June 16, 2008 - How does a university college go about moving 2.33 km of books half way across the city of Calgary? Well, Ambrose summer student workers Hannah Ayer, Michelle Petkau, Will Chambers, Peter Stanulonis and Mark Ingram are definitely finding out. Here is what it takes to move a library from these students' perspective.

It started with the making of over 4,200 moving boxes. What would typically be a rather repetitive job of folding and stacking became a time of jamming to special music mixes and building a maze of boxes. Many staff, faculty and students made a point of visiting the maze and seeing for themselves that the student workers are not only ambitious but they also have fun.

When the boxes were finished, the students' next task was to vacuum each individual book and all the shelves in the library. Once this task was completed it was time to begin packing. Since each box must contain one shelf's-worth of books (i.e. 21 linear inches), the team went to work measuring off the collection in twenty-one-inch sections.

Now as anyone who has moved realizes, setting up the library again at the other end requires packing in an organized manner. Therefore, each section of books needs to be boxed, and the box needs to be call number coded and numbered in sequence. The maze is slowly disappearing as the library shelves become empty.  

The library will be packed up by June 30th.  A week later the boxes be trucked to the new campus and the student workers will begin the task of reshelving.

Contact: Sandy Ayer Director of Library Services
Phone: 403.410.2947
Email: sayer@ambrose.edu