Library or helper?

[eluser]bennyhill[/eluser]
I am having trouble managing my left sidebar navigation for my product catalog. The navigation is two levels deep and appears across all pages. I am currently loading a "leftnav_view" on all pages but to get this to function it requires many database queries to get what department the user is in as well as what category and product. Doesn't seem like elegant, reusable code.


Should I make a Library or a Helper Class to manage this better? Any tips on how others have handled a basic navigation?