Friday Fun: Book Case Construction DIY in the "It's all on the Internet" Age for Library Space Planning

Downsize, downsize, downsize the library foot print because "it's all on the Internet. Well, I agree that  legal resources have been and will continue to be more and more electronic based. And have no problem with that when e-resources are better than their print based cousins. Sure, not all of our user populations will be confortable using, for example, enhanced law ebooks instead of print but 30 years ago similar users were not comfortable with what we now take for granted, database legal search services. Part of this unacceptance of the inevitable is generational. But back in the Roaring 80's and 90s, the generational shift moved on toward acceptance of legal e-Search because the youngsters were being hired out of law school. Today, well, with less and less recent law school grads being hired in the BigLaw and BigGov market sectors, one might say that the move forward, which in my opinon will be the substitution of p-books for enchanced law eBooks, is a bit stymied right now because New School kids not being added to and/or replacing Old School user populations.

A case in point. At our little county law library we are in the midst of relocating or staying at our current location. In either case, the footprint will be substantially smaller. My objective is to end up with the "largest smallest" footprint. Not for today but looking out 10-plus years from now. The old rule of thumb was design a layout that accomodated the growth of the print collection looking 20-years from now. That essentially meant that the library's current print collection should fill 50% of available shelving units for planning purposes. Those days are over. Today we must plan for what the print collection will likely need 10-years from now. Instead of estimating growth, we must estimate reduction in shelving space requirements.

Not only will law library planners be hard pressed to budget for additional shelving units in this context, they may be hard pressed to acquire any shelving units if they cannot use or modify for use shelving from their current inventory when downsizing the library footprint is at issue. Hence, today's Friday Fun features a DIY for bookself construction. It does not detail how to modify current selving systems (because I couldn't find a YouTube video for that), but some do-it-yourself guidence on how to build new shelving may be helpful.

From the YouTube description:

The[re] is a materials list and full construction layout guide for a large bookcase. Designed to be built on the job site. (no fancy shop tools required, although a table saw would be very benificial for ripping the oak trim). It can easily be built in a shop and moved (in 2 pieces) with the final crown mold applied on site. This bookcase must be attached to the wall with strong anchors. The result is a very elegant custom built piece of furniture. The height and width can be altered very easily for a custom fit for your location.

The detailed shop plan for the book case is available from the Google Group Woodworking Project. Granted, we are talking about wood construction but wood is probably easier to DIY by librarians than metal is. Here's the YouTube video (yes, I love the background music).[JH]