The Good Library Guide was inspired by the exciting process of choosing U.S. public libraries to be included in Heart of the Community: The Libraries We Love.

As a library reference publisher, Berkshire has always valued libraries and designed its publications to be used by students and professionals within the walls of school, public, and university libraries. But until we launched this project we didn't realize just how very much people care about them, and what a variety of libraries exist.

Because Heart of the Community covers only public libraries in the United States and Canada, it became clear that we needed to develop a separate project to provide information about all types of libraries. That's how the idea of a different book and website evolved.

This project will enable libraries to post information about their services, historical significance, special collections, and reference services in a central location. Users—and the amazing group of library devotees we've uncovered through the Libraries We Love project—will be able to submit their favorite libraries as well as add comments and ratings. We will use the information provided to select libraries for inclusion in the books we will publish (in separate U.S. and U.K. editions)

The launch of the Good Library Guide website is a transatlantic venture, and we are eager to collect reviews of libraries elsewhere in the world, too.

We've followed some of the recent discussion in the U.K. press about the public library service and been impressed by the energy and commitment of Tim Coates, former managing director of Waterstone's, who wants to see libraries become as inviting and attractive as bookshops are today. Tim is outspoken and also has many practical ideas for library management and presentation. We've offered him this blog in order to create a lively venue with frank discussion of the challenges that face libraries and the creative ways library leaders, managers, friends of libraries, and members of the public cope with these mounting challenges.

We'll be collaborating with other organizations as we undertake this new celebration of good—and great!—libraries. Competition to get into both the U.S. and U.K. Good Library Guides will be intense, generating lots of discussion, we hope, about just what makes a library successful.

The Guides will be detailed entries about the best libraries of all types: public, academic, private, and government. We will emphasize libraries that cater to a range of users, rather than those with narrowly focused holdings, but there will no doubt be a few superb specialist libraries, too.

We'll be commissioning inspections by anonymous visitors, too.

Our goal is to provide much more information about these important resources sources than is now generally available, together with honest assessments that will help people choose, and use, a wider variety of libraries. If you're traveling and want to see the beautiful historic libraries that are scattered through small towns and villages as well as in city neighborhoods, you'll turn to The Good Library Guide. If you're moving, you can check out the libraries near your new home.

The Good Library Guide rating system is designed to highlight the qualities that characterize the great libraries of the twenty-first century. See our draft Manifesto for details.

The Good Library Guide submission and review system, for both the United Kingdom and United States, will be online by Autumn 2006. In the meantime, we welcome comments and especially look forward to people who would like to volunteer as Good Library Guide inspectors. This is a volunteer activity that will be a great contribution to libraries internationally. Volunteers will be credited in our published books (though we won't include photographs to preserve your anonymity) and will receive five free copies of each publication they contribute to. For information, write to rachel AT berkshirepublishing DOT com.