University of Georgia had a fire,
To replace everything was their desire.
The President commanded them to.
Four years later, they continue.

Colorado State almost drowned
But those folks really went to town.
It took 10 years and a lot of money
Before they could finally say “finis.”

At UHM, we’re different, you know.
We drag our feet and move so slow.
We don’t really want to recover.
We just like to whine and blubber.

The University got some dough,
But two years wasn’t enough, you know.
Only contestants in a snail race
Could expend at such a glacial pace.

“It’s been ages since that disaster.
Hurry up! You better recover faster!
Why do you need those old books, anyhow?
Don’t you know they’re all online now?

“Why is it taking so long to rebuild?
You librarians are so weak-willed!
You wrangled and fought and argued.
We’ve never seen such ineptitude!”

Blaming the victim allows egress
When you’re fed up with the mess.
Who cares if they’re not finished,
Or that the collection is diminished?

So Katrina survivors, take warning,
There’ll come a dark Friday morning
When The Man will say “No more!”
And you’ll be shoved out the door.

Circulation is an important statistic, an indicator of how much use the library's collections receive. Our circulation data shows that we are loaning about 11% of the volume of books that circulated before the flood.

There are probably many reasons why our circulation hasn't recovered:

*We haven't cataloged most of our flood replacements.
*Many current documents are available online.
*Patrons don't want to page materials or wait for them to be retrieved.
*Because we don't have open stacks, people don't know we exist.

Which leads to the next question: how can we increase use of our collections? We are cataloging books like crazy, but that's not enough. We need a better web page to point people in the right direction. We must market ourselves to faculty and other librarians. And, we should be writing about the treasures in our collections so they can be found by the general public.