205. Nobles County Library, Worthington, MN

I entered the kids area to the left from the lobby. Kids have a colorful fabric puppet theater, a cozy couch by the big windows, toys, and many book and media sets. Older children seem to have an especially large non-fiction collection. An open area with tables and chairs made me wonder if perhaps there had recently been a program; there was a "pushed back" look that gave me this idea. Several small children were present when I was there; one who could not have been more than three years old greeted me nicely and showed me the book he had chosen. There was a lively, energetic, unhushed but controlled feeling in this space.

Back issues of periodicals are in boxes with slanted sides; I'm sure these have a specific name, but I can't find them in the Demco catalog. Anyway, what impressed me was a library book pocket glued to the front of each box, with a card indicating the title and year of the publication. This simple method allows boxes to be "relabeled" by simply changing the card. Slick!

New books, papers, and current periodicals are in a "living room" browsing area with windows. The "coffee table" looks like a pile of three enormous books, Canturbury Tales on top.

The Reference collection is in a separate corner with a desk for the librarian by the entrance. Some of the oldest reference books had DDS numbers on the spine that looked as if they might have been done with transfer paper and a woodburning pen, as I used to mark books long ago! [To be clear, these are classic reference books, and it is appropriate that they are "old."] This area of the library also has Spanish books and media, many audio materials for learning English, and a collection of large print books. There's a microfilm reader and files of newspapers back to at least 1892, a real treasure for research. I saw four or five public computers, and of course wi-fi is available.

For more information, go to http://nclibrary.org/.

9/27/2013, car