The Hays Public Library’s Youth Services is excited to introduce Neighborhoods, a new layout in the Children’s Department. Youth Services will hold a Grand Opening for Neighborhoods on Monday, November 25 at 10:30 a.m.

With over 4,000 books in the Children’s collection, staff members wanted to make it easier for children to find exactly what they are looking for. A survey was created to find how they could better serve their patrons. It showed that children like to look up books according to the topic rather than the author. Thirteen neighborhoods were created to correspond to the most popular book topics that children check out. Each topic will be color coded as well as listed in the catalog according to their Neighborhood.

Neighborhoods include: Things that Go, Learning Time, Wordless, Favorite Friends, Dinosaurs, Growing Up, Everyday Pets, Once Upon a Time, Popular, Holiday, Look and Find, Board, and Foreign Language.

The Grand Opening will include a ribbon cutting followed by cake and punch. Staff members will be available all day for tours of Neighborhoods and to show patrons how to find books in the online catalog.