This article features Naturita Community Library (NCL), winner of "LJ"'s 2011 Best Small Library in America Award, sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The library is the largest straw bale library in America. It sits on the western slope of the Rockies, across the Uncompahgre Plateau from the county seat in Montrose,…

Memoirs and autobiographies have been a wildly popular nonfiction genre for the past 20 years, ever since Frank McCourt and Mary Karr set the craze in motion with "Angela's Ashes" and "The Liar's Club", respectively. Memoirs have drawn fiction readers to the nonfiction shelves and elbowed their way into book discussion groups. In this confessional…

Can it be only two years, as Alan Jay Lerner once wrote, "since the whole [economic] rigmarole began"? Yet libraries have weathered to varying degrees the unreliability of funding, especially with regard to programming, materials, and hours. Money earmarked years ago is seeing construction through to conclusion; state support has helped out in…

What do a pink door, reading glasses, a website, and a Beetle Kill Pine ceiling have in common? Yes, readers will find them all in this collection of great design in libraries. But the reason they're featured is their important commonality: they were intentionally and thoughtfully placed in a library to meet people's needs or otherwise engage…

"Library Journal"'s new national rating of public libraries, the "LJ" Index of Public Library Service, identifies 256 "star" libraries. It rates 7,115 public libraries. The top libraries in each group get five, four, or three Michelin guide-like stars. All included libraries, stars or not, can use their scores to learn from their peers and improve…

Baking can be intimidating. Just ask all those contestants on "Top Chef" who would rather prepare Beef Wellington than bake a cake. But libraries can take the fear factor out of baking by putting together a solid collection of cookbooks that can help anyone master the sweeter side of the culinary arts or even serve as delicious armchair reading…

When Louise Schaper opened the new Fayetteville Public Library (FPL) in Arkansas in 2004, she brought the state's second LEED Silver-certified building to completion. The green building fulfilled a community expectation for sustainable innovation established through complex public dialog, and the library went on to become the "2005 LJ/Gale Library…

Beyond the sprawling Denver International Airport, there's little to put Adams County, Colorado, on the map. The region's light rail only stretches south, so Adams County, a mostly working-class zone to the northeast, has come late to growth. There's no central city; the community is dominated by strip malls, big-box stores, and new developments.…

The lyrics from the Ervin Drake song made famous by Frank Sinatra, "It Was a Very Good Year," kept coming to mind in 2010, despite the economy. While the quantity of works produced declined, and publishers suffered along with everyone else, there was no diminution in quality. With reduced budgets for collections, librarians were forced to make…

Self-service is a hit. From gas stations to banks to grocery stores--it has become table stakes for retailers who aim to satisfy an increasingly independent consumer. Libraries are no exception, and, in fact, with their card catalog past, they may well have been in the vanguard in enabling customers to find what they want on their own. Card…

Bill Schickling has spent a good chunk of his professional life at what is now Polaris Library Systems, shaping both the older Galaxy system and the newer Polaris integrated library system (ILS). When he joined the company as a programmer in 1987, it was still part of Gaylord, known mostly for its furniture and supplies division. Schickling was…

Despite the recent turmoil in the U.S. economy, most libraries that were tracked by "Library Journal" won their referenda at a rate just slightly lower than 2007. Nearly three-quarters of operating referenda passed. Building referenda under $10 million passed at a whopping 85%, with those over $10 million batting slightly better than…

As higher education confronts shortages in hungry times, will officials who previously viewed the library as a sacred cow think it's time for a barbecue? Don't light the charcoal yet. Interviews with chief academic officers and an online survey taken by over 130 leaders in academic affairs yield surprising results. It's no secret that academic…

This article features the University of Liverpool's arts and humanities library, which applies a new search tool to improve the user experience. In nearly every way imaginable, the Sydney Jones Library and the Harold Cohen Library--the university's two libraries that serve science, engineering, and medical students--support the lives of their…

With fancy new software developments and growth in both the richness of content and delivery options for information resources, the Database Marketplace 2010 is a feast for buyers. Unfortunately, institutional budget cuts may force more of a famine mentality--with belt-tightening for most, and only purchases that are life-sustaining being served…