Welcome
to the
June
2008
In
This Month’s Edition
Web
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Friday,
July 4, 2008
Have
you ever dreamed of being locked in the library? Have you wanted to research genealogy
“to your heart’s content”? On
Friday, June 13th, genealogists will have the opportunity to fulfill their
dreams by “Sitting Up with the Dead” at the downtown Gainesville branch
library. Registered participants
can stay until midnight researching in the library’s extensive collection. At 5:00 p.m. the library will be closed
to the public and no one will be admitted after 6:00 p.m. The second floor will remain open until
midnight for genealogists.
This
event is not for beginners or the faint of heart! However, library staff and
volunteers will be available to help out. The Sybil Wood McRay Genealogy &
Local History Collection offers full online access to the Ancestry Plus Library
edition database; Heritage Quest Online; microfilm of Georgia Censuses from 1820—1930 (excluding 1890) and
accompanying paper indexes or microfilm soundexes; some paper indexes for North
Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, and Tennessee censuses; microfilm
of local Hall County newspapers starting in the late 1800’s through current day
(sporadically); a strong collection
of Georgia records, cemeteries, and histories; a Civil War collection; a Native
American collection; an African American collection; and much
more.
For
more information on how to register click here
or contact Ronda
Sanders
at rsanders@hallcountylibrary.org
or 770-532-3311 ext. 116.
Social
Security Program
ATTENTION BOOMERS!!! This
year, the oldest of the 79 million baby boomers born from 1946 through 1964 turn
62, which means they will become eligible for Social Security. Up to
three-quarters of them are expected to file for benefits before age
66.
If
you or someone you know is planning to retire, now is the time to get the
information you need to make the best decisions about your
retirement.
On
Thursday, June 12, 2008, at 6:00 p.m., Hall County Library is presenting a
program on retirement featuring Tony Burchardt, Assistant District Manager of
the Social Security Administration. He will help you understand your
benefits and explain what you need to know about retiring. There will also
be a question and answer session after his
presentation.
Join
us at the Hall County Library Headquarters in the Meeting Room, located at 127
Main Street, N.W., Gainesville, GA 30501for this important discussion. For
more information on the program, contact Marion Hunter at 770-532-3311, ext.
132.
Attention
all readers!
The Adult Services Department of the
Hall County Library System would like to assist in connecting people who are
like-minded and interested in participating in a book club on any of the
following subjects:
Fiction
Religion & Spirituality
Biography
Historical fiction
Christian
Fiction
History
Classics
Mystery & Thrillers
Current Events
Politics
If you would be interested in
participating, please contact Marion
Hunter at 770-532-3311 extension 114 and let
us know your preference.
The
library system offers free computer classes including Introduction to
Email, Introduction to the Internet, Advanced Email,
Introduction
to MS PowerPoint, Word Processing Basics and
Introduction
to MS Publisher.
Classes are taught by trained library staff and are free to the public. Classes
will be held in the computer training labs at the Blackshear Place Branch and
the Gainesville Branch. For more
information please click here
or call 770-532-3311.
June
2008
The art of Cheryl Hardin will be featured in the gallery at Hall County Library/Headquarters from May 15 through June 30
In
creating unexpected combinations of colors, shapes, and ideas, Cheryl Hardin’s
landscape, seascape, still life, and figurative paintings are captured on canvas
in fluid and impressionistic style. She works in oils, using both palette
knife and brush to create a unique combination of realism and moderate
impressionism. Bold strokes and colors create mood, balance and emotion in
her work; imagery spills onto the canvas as she paints.
Ms.
Hardin began painting professionally in 2000. She is an award-winning
artist and has trained with some of the finest contemporary artists in the
nation, including Roseta Santiago, Pris Butler, Bill Davidson, Ann Templeton,
Dee Beard Dean, and Ken Wallin. She is currently a member of the Quinlan
Visual Arts Center and The Art League of Gainesville, Georgia.
IT’S TIME FOR SUMMER READING
PROGRAM!
Children are going to “Catch the Reading Bug” and teens will experience a
“Metamorphosis@Your Library” this summer at all Hall County Library System
branches. Registration begins June 2 and the program ends July 25. Activities
begin the week of June 9. Pick up information in any library branch or check it
out on our website.
The next pajama
storytimes will be held at 6:30 pm on June 2 at
the Gainesville
Branch, June 10 at the
Blackshear Place
Branch, and June 18 at the
Spout Springs
Branch. Everyone is welcome. Children may
wear their jammies and bring their favorite bedtime buddy.
A mini-session of 4 Baby Steps infant
lapsits will be held at the Blackshear Place
and Gainesville branches in June. Click
here for dates. There will be another
mini-session of lapsits and one of preschool storytimes in
August.
Reading Patch
Club
for independent readers in elementary school and Jump Start Reading
Club for children who cannot read on their
own are on hiatus for the summer.
Children who did not finish reading for a patch may finish over the summer and
receive their patch in the fall when the clubs start up again on the day after
Labor Day.
For more information about any of the
library’s family programming, call 770-532-3311, ext.
129.
New
titles for children and teens
The Farm
Team
by Linda Bailey
Blistering on-ice action and laughs
answers the question, “Can the hockey team underdogs, the Farm Team, pull the
upset of the year and bring home the Stolski Cup?”
