Organizing a Small Library

In September 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement spread to my small city. For 3 months, dozens of protestors camped out in a downtown park. At the camp, they discussed social issues and held open meetings to come up with solutions. Five people met at this camp and decided to keep the movement going by opening up a community space and café. Their mission is to provide local, sustainably sourced food and beverage in an open, safe space for the city’s progressive community; a place to gather and continue the work of social justice, community-building and service to each other and the planet.

Inside the space is a collection of progressive and radical literature. In the beginning, this collection was unorganized. As a frequent customer, I had developed a rapport with the worker-owners. I mentioned that I was a Library Science student, and interested in organizing their collection. They gave me full reign, and now I am their Library Coordinator.

This position has proved to be challenging. While I have worked in a library before, I have never had the experience of establishing one from scratch.  My library science education has provided me with a foundation of knowledge to work with. First, we established a collection development policy. Because the library accepts donations, we often receive many books that do not fit the space’s mission. This policy establishes what types of books we will and will not accept. (Books that do not fit in with the mission are always donated to another non-profit organization.) From there, we decided which categories of books we wanted to feature. Some of these categories include: Social Action, Gender Studies, Environmentalism, and Food Politics. 

Once we set up physical space and shelved them by topic, the next step was to create an online catalog. Without any funds for the library, I needed to come up with a free or low cost solution. I found this solution in the website, LibraryThing (www.librarything.com). This free online tool allows you to easily create an online catalog of your own. In addition to fields for ISBN, book title, and author, users can enter in their own tags to describe their collections. We used tags to label each book by what category it was shelved under. 

Our circulation policy is an honor system. We keep a sign out book for patrons to write their name, what books they are checking out, that day’s date, and their phone number or email. We ask that the books be returned within a month’s time. So far this policy has been respected by our community. While the honor system has worked for us, other small libraries might need to come up with a different circulation policy that better accommodates their needs.

For more information about setting up a small special library, please check out these links:

·        

          Setting Up a Library: A Resource Guide - The American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/tools/libfactsheets/alalibraryfactsheet16

·         Fresh Start: How To Organize Your Personal Library – Apartment Therapy
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/how-to-organize-your-library-164127

·         How to Organize a Home Library (video) – Howcast

http://www.howcast.com/videos/241548-How-to-Organize-a-Home-Library