Puerto Vallarta, Mexico - Two months ago, a group from Los Mangos Library took the opportunity to visit Entre Amigos, a wonderful cultural center in San Pancho, Riviera Nayarit. We've always admired and respected this very unique place where small miracles seem to take place at every moment. (If you haven't had the chance to visit, we strongly recommend it!)

Since our goal was to learn as much as we could from them, we decided to observe and absorb everything we could during the guided tour kindly offered by Executive Director, Nicole Swedlow. I took my pocket camera with me and proposed to photograph everything that could inspire us to implement improvements for our users at Los Mangos.

Just at the Entre Amigos entrance, we immediately noticed the very clear grid in which they present their weekly schedule using cards.

Upon return, we decided to transform one of the large partitions at the entrance of Los Mangos, to provide a similar service for our community, as soon as we were able to do so. Being so close to Costco, our first idea was to print our courses and workshops in 4×6 photo prints, color coded according to the category. We added the name of the instructor and a sticky gold star for those available for children.

To attach them, we decided to use regular wire clips, available at any office supply store, along with wood screws and washers. We created a column for each day we are open (Mon–Sat) and another one for special events that take place on individual weeks. This allows us to display the ongoing courses we offer during each academic cycle without changing them, focusing on updating special events on a weekly basis.

Once we put all the cards on the partition, we were the first to be amazed at the number of courses available at Los Mangos! "One thing is to have a printout at our desks, and a very different one is to display them all at once in this fashion," commented Executive Director, Adriana García.

Our new academic partition allows us to welcome every Los Mangos Library visitor with clear information about our courses and workshops available for children, teens and adults. Since we set it up a couple weeks ago, it's attracted just about everyone that has walked through our door.

We are thoroughly grateful to Nicole Swedlow and her Entre Amigos team for inspiring us to implement our own solution, and trust that further visits will continue to provide us with awesome ideas on how to improve the quality of our services. (And kudos to Mario Rosales, our Maintenance Chief, for a job well done!)