Entertaining Non-Fiction Coming Soon!

It's been a while, but here I am again to tell you about something exciting happening at the library.

When Paula Coutts joined the library in late 2010, she told Sharon and me about a section in a library she'd used to work at:  ENF - Entertaining Non-Fiction.

We'd never heard of it, and Paula started to explain.  Non-fiction falls into two broad categories:  informative, and entertaining.  A book that contains recipes, instructions on tying your shoes, or general facts falls into the former.  The book may be interesting, and probably does contain valuable information, but is generally read for the purpose of learning rather than for enjoyment.

Entertaining non-fiction is different.  It's still non-fiction, and is still based on facts, but it's not boring.  Most of them tell a story and draw the reader in.  We've spent chunks of time over the last few months (the last few weeks in particular) pulling entertaining non-fiction books from our shelves so that they can be grouped together with a new, easy-to-see label added to their spines:

When you see this label, it means that the book should be entertaining, not just informative.  Here's a sample of the books we've pulled to create our entertaining non-fiction collection (thanks, Elliott, for picking most of these out to highlight!):

Lager heads - Paul Brent

• Fascinating history of the competition between Molson and Labatt in Canada, including the origins of Molson's "I Am Canadian" ad campaign and the ongoing competition for new products (dry, draft, and ice beers, etc.)

The Boy who harnessed the wind - William Kamkwamba

•  The story of an African boy who built his own working electricity generating windmill from spare parts he scrounged.

The Ice pilots - Michael Vlessides

• Describes the planes and pilots that fly for Buffalo Airways, an arctic airline, and the challenges they face in the frosty skies.

Sasquatch:  the apes among us - John Green

•  Explores the stories of the legendary Sasquatch and the people who've searched for it for years.

The Bin Ladens:  the story of a family and its fortune - Steve Coll

•  Still wondering what shaped a man like Bin Laden?  Wonder no longer!  This book talks at length about his family and its origins.

Stones into schools - Greg Mortenson

•  The author was revealed to have exaggerated/falsified his stories and was ordered to repay money to his charity, but the stories about establishing schools in Afghanistan still resonate strongly.

 The Promised land:  settling the west 1896-1914 - Pierre Burton

• The legendary Canadian author describes the settling of Canada's west with a series of stories about Canadians of all walks of life.

The Coming global superstorm - Art Bell

• When the stresses on the Earth are all released at once, what will happen?  According to this book, a storm of epic proportions!

Anyway, the ENF collection should be interesting, so please keep an eye out for it!

Library Rearranging 2.22

Greetings and welcome to another edition of "Pat Yourself and the Other Staff Members on the Back Jacob"

When Paula started at the library in November, she pointed out to Sharon and me (fairly early on) that the library was fairly dark.  We've got a decent amount of windows to let natural light in, but many of the shelves, the carpet, and the ceiling were all dark colours.  Painting the ceiling would be a huge job that would probably require the library to shut down for a few days.  Replacing the carpet (which hopefully will happen in the future) is another huge undertaking.  That left the shelves.

Paula asked a friend of hers to paint the library's green shelves a lighter colour to brighten up the library.  In the process of doing that, we rearranged a few things, and discussed rearranging more.  Ultimately, we removed one shelf section from the adult paperbacks, added more shelves to the remaining sections, and spaced out the remaining paperback shelves so they aren't as cramped.  When the paint dried on the first set of paperback shelves, we prepared to move the shelf to its new home against the front wall of the library.

To move that shelf, however, we needed to move the final shelf of junior paperback.  The discussion of how to move the shelves resulted in a plan to completely rearrange the left side of the library.  So last Friday (January 21st), Paula, Chris, Sharon, and I spent pretty much the entire day moving shelves.

As long as I've been here, we've had shelves in the children's section that stuck out from the wall and left a series of dead end aisles.  We changed it, and now we've got two long aisles of children's books running down the left side of the library.  There are still two shelves sticking out from the wall holding the junior fiction and most of the junior paperback, but they're spaced out better.

We moved the study carrel to the blank wall opposite the magazines, and it fits much better there.


So here's the view of the children's section along the front wall of the library.  The picture books run along the back wall and wrap around on the front left, the junior non-fiction run along both interior shelves, and junior paperback series run along the outside right shelves.

These shelves are the end of the children's books and hold the non-series junior paperback and the rest of the junior fiction.

All the rearranging opened up the left corner of the library further,  giving us room for a larger reading area and a new place for our sale books.

The library is brighter, more spacious, and no staff members suffered noticeable injuries in the process (though Sharon did complain of a broken nail).

We're still in the process of doing inventory, so I doubt we'll be doing much more rearranging in the short term.  But anything is possible, so stay tuned!

New Display for Audiobooks

The audiobook collection in our library hasn't been displayed very well in the past.  The laminated cards were held in a small box on the same piece of furniture that held the video and DVD cards.  When the audiobook cards were kept there, they looked ugly and were hard to browse.

I've been thinking about a better way to display them, and think I've come up with one.

To the left of the circulation desk we have a corkboard hung over top of an old doorway that dates back to the early days of the Rec Centre.  As of last week, this corkboard was just used to hold old pieces of paper like a thank you certificate from 2001.

I cleaned it off yesterday, and started printing smaller copies of the laminated cards for the audiobooks.  Now patrons can come in to the library, easily browse our audiobook collection, and pull the card off the wall for the audiobook they want to borrow.

Now, the impetus behind this project is our incoming youth audiobook collection (which I blogged about previously).  When the youth audiobooks come in, they'll be arranged on the lower half of this corkboard.

"But Jacob," you're thinking "there isn't enough room for many more audiobooks on that corkboard!"

You're right.

This corkboard is being used as a test audiobook display.  If it works well, helps audiobooks to circulate, and is liked by patrons, my plan is to buy a roll of cork and use the cork to cover one (or more) of the wall panels on the outside of the reference room, opposite the magazine racks.  Then we'll have a wall to display all of the library's audiobooks in an easy-to-browse way that doesn't take up much space.

But before we make that investment, I want to make sure that a corkboard display of audiobook cards will work.

So where do you come in?  Easy!  Borrow some audiobooks!