Mercer County Library Blog

September 30 th is International Podcast Day, and in case you haven’t had a chance to listen, Mercer County Library System has had its very own podcast called “Behind the Books” since November of 2020. The podcast, which is hosted by two of the Hopewell Branch’s endearing staff members, Anna and Bob, features bi-weekly interviews with authors and MCLS staff members. The podcast started as a resource and outlet for patrons to interact with the library during the COVID-19 pandemic, and has continued to grow (over 100 episodes and counting!), inform and entertain its audience over the past four years. Each episode offers listeners the opportunity to get to know MCLS staff a little better and also hear some fun and interesting stories from well-known authors such as Dan Gutman, Fiona Davis, Renee Kurilla, Lyn Liao Butler, Saadia Faruqi, Steven Rowley, and many others! Have you ever thought about starting your own podcast? Read about Anna’s involvement with the “Behind the Books” podcast...

The upcoming presidential election is unique in many ways. We are living through history! Vice President Kamala Harris, the first woman to serve as Vice President of the United States, is also the first Black and Asian American to run for President of the United States. On the other side of the ballot, at 78 years old, former President Donald Trump is the oldest presidential nominee in U.S. history. If elected, he will be the second president to serve two nonconsecutive terms. (Grover Cleveland was the first.) And there’s so much more to know about both candidates!     To learn more about the Democratic candidate, read Harris’s memoir, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey , to hear in her own words what the Democratic nominee believes are our strengths and our similarities as Americans.   In Kamala’s Way: An American Life , author Dan Morain describes Harris’s professional rise from deputy district attorney to attorney general of the state of California and ...

I was fortunate to have been brought up in an intergenerational household with my maternal grandparents helping raise my brother and me after our parents divorced before my second birthday. The best years of my childhood were filled with an abundance of love. As a Youth Services Library Associate, I have the amazing job of dreaming up and running programs for youth in the library, so my decision to establish an intergenerational program seemed like an obvious one.  With a background in teaching college English, I have worked with adults of various ages and youth from babies to teens in the library. What if I could have a program where older children, tweens, and teens spent time with a special adult in their life and both created something together and independently?  At a time when kids make a natural shift for space of their own, it is all the more important to forge new connections with them.  Also, with the multitude of craft programs I have run in the last two years ...