In the past three years, the Union County Carnegie Library (UCCL) in South Carolina has "been transformed." The library board, selected by the county supervisors, knew something had to be done. In October 2005, the board hired Nancy E. Rosenwald as UCCL director. Longing to get back to South Carolina from western Connecticut, Rosenwald was immediately attracted to the job posting by the photo of UCCL's gem of a beaux arts Carnegie building. "I saw the picture and decided I wanted to work there," she says. The resulting three-year transformation of UCCL was total. It changed what one observer called a kind of "selective club warehousing an out-of-date collection and occasionally functioning computers" into the "inclusive, modern, service-oriented, community center" the UCCL board sought. This article features the UCCL as the winner of LJ's 2009 Best Small Library in America Award, sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The library is located in the city of Union (pop. 8,973) and serves a number of smaller communities in the surrounding rural area.