Mercer County Library Blog

Hi all, Tech Guru here with a post about something very low tech. For as long as I can remember, my best friend and I have enjoyed watching baseball together. There are memories of afternoons on a phone with her while we both watch a Yankees game, summers on hard plastic seats watching Trenton Thunder games, a road trip to Fenway in a torrential downpour, subway rides to and from Yankee Stadium, and taking our Cubs-loving-parents to a Phillies-Cubs game at Citizens Bank Park. No matter where I watch a baseball game, I’m reminded about why I love the game so much. It makes you slow down and really be in the moment. Part of that is the low tech use of a pencil to keep score while watching the game. Over the years, I have tried my hand at keeping score, never getting past a K means a batter struck out swinging and a reverse K means the batter struck out while looking. You may be asking yourself why would someone need to keep score? There are digital screens everywhere telling you the s...

Dear Tech Guru, Why is it that when I am at the library, I can access the databases, but when I am home, I can’t access some of them? Late Night Database User Hi Database User, Some of the databases we provide come from the NJ State Library. These databases provide access based on geolocation, specifically locations within the state of NJ. If you’re having trouble with access, it’s because your computer or your smart device isn’t communicating to the database that you are in NJ. As personal security online has become a growing concern, computer users have asked for ways to prevent apps and websites from gathering information. One security concern is user location. You might see the popup when you go to a website or open an app that asks for your location. Let’s use an example of a website for a large store. You visit a website and look up an item and you want to see if they have it in your local store. If you have your location services turned off or have clicked “do not allow” wh...

Dear Tech Guru, I downloaded a document that I need to file with a company, but the document has to be edited before I can sign it and fax it back. Does the library have a subscription for Adobe Pro or Adobe Creative Cloud for editing PDF documents? Does the library have a faxing service? Signed, Ado be needing help Hi Ado be, The library only provides Adobe Reader on our public PCs. However, Adobe does make some of their tools available online including the PDF to Microsoft Word converter . You can use this tool for free without signing up for an account. Adobe offers trials of more of their services with a free account if you find you need to do more than just edit your file. Once you have converted the document, you can edit it in Microsoft Word on our PCs. The quality of the original PDF will determine how clean the Word document appears. Once you have the file open in Word it is easy to edit the document. After you’ve made your changes, you can save the document as a Word f...

Dear Tech Guru, Recently a friend shared a tweet: There are two types of people. Those who delete the question mark and everything to the right of it in shared URLs and those who have no idea what I’m talking about. I’m one of those people who have no idea what the tweet is talking about. What is everything to the right of the question mark, and should I delete it? Signed, U__R__L__ Dear U__R__L__ Great question! Many of us know that a URL is a web address that will take us to a webpage. For example, if you type “mcl.org” into a search browser’s address bar, it will take you to the library’s website. This simple URL is called a domain; everything after the domain is directions to the correct file or page on a website. Take, for example, this page with information on Women’s History Month programs - mcl.org/womens-history-month/ .  Everything between the two forward slashes (/) tells the web browser which specific page to direct you to. If you wanted to sign up for one of tho...