To the Editor:

As I join our community and my colleagues at the Princeton Public Library in preparing for the grand reopening of the library’s second floor on Saturday, March 25, I want to take a moment to thank the Princeton University Library for its generous partnership in serving our cardholders during our renovation. We were committed to remaining open throughout the renovation and to offering the easiest possible access to the collection while the second floor was closed to the public. Princeton University Library made that possible by offering us storage, at no charge, in their facilities and supporting our efforts to page books upon request. This was a significant service to our cardholders, making the 30,000 volumes in the library’s adult nonfiction collection available typically within just a day or two after we received a request.

Princeton University Library’s generosity also allowed my colleagues to spend the last several months completing an ambitious and innovative reorganization of the collection into “neighborhoods,” a new system that combines the best of bookstore organizational systems with the best of our tried and true Dewey Decimal System. We have invested a tremendous amount of time, attention, and our collection budget into ensuring that the books in the collection meet the needs of this community, and we are excited to share the reorganized adult nonfiction collection with everyone when we reopen the floor. We have never had a collection that was more likely to exceed everyone’s expectations and we have never before been able to make specific titles easier or more appealing to browse or find. The collection itself has never looked better, and we could not have completed this vital work without our friends and colleagues at the Princeton University Library.

I look forward to seeing everyone at the ribbon cutting at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, March 25, and during the day-long celebration that will follow.

Brett Bonfield

Executive Director, Princeton Public Library