Mercer County Library Blog

                           This year, the West Windsor Branch was provided with a set of these wonderful, squiggly shelves for our board book collection, thanks to the generosity of the Friends of the West Windsor Library. The books in our board book collection circulate a lot. We can barely keep them on the shelves half the time! It only felt fitting to highlight them while also making the collection more accessible for smaller children. Board books are quickly becoming a library staple. According to Gail Cornwall at the School Library Journal, sales have been skyrocketing since 2010, and board books are “a solid hit with tots and sturdy sellers in the publishing industry” (Cornwall, 2023). Over 630 original board books were published in 2022 by just Penguin and their subsidiaries alone (Cornwall, 2023)! Now, that’s a lot of cardboard! But what makes board books so popular? Board books are a reliable, fun, and colorful way for early readers to be introduced to the realm of books!

R.E.M. was an American rock band from Athens, Georgia, formed in 1980 by drummer Bill Berry, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and lead vocalist Michael Stipe, all students at the University of Georgia. Their musical style has been described as alternative rock, college rock, folk rock, post-punk and new wave. Many writers have speculated that the band's name was derived from the phenomenon of “rapid eye movement,” but the band has never confirmed this. I first became aware of R.E.M. when I attended a multi-group concert in Philadelphia. The headliners were The Police (my favorite group). Also on the bill were Joan Jett, Madness and the (at that time) relatively unknown R.E.M. But I was so impressed by their music that they have become one of my favorite groups ever since. Altogether I have seen them in concert six times, and I own all their albums. After performing at small venues in Georgia and nearby, gaining a growing following, the band members dropped out of schoo

Interlibrary loan (ILL) is just one service the MCLS offers to all its patrons. We can get books, audiobooks on CD, and articles from all over the nation if the Mercer County Library System doesn’t happen to own them! I have been helping in the interlibrary loan office recently and have learned some fascinating things. We love our fellow New Jersey libraries! They make up the majority of libraries we interact with, both loaning to and borrowing from. There are hundreds of libraries in New Jersey (check out this great list from the New Jersey State Library) so the odds are usually pretty good that we can get an item from a library fairly local to us. Sometimes, though, we can’t get an item from a New Jersey library. We also borrow from and loan to libraries from all over the United States. The American Library Association has counted over 120,000 libraries in the U.S. so there are a lot of libraries to send requests to! Within a random span of less than 3 months, Mercer County Lib

  As a Star Wars fan and semi-frequent reader of “Wookieepedia” the Star Wars wiki, canon is something that comes up fairly often. What is it? The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms , fourth edition, defines “canon” as:   “A body of writings recognized by authority. Those books of holy scripture which religious leaders accept as genuine are canonical , as are those works of a literary author which scholars regard as authentic. The canon of a national literature is a body of writings especially approved by critics or anthologists and deemed suitable for academic study.” (p. 51) The first part of the definition is what we’re looking at today. Way back at the dawn of time (1977) the original Star Wars movie was released. Soon thereafter, others wanted to explore the worlds George Lucas created. What happened after Luke blew up the Death Star? Marvel Comics produced the comic adaptation of the film, and created their own tales. Science Fiction author Alan Dean Foster, writer o

When you need to know something at the library, or really need to know anything at all, the first place to stop should be the reference desk at one of the Mercer County Library System branches. The reference desk is staffed by knowledgeable people trained in the fine art of finding things out. While I do not work as a reference librarian myself, during my time at MCLS I’ve come to realize there are no questions too big or too small for those who staff the reference desks around Mercer County. I know the reference staff get their fair share of what we would call “normal” questions. They are constantly helping patrons find books, track down articles, sign up for programs, learn how to get books onto their electronic device, and many other library related tasks.  Either over the phone or in person, you’re likely to hear one of the reference librarians answering questions about the upcoming weather forecast, directions and hours of local stores, how to pay bills online, providing the resou

Mercer County Library System Teen Advisory Board members contribute to our library community in many ways. Some write book reviews that we share on the library’s GoodReads account. Please enjoy these recent reviews by TAB member Aubrey, who loves YA and general fiction. Find both the physical and eBook/eAudiobook versions of these titles at the library! The Notebook , by Nicholas Sparks The Notebook  is a novel I highly recommend if you're a fan of tearjerker romances. I personally felt that it was a comforting read, because I love the classic idea of “finding your way back to each other.” I do not typically read books from this time period, so it was extremely intriguing to read a novel that does not take place in the current day.  I found the 20th century time period interesting to read about because it made me consider how warfare and levels of discrimination (for various reasons) can affect teenagers and their day-to-day life. Seeing the way Noah and Allie try to navigate throu