Firstly, I want to put forth a special thank you to all the librarians and library technicians I've gotten to know over the years. I would be absolutely useless here without everything they taught me. I'm not in contact with most of them and many of them probably don't remember me (it all started with elementary school) but man have I learned a lot. My thanks especially to Mrs. Allen-Cofell (St. Mary/St. Anne's) Mrs. Goldhawk and Mrs. Woods at UCC (These people are all still in the Chatham-Kent area I think) And EVERYONE who works at the Jean-Leon Allie Library at St. Paul University (especially Desneiges). If anyone sees these people around, feel free to let them know I hold them partially responsible for the presence of a library in rural Ghana, in a village that knows no map. A library which is going to be officially opened this Wednesday!
The construction finishes today and the cataloguing operation (which Conor and I have been running out of our front room will be moved to the library tomorrow. We've been cataloguing mountains of books and we've only just touched the surface, from the sounds of it. We've been creating a catalogue, barcoding all the books and stamping them and everything I was doing at home for the Saint Paul Library. Given the lack of a Staples or similar stationary depot, this process, like the carpentry, takes longer because everything has to be done by hand. Rather than printing stickers and sticking them on the book, we have to cut out the sticker, create the non sticky sticker, write on it by hand and then tape it on the book. Thanks to the People's Republic of China, there is no shortage of affordable tape (though no stickers).
Luckily there are a lot of people who want to help out. This weekend is going to be a mad blur of readying books that will make me never want to enter a library again. Popular opinion feels that it will be worth it.
I will let you all know how it goes.
-The Jessicat
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