Many, many thanks to all who responded to my question about using milk
crates to pack a school library collection. The general consensus was that
they aren't a good idea for these reasons:
1) the open holes catches sides & bindings and damage books
2) sour milk/insect/rodent issues
3) they get very heavy (heavier than boxes)
4) because they aren't closed, books get dusty/dirty
5) if they tip over the books spill out
6) you can't get very many books into them so you have to use a lot more
than boxes
7) milk company wants them back when school starts even if your project
isn't done (this actually happened to someone)
8) tall, oversized books don't fit or make them non-stackable
Please see below for individual comments - and if you want a good laugh -
read all the way to the end!
Thanks!
Charlotte Lesser
---------------------------------------------
Crates are too heavy once filled. Also, they will not be stackable if you
have larger/taller books. We are using copier paper boxes with covers-not
too heavy when filled and somewhat stackable....Beg, borrow, steal from
local businesses?
--------------------------------------
When we moved our collection two years ago, we found the best boxes to be
banana boxes from the local grocery store. They are wide, very sturdy and
not too deep.You would be surprised how many of them you can get from one
store in a week.We packed fiction into the cafeteria French fry boxes, which
are easy accumulate quickly. Best moving tip: spray paint the outside of
boxes a different color for each section, then your help will get them back
in just the right spot.
------------------------------------------
Search the archives for "Moving a library" and you will find tons of
suggestions, though not specifically about milk crates. I still think the
best option is the one I finally used: to use plastic wrap from the
cafeteria to wrap the books right to the shelves. I posted detailed
instructions that can be found in the archives, but basically, I labeled
every shelf with a letter/number code that identified where it belonged, and
then had people work in teams of three. Two people lifted the shelf WITH
its books out of the case and set it on a tall stool, stabilizing the books
on the shelf. A third person wrapped the plastic around and over the books
and shelf, anchoring the books right to the shelf they belonged on.
Boxcutters made short work of cutting the wrap. These loaded shelves were
stacked in an empty classroom over the summer (lined with cafeteria tables,
so shelves could be stacked 2-3 high on the floor and 2-3 high on top of the
tables). When the shelves were brought back to the library, it was a simple
matter to pick up a wrapped shelf of books, say K23, and put it back on
bookcase runKo, position 23. We carefully used the boxcutters to remove the
plastic, and re-positioned the shelf where it originally came from. If you
pack up books in boxes or crates, somebody eventually has to put all those
books back on the shelves in the right order! ARGH!!! It makes so much
more sense to never pack them up to begin with! The plastic wrap came form
the cafeteria, and was very inexpensive. And we had one trash bag full of
wrap to toss at the end of the whole 11,000 book process!
---------------------------------------------------------------
We just used supermarket boxes. Our food service also saved boxes for
months.
--------------------------------------------------
The librarian before me decided that to save money she would put books in
those plastic milk crates on the window sills. The main thing that I can
tell you is that by themselves they are pretty heavy. With books in them,
they are even heavier.
----------------------------------------------------
When my library was being recarpeted we used the recycling bins to put the
books in.
------------------------------------------------
When I moved my entire collection a few years ago, and I got a large number
of wonderful boxes donated(with handles) from a local box manufacturer,
Weyerhauser (formally McMillan Bloedel). I also asked 2 local grocery
stores to save me their discarded boxes that paper towel and eggs come in.
They
have handles and are a good size too.
----------------------------------------------------
Are crates able to accommodate oversized items? Can they be covered in some
manner to protect from dust, etc. Be sure some type of specific label can be
affixed to identify the items in that crate. I used a box number AND the
call number and renumbered for each section of collection, e.g. reference,
fiction, etc.
---------------------------------------------
We had our kitchen staff save boxes, staff brought some in and someone had a
friend with moving boxes.
-----------------------------------------------
Are they the kind of crates that have many holes in the bottom and sides? I
can see that it would be easy to bend corners when placing books in those
sorts of crates. Also, depending on where the books will be stored, you
could get lots of dust and debris in those crates. Check and see if you can
get the longer cardboard boxes that jugged milk or egg cartons are sometimes
shipped in - they have handle-holes on each short end and flaps on the top
that are fairly easy to tape down.They hold an awful lot of books (perhaps
too many).
