, removing old labels, attaching color-coded labels to each spine and covering the new label with tape. Additional labels containing the author’s name, reading grade level, and other pertinent information was attached to the inside of each book on the back cover. The books were then re-shelved.

As with any project of substantial size, unanticipated obstacles were encountered. Because of the budgetary issues, the library had not had a full-time librarian in quite a while. Instead, it depended on part-time library clerks, who each had their own method and ideas of how to organize the books and where certain types of books should be located. This made physically locating many books a treasure hunt.

In addition, the reports that were printed to assist volunteers in knowing what books to pull off the shelves also presented challenges. There was nothing to differentiate between paperback versus hardbound copies when the two different types of books were shelved in different areas and because many books were available in both paperback and hardbound, accounting for all copies was at time an interesting task.

Because so many people at times had been involved in shelving the books, including the students themselves, finding the books was difficult because things weren’t shelved in the order or location they belonged.

Part of taking on a project is knowing that you may run into other issues that need to be addressed. This was something that Wallace and his volunteers were unaware of when the project started. But the Boy Scout motto is, “Be Prepared,” allowing Wallace and his group to work out the issues as the project progressed. Along the way the entire fiction area was completely re-organized and put back in alphabetical order. The “non-fiction” section, though not completely revamped, had approximately two-thirds of its section reorganized and re-shelved. Wallace and his volunteers also worked on the children’s section as well as Spanish fiction and non-fiction.

Scouts, parents, friends and family put in more than 300 volunteer hours to complete Wallace’s project.