On Tuesday, May 1 at 10:00AM, the Meredith Public Works Department will be removing a time capsule from the Meredith Public Library lawn, 91 Main Street, that was buried in 1968.  

"The time capsule will be officially opened on July 4, 2018 at 2:00PM at the Chase House.  The Common Man is donating an ice cream social for the first one hundred people.  Carl Johnson, Jr. will be emceeing the opening and we will have a slideshow displaying events from Meredith's 200th Anniversary in 1968," said Meredith Public Library Director and Time Capsule Committee Chair Erin Apostolos.

The Time capsule was buried in 1969 as the final celebration of Meredith's 200th anniversary in the previous year.  Citizens of Meredith in 1968 chose to put items in the time capsule that largely commemorated the events celebrated in the 200th.  Those events will be explained at the July 4 opening.

"We are also inviting everyone who was present when the time capsule was buried in 1968 to the library lawn at 1PM on July 4 for a group photo and to escort the capsule to its official opening at the Chase House," said Jonathan James, Chair of the Meredith Select Board and member of the Time Capsule Committee who will be donating the use of one of his antique vehicles for the occasion.

The time capsule is being removed on May 1 because the Friends of the Library will be planting a festive Red, White and Blue garden to help commemorate Meredith's 250th anniversary. Since the time capsule is currently in the garden bed, it will need to be removed prior to the planting of the garden so as not to disrupt it.  It will be securely stored in one of the Town's vaults.  

The library is also inviting anyone who was involved in the 200th anniversary of the Town in 1968 to contact Linda Hough at the library.  We are looking for people who might be interested in a short interview about their experience as part of an Oral History Project.  These interviews will be transcribed and then placed into the new time capsule which will be opened at Meredith's 300th anniversary.  Please call 279-4303 or email us.

The Dewey Decimal System. Taught to most of us sometime in elementary school, is a numeric way of finding non-fiction books on the shelves of libraries. There is an organizational method to those numbers, seemingly cryptic except to those in the library-know, but not very user friendly to those wishing to browse our shelves of non-fiction.

Some public libraries have decided to switch to the bookstore model of organizing books, where words such as TRAVEL replace the Dewey number 910, HISTORY replace 930-940 & GARDENING replace 630 to make their shelves more user friendly.

After some debate, we at the Meredith Public Library decided to experiment with switching some of our popular non-fiction collections to the bookstore model (called BISAC) to see what our faithful library patrons think of it. Joyce has been working tirelessly researching BISAC and making the switch and so far has completed Travel, History, Cooking and Gardening.

So for example in our Cooking section, all cookbooks will have the main heading of COOKING on their spine label. Then there are subheadings. So if you are looking for Italian cookbooks, the spine will look like:

Taking a trip across the pond? The spine label would look like this:

Need to learn about Germany's past? The spine label would look like this:

We are still working on the best way to organize the shelves since most of our books are still in Dewey and it makes it confusing to see both systems being used. We are still working out some kinks. New non-fiction books, regardless of their spine label, are still shelved with new non-fiction on the main floor.

So, we welcome your feedback. What are your thoughts on using the bookstore model over Dewey? Would you like to see us switch all of our non-fiction books over to the bookstore model of change back to Dewey?

We are looking for ways to make our collection more accessible to everyone, so your input would be most appreciated. While checking out your books, please give your opinion at the front desk and this information will be forwarded to me.

-- Erin Apostolos, Library Director.