Synchronized Book Shelving

There are lots of good ideas for fun with book carts - the Book Cart Drill Team is well known. Others libraries have used book truck slalom races (Cal Poly-SLO) and speed shelf reading from the book cart effectively (Virginia Commonwealth University). Here is another:

Synchronized Book Shelving

This will require a judge or panel of judges. It is a great way to involve your student assistants in the fun of the library. The suggestions below are for teams of two shelvers at a time, but could you try it with more.

Clear one shelf each on two adjacent ranges of shelves.

Place the books from those shelves on two book carts.

The two book shelvers must then reshelve the books with their motions matching one another – think synchronized swimming.

Points are awarded on the basis of time, synchronicity and artistic flair – the shelvers and the trucks could appear in matching or complementary attire.

The winner is the team with the highest point total. Award could be a picture of the team with its cart which is posted in the circulation area along and some little gift – perhaps an ‘NSync CD, just for fun?

This could be done a couple of times during the year with a championship match at an appropriate time; or not.