Keeping Your Library Looking Good

In an ideal world, you would build a new library that is designed for easy maintenance. You would hire custodial staff who would know which products clean which surfaces. And, you would have staff and a clientele that appreciated the new library so much that they would take really good care of it.

In the real world, we inherit some library buildings that were designed to win awards or were not originally designed as libraries. Our custodial staff is contract employees who clean the building during the night. We find graffiti on the restroom stalls, tar on the new carpet, water stains on the new furniture, and permanent markers used on the new marker board. Street people are sleeping on our new couches and in the bushes around the building; there are always paper towels on the floors of the restrooms; and the light bulbs in the bug-catching fixtures are constantly burned out. We were hired as librarians, but we sometimes feel like full-time janitors.