Mercer County Library Blog

As the weather warms and we recover from a very cold and snowy winter, adults and children alike are excited to get outside and enjoy the great outdoors. Warmer weather means playing, exploring, and enjoying the amazing natural world around us. Going for walks, digging in the garden, and smelling the flowers help kids engage with nature and each other. Whether your child loves getting muddy in the backyard or prefers looking for flowers, there are so many ways to encourage a love of the outdoors. Children can get messy, smell the breeze, and explore the sensory feast of a backyard walk while sparking their curiosity. Whether you plan to stick close by or go further afield, Mercer County Library System can get your family’s outdoor experiences jump-started at your local branch. Books like  The Wildest Thing  by Emily Winfield Martin celebrate children who love the wild and immersing themselves in wild exploration.  Fairy Walk  by Gaia Cornwall offers a story of whol...

BookCon, a two-day event held at the Javits Center in New York City, is a convention that focuses on bringing the reading community together. Readers, publishers, and authors come together and eat, sleep, and breathe all things books. The first BookCon was in 2014, and the previous BookCon event was back in 2019. There were plans for one in 2020, but it was cancelled because of the pandemic. However, it was announced in late 2025 that the Con was back in action and would once again be held at the Javits Center in April 2026. My coworker, Alyssa, and I agreed we HAD to go! And somehow (pure luck) we were able to buy tickets on the first day they went on sale. It’s good that we did, because about 30 minutes later, both Saturday and Sunday tickets were sold out. Once those tickets were secured? Game. On. We mapped out the day to ensure we’d be able to visit author signings, panels, and booths. We even created bookmarks and keychains with book quotes on them during our spare time at hom...

Do you have your digital photos printed? Use an actual print camera to take pictures that need to be developed? Do you develop and process your own film? In the digital age, it can be all too simple to just tap the button on our smart phone. We take pictures that linger in the digital ether and never get printed in a physical format. Sometimes they never even get looked at again. When you have thousands of pictures on your phone—family, pets, vacations, that beautiful flower, or your daughter’s very first bike ride—it’s easy to just let them melt into the background of your mind. All the experiences of our lives that we deem worthy of remembering are so quick to forget. During my undergraduate days, I focused on art and attended several photography courses. I loved it. I would bring my Canon Rebel G with me everywhere, taking a picture of whatever struck me as interesting at that moment. I learned to develop my own film and spent hours in the photography lab in the darkroom. When I st...

Do you ever feel like you’re being watched? These days, security cameras capture you on street corners, generative AI remembers things about you, and third-party cookies track you across the Internet. The library offers a number of resources that will help you understand more about these important topics. In Means of Control , journalist Byron Tau explores how the U.S. government takes advantage of all the data collected about consumers on the Internet. “Recommendations” on social media feel eerily targeted and advertisements are specifically curated to your desires and purchasing behaviors. Beyond that, generative artificial intelligences such as ChatGPT, ClaudeAI, Google Gemini, and Grok are proliferating fast, with 62% of U.S. adults stating that they interact with generative AI at least once a week. In More Everything Forever , astrophysicist Adam Becker discusses how genAI companies and the billionaires who fund them do not always have our best interests in mind, valuing technol...

What's Happening at MCLS: May 2026 Here are some of the events and programs from around the Mercer County Library System for the month of May. For a complete list of events at your local branch, visit the MCLS Events Calendar . This May, MCLS branches are filled with programming celebrating Mother's Day, Star Wars Day, the 250th anniversary of American independence, Mental Health Awareness and Meditation Month, and Asian American, and Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Join us for crafts, storytimes, meditation workshops, history talks, cultural celebrations, and more throughout the month. For Kids Mother's Day Planting: Spider Plants Saturday, May 2, 3:00 pm West Windsor Branch Mother's Day Craft for Toddlers Monday, May 4, 3:00 pm Ewing Branch Crafternoon: Mother's Day Cards Monday, May 4, 4:00 pm Tuesday, May 5, 4:00 pm Hopewell Branch Mother's Day Craft for School Age Monday, May 4, 4:15 pm Ewing Branch Star Wars Jedi Trai...

Happy Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Month! Did you know that the origin of AANHPI Heritage Month dates to 1977? This is when a joint resolution was passed by Congress designating a seven-day period beginning May 4 as Asian/Pacific American Heritage Week to recognize the history and contributions of Asian Pacific Americans in the United States. President Jimmy Carter signed it into law in 1978. In 1990, President George H.W. Bush expanded the week-long celebration to a month-long celebration. Then in 1992, the official designation of May as Asian/Pacific Islander Month was signed into law. The month of May was chosen to honor two important events: 1) the arrival of the first Japanese immigrant in the United States on May 7, 1843, and 2) the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad on May 10, 1869. Later in 2021, President Joe Biden changed the name to Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month to recognize and include the many divers...