In these difficult economic times, everyone is on the lookout for savings. This author, an adult services librarian at New City Library in New York, has spent the last two years implementing small-scale open source and freeware replacements where proprietary or paper solutions once ruled. While none of these projects is individually revolutionary,…

A halo of signs, some stuffed into thick plastic sheaths while others curled under yellow tape, cluttered the service desks of the New City Library. They bleated out messages of closings, procedures, and warnings. Their number undermined their cause. All too often a customer would ask a question that was answered by the very sign they had pushed…