The Second Floor Librarians

March is here which means spring break and time to plan summer trips. Did you know the 2011 guidebooks for the U.S. and countries around the world are now here and you can check them out?

The library will be closed on Monday January 17th in observance of the holiday honoring the late Civil Rights leader, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  This year (the 25th anniversary of the holiday) a website has been setup by the Corporation for National and Community Service highlighting ways people can celebrate the life of [...]

With all of the technical difficulties during the past couple of weeks it has been a strong reminder to me that communication is a big part of our business. We want to be available in person at the library, but also we want to be where you are, and enable you to contact us in [...]

Did you do a transaction at the library or on our website on Wed. Dec. 29th? If so, the record of your transaction has been lost, due to our computer failure that happened on Thursday, December 30th. This means that if you placed a hold, checked out an item, returned an item, paid a fine, [...]

It looks like we are back up and running! The catalog is working and access to your account online is also available. Thanks to everyone for your patience!

Traveling this season? Our website now has a travel page to help you find travel resources at the library. You’ll find the page linked from our Research page at thebestlibrary.net/research.

So it’s Halloween on Sunday. I like Halloween, but I don’t like scary things. Horror books, movies? No thanks! Not for me. My favorite thing about Halloween is the smell of candle-warmed pumpkin – it brings back so many fun memories, but it sure isn’t spooky. So for that reason, I can’t recommend any particular [...]

You may have noticed the red bar that runs across our homepage. There is a ton of amazing information that hides just below the surface of the red bar. And not in a creepy way, but in an amazing, “wow I didn’t know that was there!” way. A lot of people use the red bar [...]

This week is Banned Books Week, a week to raise awareness about the importance of the freedom to read. Our blog post for BBW last year was quite popular, probably due to its attention-grabbing (and true!) headline: “42% of the top 100 novels of the 20th Century have been banned or challenged.”

Did you know that 60,071 items were checked out in July?  1,225 audio books were checked out in June, and 359 e-books downloaded. These statistics are useful in showing how well-used the library is, to find out which materials are the most popular, and to track which days and months of the year are busiest.  [...]