Mercer County Library Blog

During Teen Read Week libraries around the country promote reading and books for teens. This year's theme is “Books with Beat" celebrating books about music, about making your own music, And about poetry. Some of our branches are even marking this week with special events: At Ewing Bring in your MP3 players or iPods, and share your playlist! From your list, we will create poetry, and set it to music, Monday the 17th until Thursday the 22nd at 5 p.m. Light refreshments! Sponsored by the Friends of the Library! Teens read to preschoolers, October 20th, 4 p.m. Teens will receive one hour of community service At Lawrence Contest!! Teens can write a paragraph, a blog entry, a poem, or create a piece of artwork about any book of poetry or book about music (fiction or nonfiction). Entries should be submitted to a youth librarian with name, age, and phone # any time during the week of 10/17 – 10/23. Winners will be chosen at random and will be able to choose a grab-bag prize....

September 2010 marks the second anniversary of the tumultuous financial crisis of 2008 the undercurrents of which had been brewing since early 2007. It was a time of intense financial upheaval, a time when financial giants like Lehman Brothers and Wachovia crumbled, and AIG the country’s largest insurer of Banks was on the verge of collapse. The shock waves have reverberated to all corners of the world and in the past two years the dynamics of the global economic system have been rewritten. This month’s picks analyze the events that led to this catastrophic financial collapse and point to what directions the future will likely hold for the world economy. On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System by Henry Paulson The former chairman of Goldman Sachs and U.S. Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson’s gripping memoir of the financial crisis takes the reader to the fascinating drama that was unfolding behind the scenes in September2008 to avert what could...

September is Library Card Sign-up Month, and the Mercer County Library System wants to make sure that your children have the smartest card of all – a library card. Observed since 1987, Library Card Sign-up Month is a time when the American Library Association (ALA) and libraries across the country remind parents that a library card is the most important school supply of all. Just to name a few resources, our library provides: Access to research databases from home for term papers Books for school reports AND pleasure reading Downloadable audiobooks and eBooks CDs and DVDs for check out Myriad events and programs for all ages! For more information on how to sign up for a library card, please contact one of our nine branches or visit our website . -Anna, Hopewell Branch

So, what do you do as a librarian when all kinds of information moves from the print world to the digital one? One instinct may be to kill the printer making a bazillion copies of webpages to squirrel away in a file someplace a little safer than an anonymous server out in the ether. Most of us, however, are happy that a few technology companies have come together to create the Internet Archive (IA) to store and organize all kinds of digital information from the web. Established in 1996 as a non-profit group, the IA has a very thorough mission statement and set of goals that are geared toward preserving a static copy of a publishing form that can change by the minute, so that researchers and the general public can access this valuable information even after it disappears from a website. You can even sign up for a free account and bookmark your favorite material on the site. But even if you aren't doing any serious research, this is a great site to explore and one you may go to and...

Converting Text into a Table and vice versa in Word 2007 is easy and convenient. You have pages and pages of data which you would love to have in a table format. Not only would it look more organized but it would also be easier to read, and retrieve, data when you want it. The trouble is you have neither the time, nor the inclination, to re-type it all in a table format! Word 2007 has made it extremely easy for you to organize your existing data into a table with just a few clicks of your mouse! First, select the text that you want to change into a table. Then from the Insert tab click on the Table command, and then click on Convert Text to Table . From the dialog box that appears modify the settings by choosing the number of rows and columns you want and whether you want the data to be separated by commas, tabs or paragraph marks. There will be no need for any further modifications if your existing data is formatted into columns. Go ahead and click OK which will close the text-to-ta...

Ramadan is an important Islamic holiday, which is celebrated during the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. Muslims who are physically able are required to fast each day for the entire month, from sunrise to sunset. The evenings are spent enjoying family and community meals, engaging in prayer and spiritual reflection, and reading from the Koran. This year, Ramadan began August 11th and will end on September 9th. The holiday known as Eid al Fitr or spelled Id al-Fitr is a joyous holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Eid al Fitr will be celebrated around September 11th. With the upcoming holiday, now is a good time to take a look at some books that explain Ramadan and Eid al Fitr for those unfamiliar with Islam. These are excellent books to learn about the sacred time. Fiction Picture Books The White Nights of Ramadan by Maha Addasi This book is the perfect choice to introduce another culture to children or for Muslim children to celebrate and rejoice in their own rel...

Celebrate Labor Day with these books that have work-related themes: Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford This debut brings alive an experience that was once quite common but now seems to be receding from society — the experience of making and fixing things with our hands. For those who felt hustled off to college, then to the cubicle, against their own inclinations and natural bents, Shop Class as Soulcraft seeks to restore the honor of the manual trades as a life worth choosing. The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton This exploration of the joys and perils of the modern workplace beautifully evokes what other people wake up to do each day — and night — to make the frenzied contemporary world function. With a philosophical eye and his signature combination of wit and wisdom, Alain de Botton leads us on a journey around a deliberately eclectic range of occupations, from rocket science to biscuit manufacture, accountancy to art ...

Frequently people ask me for craft or story time ideas. I definitely make good use of the craft section at the library, but there are great projects on the internet as well. These are some my favorite online resources: Bestkidsbooksite I used this a lot when I first started doing story times. Information is divided by theme, listing books, songs and craft ideas, coloring pages, and web links for that topic. The crafts can usually be done with simple materials like construction paper, glitter, or cotton balls. Dl tk’s Crafts for Kids This site, run by a family, has simple crafts for preschoolers. These are great for an instant project, even for a large group. The most you would need is a paper plate or a cardboard tube. Crafty Crow This is my favorite idea place right now. It is a blog that compiles ideas from many other bloggers. The bloggers are usually moms or teachers and the projects tend to focus on nature, organic or renewable resources, and creativity. Family Fun Website for...

As a book lover I always find it amazing to pick up a book and find myself getting lost in its pages, transported to another world – whether that is an era long gone by, a fantasy creation or some aspect of science, the arts or politics. Writing about the ordinary, authors turn it into extraordinary through the strength of their words. I often wonder what it is about the life and experiences of authors - the creators of these magical pages that empower them to enthrall readers with their writings. This month’s picks are biographies that have been painstakingly researched and written, and provide readers with a window into the fascinating lives of some authors who have captivated and engaged generations of readers. Pearl Buck in China: Journey to the Good Earth by Hilary Spurling Pearl Buck, the prolific American author best known for her book “The Good Earth” and a winner of a Pulitzer as well as the Nobel Prize, is the subject of Hilary Spurling’s well researched biography. The autho...

Today (August 9) I read in the in the New York Times article India Asks, Should Food Be a Right for the Poor? that despite the Green Revolution of the 20th century which virtually eliminated food shortages in India by introducing high-yield grains and fertilizers and expanding irrigation, India still has alarmingly high rates of food poverty and hunger -- perhaps 42 percent of all Indian children under age 5 are underweight. Some analysts see this as a failure of the food distribution system – not the food production system. So I wondered what is the state of the world food supply? Why are some of us pretty well fed, if not stuffed, while others are almost starved? There are no simple answers and lots of debate. But if you are concerned, start with some of these: In Stuffed and starved: the hidden battle for the world food system author Raj Patel notes that one billion people worldwide are overfed while another one billion are malnourished and underweight. He traces the politics of f...