Friday, September 18, 2009

Dewey or Do We Not?


I just returned from the Association of Rural and Small Libraries Annual Conference (www.arsl.info) in Gatlinburg. Gatlinburg's new library, the Anna Porter Public Library, is a beautiful building on the outskirts of town and is the pride of all residents. Kenton Temple, Director, hosted a preconference and shared the Gatlinburg Story. It was fascinating how they involved the community to raise funds to build this new library. Another interesting fact is that their library arranges their nonfiction like a bookstore - not by dewey numbers. They still use the dewey classification, but the nonfiction is arranged by topic - ie: health, money matter, self help, etc. It's an interesting concept and one that is working very well for them - the community loves it! Included in their catalog is an extra column that lists the location of the book by topic.
Check out the library's website for more information. http://www.annaporterpl.org/