------------------------------------------------
It is important not to have too large of a container because books are so
heavy. We always use boxes that are 14 x 21 x21.
--------------------------------------------------
I'm using boxes I received for free from a local box manufacturer. It pays
to make some phone calls!
------------------------------------------------
When I move, I always get boxes from the grocery store, egg boxes work well,
not too large, lots of them, consistent size.
---------------------------------------------
When we moved our library (K-12, our principal contacted local businesses
and factories for box donations. We had more boxes than we needed.
----------------------------------------------
They might work well as long as you can indeed have them back to the company
in time. What about the dirt level in the area where the books are to be
stored? We just went through two packings and unpacking in two libraries in
the last two years. Our boxes were a filthy mess both times. (I threatened
to take out
stock in Swiffer) My thought is you want those crates of books covered with
something unless they are in a sealed room the entire summer. Big sheets of
plastic
might be all you need. How will you label them so you can easily find the
rates in the order you need them? I used brightly colored copy paper. A
different color for each type of book. Fiction, biography, PBs, etc. I
recommend you put the call# range on each label as well as a numbering them
in order. If you have to wait for the crates until the company no longer
need them, does that mean you have to wait to do all this after school is
out when workers should already be starting the remodeling on your library?
--------------------------------------------
We installled a rug in our HS library and I had to pack up the books. No
boxes either. I had to collect my own:
1) Ask the lunch ladies to save boxes. You will need to stack them in
your room because the cafeteria won't store them there. This will take
awhile.
2) Copy paper boxes are the perfect sixe and they have covers. Get
yourself named as a priority and start saving.
3) Go to maintenance and areas in your district which receive orders. Find
new boxes which were stashed away. Save boxes that were delivered . A lot
of boxes here. Reward them with candy.
4) This is more work. Go to grocery stores and ask them to save boxes.
Find out the delivery dates. They normally put them in a box crusher so you
have to pick them up at an arranged time.
5) Go to other stores and do the same thing. Only so many will fit in your
car and you will need to do this often.
I found I needed 350 boxes of different sizes to pack 11,000 books. You
won't get the exact size you want but you can't afford to be picky. I went
to stores for all of my boxes. Then 2 years later I moved and got smarter.
I got all my boxes from the high school cafeteria. I carted home boxes for
4-6 weeks but I got enough to move an entire house.
---------------------------------------------
I was very happy with the way we were able to store our materials when
South's library was gutted/remodeled a couple summers ago. The prospect of
boxing up and unboxing all the books was awful. The time it would take for
reshelving just would not be available at the end of the summer. So, we
stretchwrapped the books to their individual shelves labeling each shelf
with a sequence number (1, 2, 3...867) and carted them to the auditorium
where each shelf stretched across a seat. The books remained in Dewey order
and were thus easier to reshelve. Bottom shelves sometimes are permanently
attached to their units so a number of supplementary planks needed to be
brought in to help. Varying widths of stretchwrap are available from
suppliers. Teams of 3-5 students can be trained and employed in the
wrapping/carting/storing operations, but practically speaking, they can't
really work from more than 2 ends of each collection (ref., fiction,
regular) at once and still keep the books in order. And some of the
shelves will definitely need more than one middle schooler to lift and carry
them. In the end, I think it took a good four days to empty us out and a
day or two longer to restore [rough] order - but then again, we were also
integrating some new shelf units as well. 5" stretchwrap worked well.
------------------------------------------
I had to pack up and move about 7500 books out of my middle school library
so new carpet could be installed. I only got 2 weeks notice, and no boxes
either. We contacted the local grocery stores, and my wonderful head
custodian went out daily and picked up banana and egg boxes. We didn't get
enough, but they worked well to lift and move, then to flatten for recycling
later on. I did the packing myself, with a few students to help with
fiction on the last teacher work day. I unloaded myself the 3 days before
school started. It can be done! It's also intense labor!
--------------------------------------------------
One year I gathered carts from every library in my district to pack up my
library. We were recarpeting so I only had to do the free standing shelves.
It worked.
