The Daily Grin

Check out Booksprouts: “Start a club, join a club, invite your friends, choose a book, and discuss!” (this site is not affiliated with the Cheshire Public Library; I was just passing it along).

Gas prices and airfare got you grounded this summer?  Check out our “Travel Close to Home” display in our lobby for ideas on local excursions that won’t break the bank.

Check out a museum pass for free and have a fun and memorable day with the family.

And don’t forget, our films on DVD and VHS go out for 7 days, and there’s no limit to the number you can check out.  Have a family film night at home, or join us here at 104 Main Street for Family Movie Night on Tuesday evenings in July and August.  Visit our website for more information on free library programs and services for all ages.

“Please schedule programs for children before 5 p.m.”

I’m not sure whether this was a suggestion from someone with or without children. We try and schedule family programs at times when families are most likely to be together, and this includes evenings and weekends (and also mornings and afternoons).

Summer is our busiest time of year — we loaned more than 3,300 items on Monday, July 7, which is a record for us. However, if you’re looking for a quieter time at the library, please take a look at our website at www.cheshirelibrary.org and click on the ‘Events’ tab. Our interactive calendar will list when library programs are scheduled, so you can plan around our peak periods.

“We love the ‘bounceback’ notices!”

We’re so glad to hear that.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with what a ‘bounceback’ notice is, here goes:

If you sign up for email notifications from the Cheshire Public Library, you will receive an email (from the address “bounceback@cheshirelibrary.org”) a few days before your library materials are due, which can be helpful in avoiding fines.

Sign up for email notification by giving your email address to any staff member, and save that library fine money for gas and groceries instead…

This just in: Our Fiscal Year 2007-2008 loans were up 12% over Fiscal Year 2006-2007!

The numbers:

Total Loans: 445,652

Adult Materials Loaned: 266,916

Teen Materials Loaned: 21,035

Children’s Materials Loaned: 155,930

Audiobook Downloads: 1771 (included in totals, above)

Door Count: 195,985

Last year, the Cheshire Public Library ranked #20 (out of 169 municipalities) in the state of CT in terms of the number of items loaned. While we won’t have figures from other libraries until the State Library publishes them this winter, we expect to have moved up a couple of rungs — many other libraries have anecdotally reported decreasing circulation (loans).

Stop by the library today and check out one of our “Modern Scholar” sets on CD.  Great professors lecture on topics such as the following:

“Take Me Out to the Ballgame: a History of Baseball in America”

“The People and the Ballot: a History of American Political Politics”

“Islam and the West”

and much more!

The “Modern Scholar” series is available in the lobby of the library.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, The average worker in Connecticut spends 24.1 minutes traveling to work each day, just a shade under the national average of 24.3. Of course, that’s not counting being stuck in traffic jams because of construction, accidents, and other forces of nature. Whether you drive to work, walk, bicycle, or take the bus or train, a good book can make the time fly.

You probably already know that the library has a wide selection of audiobooks on CD and tape. Are you also aware of the many books that we have ready to be downloaded to your WMA/MP3 player, burned to CDs, or simply played from your computer? And we even offer a few e-books that can be read as PDF files.

To start, visit our downloadable audiobook catalog by clicking on the link over on the right side of the screen on our website’s homepage. You can start browsing the collection by categories: Fiction, Non-Fiction, Children’s and Young Adult, Recently Returned, New Arrivals, and Always Available. You can search by title or author, and you can ask to see only titles that are available. Or you can start with one of the guided tours or tutorials offered.

In order to download audiobooks and e-books, you will first need to install OverDrive Media Console 3 onto your computer. OverDrive is a small application that manages your checked out materials and downloads them to your portable audio device. (The task of burning CDs is handed off to Windows Media Player.) Then you simply start adding books to your cart, proceed to checkout, and start OverDrive in order to download the books you have checked out. Some downloadable audiobooks in our collection are always available, but others may be checked out by only one person at a time. If the audiobook you want is checked out, you can put a hold on it, and you will be notified by email when it is available for you to download. Audiobooks expire 14 days from the time they were checked out.

Portable audio devices come in several sizes, and if you are buying your first player, you may be wondering how much memory you will need to buy. As a rule, the item record in the audiobook catalog will list the filesize in kilobytes (KB) and the duration in hours and minutes. For example, The Story of King Arthur and His Knights, by Howard Pyle, is 157300 KB and 10 hours, 56 minutes long, or roughly 14300 KB per hour of listening time. 14300 KB is equal to 14.3 MB (megabytes), so a 512 MB MP3 player can hold about 35.8 hours of listening pleasure.

This service is intended for home use only, and you will need your 14-digit Cheshire Public Library card number. While you may browse this collection and checkout titles at the library, you will not be able to download the files to a library PC. Apple iPods are not supported yet, but will be later this year.

Detailed instructions are provided at the Library Connection Downloadable Audiobook Catalog, and we’re here to help you if you have any questions.

The Sarajevo Haggadah is a 14th century illuminated codex containing the text, hymns, and Torah readings for the Passover Seder. Created during La Convivencia—”the Coexistence”—when Jews, Muslims, and Catholics in Spain lived together in relative peace, it was carried to Sarajevo by Jews who were expelled from Spain in 1492. The Haggadah was acquired by the Sarajevo Museum in 1894, and preserved as a testament to the long presence and continued endurance of Jews within the Ottoman Empire. It was almost destroyed during the bombardment of Sarajevo in 1994 but was miraculously saved by two devoted staff members of the demolished museum where it was housed.

Geraldine Brooks’s new novel, People of the Book, tells the fictionalized story of the Sarajevo Haggadah in two parallel threads. One story travels forward in time to tell of Hanna Heath, a rare book conservator who is called on to rebind the newly rediscovered codex. The second story travels back in time, anchored by the clues that Hanna has found in the previous binding: a butterfly’s wing, a white hair, a wine stain, missing clasps, and grains of salt. Along the way we meet the people who over the centuries saved the Haggadah from certain destruction, and the artists who created this extraordinary volume.

Librarians, of course, are one particular type of “people of the book.” If you are one of the “people of the book,” in whatever sense you take that to mean, then you will certainly enjoy this latest novel from the author of “March,” “Year of Wonders,” and “Nine Parts Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women.”

Library users on the Lower Level - home to the non-fiction collection, the Reference Department and public Internet computers - have commented on the increased noise level in recent months. In an effort to make a quieter space in the library we are now asking people who use the Lower Level to set their cell phones on vibrate and to conduct their conversations on the Main Level. Bill

Do you know about all the newspapers, magazines, and other research materials available at your fingertips? Your Connecticut library card is your key to articles from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Hartford Courant, Christian Science Monitor, and the AP Photo Archive. You can find articles from journals and magazines on science, health, history, biographies, and business. You can find your physician’s profile, the history of your town, and the demographics of a town where you’re thinking of setting up a business. You can find books and other materials at public libraries across Connecticut, as well as at academic libraries like Yale, Wesleyan, Trinity, and Connecticut College. And best of all, you can search all of these resources with just one click, because they’re all included in iCONN, Connecticut’s research engine.

You can reach iCONN from home or from the library’s public computers. (At home you’ll need your CT library card to gain access.) You can go to iCONN directly–just click on one of the links in this post–or you can use the link on the Cheshire Public Library website. Just click on the tab named “Research a Topic.”

Happy browsing!