How Can Our Small Company Create a Cost-Effective Library? Seeking Your Ideas and Feedback

Hi All,

We are a small organization with around 50 employees and want to set up a cost-effective and efficient library. I have come up with this idea for the same. Please review the attachment and provide your feedback and suggestions.

Thank you.

Regards,
B.K. Manas

Manas,

I have a suggestion that can be implemented before you purchase the books. Why not have a book donation camp/drive in your vicinity, where you announce the topics of interest to your company? I am sure there would be many folks who would like to share their treasure troves with you since they no longer use them, or simply to clear their homes!

Then you can proceed with purchasing newly published books on topics of your interest, excluding the ones that you received... what do you say?

Regards,
Nayana Chander

Hi Nayana,

Thank you for the input. I will surely consider your suggestion. Could you provide me with more details about the same? If you have experience with this or know someone who does, I would appreciate being able to speak with them directly.

Thank you,

Regards,

B.K. Manas

Glad you liked the suggestion.

We started off with a dipstick check about the response within the company itself (though it was limited to book donation and not monetary contributions). We announced that we would be setting up a library; enlisted topics/authors, and magazines that employees were keen to read about.

We published this list, requested employees to bring in their books, magazines of the enlisted topics/authors. The response was good. We even had employees going out of their way and persuading their relatives, friends, and neighbors to divulge with their priceless treasures. Some even went an extra mile to the local "iraddiwalas" and asked them if they would like to make any contribution! And agree they did (only we had to let them sign those books as a contribution from their stall/shop - talk about branding!).

Next, we set up a team of voluntary employees and sorted these books (any B.Lib? please help with sorting...). The ones that had pages missing, we tracked a few other owners of the same books, got the missing pages photocopied, and reinstated the matter... Books that had covers missing, we got them bound and covered. Then we stamped each book with the company stamp and set up library cards and registers to track whichever books were loaned for how long...

Then after zeroing down on the place, we bought some aluminum racks (cheaper and easy to maintain in comparison to wood) and displayed those books... and... we soon lost track of the number of registers we've used... :)

We really didn't need to purchase any specific books because the book donations never stopped. It kept on trickling in from employees wanting to clear their homes, relatives whose kids had moved and found no use of their books, and even the local libraries that wanted some publicity or had too many editions/copies of the same books.

All the best, Manas.

Regards

Nayana. C

Oh, and just one more thing, we accepted these donations on a no-return basis.
Regards,
Nayana C.