Saturday, April 11, 2009

Perry Library, Gilbert, AZ



I've got the email and blog accounts. What I really want to do is write about my visit to the Perry Library in Gilbert, AZ; and here's my son walking in the front door.










Like Natomas and Franklin the Perry Library shares a campus with a high school, but is in a separate building. It's really a very nice, airy area and though it was pretty quiet when we went, it's big enough to be comfortable for a lot of users at one time. It's also very famous for NOT using Dewey Decimal Classification. That seems to work really well in the small, pop literature environment here in Gilbert. As you can see there are
faceouts, and attractive graphics throughout. Some of the shelving units were wheeled, but mostly stayed put. The openness and light gave the library an inviting feel.







I was able to visit with the branch manager Jennifer for a while. She took a few minutes to show me around and let me know some of the quirks of their building and patrons. For example, she really liked RFID systems, but felt their own installation was rather inaccurate and undetailed. It had only 5 bins to sort into. Four were labeled for library areas, one was labeled exceptions [There were a lot of exceptions]. By the way, their bar codes were on the back of the books - I really liked being able to see the entire front cover. Five self checks take care of most of the materials and are usually busy.






What the Perry Library is really famous for ( really famous ) is the lack of DDC numbers. Jennifer explained that the subject labeling system they use works very well in their small facility. I looked at the pet books - labeled pets, of course. There were 3 shelves more specifically labelled; dog, cat, horse. I was suprised how few horse books I saw there, since there are horses all over the area. Maybe the books were mostly checked out.






The book collection is oriented to the popular and current. Patrons are encouraged to request books from other branches (the Maricopa County Library District has 17 branches in total). There were about 8-12 shelves of requested books which I thought a lot for the size of the branch. They do deliveries much like SPL does.

Signage was visible and lively. The Teen Oasis is a separate room off the main area and well within sight of the desk (multi function, circ and reference) and the Newstand (periodical room) is right across from that desk. The FICTION sign is visible from the entry door clear across the room.












2 comments:

  1. Well, then write about your visit to the Perry Library; this IS your blog, you know!

    ReplyDelete
  2. talk about the bookstore model...

    ReplyDelete