Happy New Year

The final push starts today to get everything ready for opening on Thursday the 4th.

Merry Christmas

Vale of Glamorgan Libraries are closed from Saturday the 23rd to Wednesday 27th December. We open again on Thursday 28th and Friday 29th December.

There are no decorations in the library at Barry this year but other libraries, including Rhoose above, have not held back. As well as decorating the library Sandra has wrapped books in Christmas paper and is issuing customers an extra surprise book for Christmas.

Penarth

Display at Penarth Library

Lolfa

The chairs have arrived in the lolfa and Sandra takes the opportunity to use the area for a meeting about staff rotas.

The PR section sent a photographer to take some shots of the library today. The first publicity stories that get in the press before opening will probably use these photos of staff pretending to be customers.

Splash of red

We're not afraid of colour at the new library. A large consignment of casual seating arrived today, all of it in strong colours. We also received some study desks, occassional tables and the last office desks.

New Books

Tina and Angela prepare new books.

Clock

The town hall clock is now working again after being stuck at 9am for the last 5 years. The pendulum for the clock drops the whole length of the clock tower and down to the basement. The weights are wound up to the top of the tower every seven days and take seven days to sink to the basement floor. If they are not wound up again the clock stops.

Jill

Jill worked her last day on the staff at Barry today and got a good send-off. Jill is stepping down from a permanent job to enjoy the flexibility of working as a relief assistant. We're sorry to be loosing her but at least we'll get the chance to work with her from time to time.

Apologies for the photograph - it's a technical problem with the camera!

Offices

We haven't received all the furniture for offices yet and still await most of the public seating and several tables. Colette is making good use of a bench while she waits for a desk.

Print kiosk

Richard from Lorensberg, spent three days with us this week installing the print kiosk, setting up connect and setting up wifi on netloan.

When we open in January this means customers will be able to release and pay for their own printouts using the self-service kiosk, we'll have an online booking system for rooms and equipment, and we'll have a method for logging on to the wifi network using barcode and pin numbers.

Move complete

Everything has been moved from the leisure centre and all the books have been shelved. We've left space on the shelves for the new stock to be brought up from the basement and interfiled.

DVDs

DVDs and CDs have been shelved

Last crates

Would the last one out please turn off the lights!

The books arrive

The final movement of crates from the leisure centre started today, a week ahead of schedule. Almost all had been moved by 5pm. There is just one lorry load of books to move. By lunch time tomorrow all 76000 books and other items whill have been moved from the leisure centre to join the 9800 items already moved from the reserve stock.

As well as delivering the crates, McKeown are also shelving the books and doing a fine job of it thanks to pre-planning. Each crate is labeled with a bay and shelf number. We have a floor plan indicating the shelf numbering system if anyone gets lost or confused.

Large Print

Most of the large print and talking books have now been shelved.

Barry library

This is what the old library looks like without furniture, shelving or books. It is even more obvious now that there were no windows in the room originally built as a bowls hall.

The rest of the crates will be collected next week. They'll have to be taken down the steps from the fire exit door because the lift cannot be trusted.

Yvonne & Pat

NVQ success

Despite all the work at the county library there is still time to make progress in other areas of the service. We've launched a new mobile library and mobile routes in the last few months, we've run a Face 2 Face programme with visiting authors. And today, six staff have achieve their Information and Library Services NVQ awards. Seen above are Dene, Rachel, Phil, Bloss, Julie and Chris with Lynne, the assessor, holding the flowers.