The Vashon Library will open its doors two hours early next week to offer resources and assistance to those affected by the recession.

Books and other materials of special interest will be on display, and classes designed to help people navigate the best path forward will be offered each morning.

All of the 44 libraries in the King County Library System (KCLS) will participate in what has been an exhaustive effort to compile library and community resources in four main categories: recent job loss, searching for a job, small business struggles and financial problems.

As a library in a small community, the Vashon Library could have tackled only one of the topics, but it chose to offer information relating to them all, according to Hester Kremer, Vashon’s branch manager.

“We are trying to make everything available that a big library would,” she said. “It will be an interesting week for staff and those that come in. We will all be learning a lot.”

The first class in the series, “Excel, Level 1,” will meet at 9:30 a.m. Monday, May 4, and again at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, May 6. Excel is Microsoft’s popular spreadsheet program, useful for managing the finances of both homes and businesses, Kremer said.

“Online Job Search Tools” will meet at 9 a.m. Tuesday and Thursday, May 5 and 7. Nancy Morgan will lead the class in looking at job search sites, setting up job alerts and how best to use keywords in job searches.

Human resources specialist Michelle Orsini will offer “Interview Skills” at 9:30 a.m. Friday, May 8. Included will be information on researching both the position and the company for the best fit possible.

When the classes are being offered, librarians will be on hand to work with individuals interested in other topics. Part of what they will be able to offer patrons is assistance navigating the new “Look to Your Library” section on the KCLS Web site, which highlights the four categories and offers online resources, book resources and a printable resource list for each one. In the “Just Laid Off” category, for example, the online resources include information on coping with a job loss, how to file for unemployment, information on worker retraining, free career workshops, exploring a new career and veterans’ benefits.

The classes and the Web site information are intended to benefit anyone hurting from the recession, from those new to the job market to seasoned professionals who have suddenly found themselves out of work, according to Marsha Iverson, a public relations specialist with KCLS.

Many of the resources compiled were already at the library, Iverson said, but now they are organized differently, and community resources are included and well organized, too.

The project was a large undertaking for the library system; Iverson estimates it took 25 to 30 people four months to pull all the resources together.

“With so many people needing them, we wanted to help them find them,” she said.

For more information, see www.kcls.org.