Mercer County Library Blog

Dear Reader, I hope you’re staying warm. What have you been up to? Have you read anything good lately? I recently finished the novel Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn, and found it astonishingly clever and entertaining. It is a novel of letters – an epistolary novel, but also about the letters of the alphabet themselves. It takes place on a fictional island nation off the coast of South Carolina, proud home of the creator of the sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” (a pangram: a sentence that contains all the letters of the alphabet). As letters begin to fall off the sign commemorating this great sentence, letters of the alphabet are banned, one by one. Fewer and fewer words are available for the islanders to write in their letters that make up the novel. I’m tempted to finish this letter without any E’s, but I’ll spare us both. The novel re-kindled my love of mail.  During lockdown, I pulled out my stationary, ordered some attractive p...

I just started curling this winter. Most people’s first impression of curling comes from the Winter Olympics: watching the pros slide round granite stones down the ice, furiously sweeping the ice to urge the stone to move faster or curl more. These elite athletes make it look so easy. My legs and I beg to differ. Lots of new stretches and exercises, not to mention learning how to walk on ice while sweeping. It’s been a fun experience. Isn’t that what a new year is all about? A blank slate, a fresh start, a chance to do something new.  Thinking of trying a winter sport? ‘Tis the season!  The Mercer County Ice Rink is open for the winter. It’s a great place to take a lesson. They also have open skate times, times reserved for seniors, and birthday party packages. It’s a fun way to get in some winter exercise for folks at all levels of skating experience.   Maybe horseback riding is more your speed? The Mercer County Stables offers trail riding through the winter at Me...

Over the last year, Overdrive has been working to make the Libby app more accessible for all readers, including those with visual, motor and cognitive needs. Overdrive partnered with Fable to get feedback from blind and low vision users of Libby.  They took that feedback and made improvements this year and have a number of additional improvements set to release in January 2022. Avid users of Libby may already be familiar with some of the changes: Screen reader support – eBooks open in Libby can be read using the native or preinstalled screen reader software on your smart device. Read from Here – a new mode in Libby to have the text of an eBook read aloud. Navigation Bar labels – an app setting that adds labels to each of the navigation bar icons. Adjustable text size – Libby uses your phone/smart device setting to pick text size, but you can also adjust it to a size that works best for you. Adjustable playback speed for audiobooks – Overdrive provides 48 different r...

After an extremely difficult year rebooting the box office, movies made a triumphant return in 2021 with brand new feature films releasing on a weekly basis once again. It is with immense excitement and incredible anticipation that I bring you previews for 12 movies releasing in 2022: 1. Scream (January 14th, 2022) directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett Technically the fifth installment in the Scream franchise from Paramount Pictures, Scream (2022) is a sequel to Scream 4 (2011). Despite its misleading title, Scream sees returning characters Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), and Dewey Riley (David Arquette) entangled in another series of vicious murders committed by the Ghostface killer (voiced by Roger L. Jackson). This is the first film in the franchise not to be directed by the late, great horror legend, Wes Craven; however, hope remains high this film will maintain the terrific standard set by the original Scream (1996). 2. Uncharted (Feb...

As the year winds down, one is wont to think back to those we have lost during the year. We hear of quite a few, some with more accompanying news stories than others. Let’s glance back at some you might have forgotten, or never even knew. As a science fiction kinda guy, I was saddened and surprised by Mira Furlan passing away on January 20th. While I remember her as the great Delenn in the series Babylon 5 , others might know her from Lost , or even heard her album Songs from Movies That Never Been Made . She’s also in the cast of the audio production of Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre , available on Playaway at the library. Melvin Van Peebles (September 23) wasn’t just the “ godfather of black cinema ,” but also an actor, playwright, and more. After shooting some short films in the late 1950s, a move to France led him to the theater and writing. He returned to movies in 1968 and became a pioneer in independent cinema, as well as a musician, noveli...

At this time of year I tend to become obnoxious about my musical preferences. Well, okay: more obnoxious. People, as we know, can be divided into exactly two categories: those who divide people into two categories; and those who do not. ( Joke! Haha! I still got it!) Or, more to the point, we can divide people into those who like holiday music; and those who do not. I am in the latter category of the latter dichotomy...and, it seems, the former category of the former dichotomy, which is irrelevant, but I felt I needed to bring it to a conclusion since I brought it up. The point is, I am not, for the most part, a Christmas/Winter Holiday music person. Radio stations and department stores start playing all the usual C/WH songs before Thanksgiving, it seems, and my objection is not that the songs are bad (though some just objectively are bad; case in point: Get a load of this “ Yooooo-hoooooo! ”   in Johnny Mathis’s version of “Sleigh Ride'': BAD! ); it’s that even the good ...

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you had your birthday every day and you were showered with boxes upon boxes of gifts? This is a little glimpse of what working in the Acquisitions & Cataloging (AcqCat) department is like. The AcqCat department (in some libraries described as Technical Services), is housed in the back of the Lawrence Headquarters Branch.  Acquisitions is defined by the American Library Association (ALA) as “the department within a library responsible for selecting, ordering, and receiving new materials and for maintaining accurate records of such transactions.” The ALA defines cataloging as “the process of creating entries for a catalog. In libraries, this usually includes bibliographic description, subject analysis, assignment of classification notation, and activities involved in physically preparing the item for the shelf, tasks usually performed under the supervision of a librarian trained as a cataloger.” Put these two together and you’ve got...

How old were you when you started helping in the kitchen? I’m not sure exactly how old I was, but I have very fond memories of my grandmother making gnocchi from scratch. She would boil the potatoes and try hard not to burn her hands as she peeled the steaming hot tubers. As I watched each step of the lengthy process of mashing the potatoes and adding the flour to get the right consistency, I was waiting eagerly for my turn to help. It was fitting that the first meal that I prepared in my new home was gnocchi! One of my favorite new memories is watching my oldest nephew cook with my mother. They get out a mixing bowl, whisk, milk, eggs, and flour to make waffles. My nephew will carefully scoop the batter onto the hot waffle iron and wait patiently for the green light which means it’s time to open lid. He is so proud that he knows how to cook! When I mentioned that I wanted to write a blog about kids in the kitchen, my co-workers offered me pictures of ...