Part of my job as the school librarian is to put together the annual textbook order. We have in the budget each year funds to buy additional books and to replace books that have been destroyed, so early each year I get a list of requested books from all of the teachers. Here in Tanzania, we have a goal of having at least one textbook of each type per every two students, which qualifies us as a high-level school. In many schools, several students share one book, so one of our goals this year was to hit that mark with all of our major textbooks.
Textbooks generally cost from $4 to $8 each, with a few of the higher-level ones being a bit more, so it adds up fast. This year we spent over $1900 on books! Running a school can be quite expensive. (Speaking of which, if anyone wants to sponsor a student or contribute towards scholarships, let me know...)
Making the order is just the beginning of my work. It took a while (nearly two months!) to get our order from one of the bookstores in Arusha, but they did deliver them, so that was nice. Fortunately, we have an empty office at the moment, so I commandeered it. First, I had to unpack all the books and check what we received against my original order and against the receipt. There were some books missing and a couple of things on the receipt I didn't recognize, so it took a day or two to sort that out. The bookstore made a second delivery a couple of days later with the missing books.
Then, the books needed to be processed. Even with students helping, it took a couple of weeks of spending most of my time at work outside of class working on it. First, we stamp the books with the school stamp in the front, the back, and somewhere in the middle. Then, I write in the front cover, the last page, and on the bottom of page 50: AOCSS, Form 1, Oxford Biology, #1/20. (or whatever form/book it is). I go through my inventory of our existing books to number books that are being added correctly. After all of that, we completely wrap the covers in packing tape to help them last longer, as these textbooks are cheaply made paperbacks, not durable hardcovers.
So, with several hundred books, it takes a while! I am especially grateful for the form four girls who spent several afternoons in the library taping books with me.
Finally, I delivered the books to the individual teachers and they added them to their inventories, as they are responsible for keeping up with their subjects' books until the end-of-the-year inventory. I enjoy working with the books, but the big annual book order is quite a job!