-------------------------------------------------
The main drawback I see is that you are going to have to pack them in
something that can be stacked (I've moved libraries twice and have "box"
experience). The milk cases would not have been large enough for many of my
oversized picture books in the elem. library. If they could fit, they would
have stuck out of the top and not allowed for another box to be stacked on
top. When we moved, we collected fruit boxes from the local grocery store,
and I used wallpaper to "paste" a memo to myself as to what was in that box.
For example, for the Fic boxes I used blue wallpaper and wrote FIC #1, etc.
on the boxes. On non-fiction I used green wallpaper, and Easy Readers a
third color of wallpaper. That way when they were being carried back in, I
could tell at a glance what general area of the library the box needed to be
in. I used wallpaper because it was cheaper then contact paper and had a
couple Mom's writing the info. on the tag as I filled a box, then dipping it
in water and slapping it to the side as we started stacking the boxes. By
the time the custodians came to carry the boxes out, the wallpaper was dry.
I had some that we wondered if they would stay stuck, but we didn't loose
any! My boxes were stored for a year in a semi parked out on the playground
and made it through severe heat and cold (Nebraska weather!). There was
even a leak in the semi we found out when it was unloaded, but the waxy
boxes keep things pretty dry. I think I only lost one or two books. My
collection is around 10,000, and it took between 200 and 300 boxes if I
remember correctly. The biggest drawback is that the boxes are HEAVY. When
I moved 5 years earlier at a Middle School (not so many oversized books) we
were able to get cardboard boxes that gallons of milk came in and they were
slightly smaller, but with handles and no writing on the boxes. There were
ideal, but we could no longer get those when my elem. moved.
-------------------------------------------------------
I moved a small library by using banana boxes I got from the local grocery
store. It seems that milk crates would work, but would take a lot more
crates.
-----------------------------------------------------
We had schools in the area save their boxes that our school memo paper came
in. We were able to move and stack 10,000 books with the empty paper boxes
---------------------------------------------------
We used mostly banana boxes last spring. Even then we used 353 boxes for
just over 7000 books. We got the banana boxes from two supermarkets.
-----------------------------------------------------
There is also no way to close them so that when a stack tips over they don't
dump (and damage) the books. There is also no way to label each and every
crate. I did that many (probably closer to 9,000 books) and primarily used
copy paper boxes. They are sturdy, stackable, have covers and can be
labeled. Check with various businesses in the area about getting boxes
from them.
-------------------------------------------------------------
In the past, I've used plastic milk crates in the library for a variety of
purposes. I've since discontinued using them because the hard plastic can
tear books apart. I was finding that if a book was not laid flat in the
crate, it would catch on the openings. Some books would get wedged in there
so tight, they would get damaged upon removal. In short, I would avoid
using milk crates. I also like your question as to what happens when the
company wants them back. By my calculation, it would take over 1000 milk
crates for your collection...a conservative estimate. The cardboard boxes
would be easier on the books and you could mark locations and call numbers
on them when it comes time to re-shelve.
-----------------------------------------
We once borrowed the school cafeteria for this purpose. I took the books on
carts and lined them up on the lunch tables. They stayed in order this way
without boxes. Another time, we moved them in boxes. They did not stay in
order and I had a major mess! The larger books don't fit, the boxes get out
of order, etc. I feel for you because there is really no good way to do
this. Just go with the flow and do the best you can to keep it organized.
Whatever you do, keep it light. Overfilled boxes or crates are very
difficult to move.
-----------------------------------------
I have packed and moved a library two times. I found the egg and tomato
boxes from the grocery story to be best. They are very sturdy, have cut-out
handles, and have tops to keep the books from getting dusty. They are also
free and you do not have to return them. Of course, you have to visit your
local grocery stores and start collecting NOW in order to be ready to pack
in a few weeks.
-------------------------------------------
Packed everything in liquor store boxes. Good size, pretty sturdy. I did
wonder what people thought as I made trip after trip to the liquor store -
maybe they thought I was having a bad year and needed fortification?
*************************************************************
Charlotte Lesser
Director of Elementary Library Services
Monadnock Regional School District
600 Old Homestead Hwy.
Swanzey, NH 03446
(603) 352-6955 x.422
Fax: (603) 358-6708
email: clesser@mrsd.org
on the web: www.mrsd.org/~library
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