The Hunt for New Ideas, part 2: Revenge of the New Idea

Library stacks.  Library shelving.  You can picture in your mind exactly what I'm talking about without me actually going out there and finding an image, right?  It hardly seems like something that would be subject to a "new idea" does it?  The humble book shelf and book stack has remained largely unchanged in public libraries for 150-odd years.  Here's what the stacks look like in the Hutchinson Public Library:

Storage, pure and simple.  What's hard to see here is how they are constructed.  Each section has a rectangular frame in the middle from which the shelves hang.  Like this:

This is not a bad way to do it.  It holds the shelves very securely, allows for long rows to be linked together, and is very sturdy.  However, one is limited in configuration because most of these systems don't work very well with different height frames hooked together - basically you can put together long lines of, for example, 7' high shelf stacks.

So along comes a company called Paragon with a new way of looking at library shelving.  At least it's new to me.  And I've been looking.  The shelving product is called Intuitive-IC and they allow a library to do one thing differently - mix up and combine shelf heights, work surfaces, and seating within the row of shelving.  Here's a picture:

If you look closely, you can see that the cantilever supports that hold up the shelves go from the front and back edges toward the middle of the shelves.  This allows all different heights of shelves to be put together in a row.  They have a short little YouTube video that shows some of the possibilities.

I think this might be a good choice for our art collection on the second floor since we need to replace the shelving there.  We need to be able to stack higher, but want the option of some low tops on which to set heavy books.  It is a collection that lends itself to browsing and sometimes it is easier to look through a few right there in the stacks before deciding which ones to check out.

As I go through the stack of papers and brochures I picked up at ALA Midwinter, I continue to find more and more good ideas and nifty new ways of looking at the same old library things!