Welcome to Gaia! ::

You can't become a gnome. It's all biological. Also, there is no registry. No complete one anyway. Every now and then one of us might try to start one, but they eventually get bored and move on to more interesting pursuits. I think this person you talked to was probably talking about The GNOME project, an international effort to create an easy-to-use computer desktop environment built entirely from software considered free by the Free Software Foundation.

wow i nvr look at the date of these posts and yet i comment anyways

rofl rofl rofl rofl

There is a book called
Hector and the little people By Mary McGillis
http://marymcgillis.ca/

It involves gnomes and fairyfolk reconnecting with a community. It starts off with a bunch of kids taking garden gnomes from around their community and circling them around a water tower. They get caught by the cops for stealing. But after doing so a living Gnome comes to the house and asks the family for their assistance in retrieving some of his friends...from the police station.
It's an ok read. Directed more towards Teens than adults. It is a bit on the fantasy side, but touches on a number of concepts I've been learning about since my uncle introduced me to spiritualizm, astral plains and the supernatural.