(EFC)
Snap! by Mick Manning and Brita
Granström
Follow the food chain as each creature
is gobbled up by an even larger one. But which animal is the biggest animal of
all getting ready to “snap?” (EFC)
Sheep by Valerie
Hobbs
After a fire destroys the farm where
he was born, a young border collie acquires a series of owners and learns about
life as he seeks a home and longs to fulfill his life’s purpose of shepherding
sheep. (JFC)
The Fairies of Nutfolk
Wood
by Barb Bentler Ullman
After her parents divorce and she
moves to the country with her mother, fourth-grader Willa Jane, anxious and
unhappy with the changes in her life, discovers a world of little people called
Nutfolk living in the woods around her new home.
(JFC)
Resurrection
Men
by T.K. Welsh
In London in the 1830s,
twelve-year-old Victor risks his life to uncover the identity of the ghoulish
murderer who is at the heart of London’s furtive trade in human bodies.
(YAF)
The Wizard, the Witch & Two Girls
from Jersey by Lisa
Papademetriou
A fantasy novel goes completely
haywire when two girls from New Jersey get zapped into its pages and have to
team up with a wizard with no magic, an elf-bakery reject, and a talking
squirrel to tackle the most terrifying evil known to the fantasy genre.
(YAF)
New
titles in the adult area:
The Killer’s
Wife
by Bill Floyd
Leigh Wren and her son
have started a new life after her husband’s conviction as a serial killer. Her
new life is put at risk when the father of one of her husband’s victims begins
stalking her.
The Forgery of
Venus by Michael
Gruber
“Talented Chaz Wilmot,
who makes a modest living as a commercial artist in New York City, can't say no
when Mark Slade, his former Columbia roommate who now owns a downtown gallery,
offers him $150,000 to fix a ruined Tiepolo ceiling in a Venetian palazzo…. Once
abroad, Wilmot gets sucked into an increasingly bizarre world where his own
identity is confused and the art he produces may be a forgery but is genuinely
magnificent. Is Wilmot crazy or is he being manipulated in a grandiose scheme
linked to unrecovered art stolen by the
Nazis?”
River of
Heaven by Lee
Martin
Although young Dewey
Finn died in 1955, the mystery of his death still haunts the town of Mt. Gilead,
Illinois. Dewey’s boyhood friend
Sam in particular finds himself haunted as events surrounding Dewey’s death
bubble toward the surface.
Feasting on Asphalt: The
River Run by Alton
Brown
Food Network star Brown
takes readers on a delightful culinary journey along the path of the Mississippi
River.
A la Carte: The Secret
Lives of Grocery Shoppers by Hillary
Carlip
Carlip has collected not
only the grocery lists but insight into the lives of a myriad of
shoppers.
Pictures at a
Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood
by Mark
Harris
“An epic account of how
the [1960’s] revolution hit Hollywood, told through the five films nominated for
the 1967 Academy Awards.”
Scrapbooking
Workshop
There
will be ongoing Scrapbooking Workshops once a month at the Blackshear Place
Branch. The next meeting is
scheduled for Monday, June 30
from 5pm to 7:30pm. Experienced scrapbooker Arneshia Echols
will demonstrate useful techniques and creative ideas to showcase family
memories or create clever pages for your memorabilia. Experienced scrappers and
“newbies” are welcome, but advanced registration is required. Beginners may
purchase an optional starter kit for $12, payable upon registration. Attendees
are encouraged to bring their own photos or clippings. Please call 770-532-3311
ext. 151 for more information.
Book
Club at Blackshear Place
The
Blackshear Place Branch will hold the next meeting of their new Book Club on
Tuesday, June 10 at 6 p.m. The group will be discussing The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs is
part memoir, part Cliff's Notes to every topic
under the sun. For more information, contact Janine
Cline
at 770-532-3311 ext. 155.
Free
Jewelry Making Class
Dazzle
your friends and family with your personally designed creations. Classes
will include basic instructions, designs, and techniques. You will learn
how to make one-of-a-kind jewelry, whether for self-expression, a fashion
statement, or as a unique gift with a personal touch. If you have your own
supplies, you can bring them to class or for a small fee you can purchase
supplies in the class.
Join
us in the Gainesville Library’s meeting room, located at 127 Main Street NW on
Thursday, June 26 at 5:30 p.m. Classes are free to the public but space is
limited, so please call 770-532-3311 ext. 114 to register.
Donating
a book to the library in honor or memory of a loved one is a great way to show
affection. Titles of suggested book donations are listed on the library’s
Amazon.com Wish List. For the price
of a book, anyone can help the library keep the most current materials
available. To view the list, see the library
website
and follow the link to amazon.com.
Book donors may request that a commemorative plate be placed inside the
front cover of the book in recognition of a loved one or to honor a special
occasion. The Hall County Library System is a non-profit government agency
and a charitable 501(C) (3) organization; therefore, all donations are tax
deductible. The library is pleased
to announce that it has now received 200 plus books through this
program.
Dear
Patron,
The next time you walk through a
library ask yourself how much work goes into just ordering the collection.
Library staff does not have the time to read long reviews found in the book
sections of newspapers or in some magazines published for a segment of the
population. I like Scientific
American as much as the next person but with just so many waking hours in my
day I find no time to read the magazine regularly, much less the reviews. There
are also several magazines published for the library and bookstore trade that
review a few hundred book and audiovisual titles every other week. These reviews
are a paragraph long and the synopsis is sometimes followed with the reviewer’s
recommendation. Short reviews never offer much more than an on-the-fly, critical
statements of the contents: good, bad, thumbs down, buy or forget it. Booklist, PW (Publishers Weekly) and School Library Journal are a few
examples of trade journals. The publishing industry and book jobbers also
release content synopsis in trade catalogs especially for nonfiction.
There are all sorts of lists
published. Amazon ranks purchases. There are regional and national bestselling
lists reportedly coming from bookstores around the country. There are specialty
lists of bestselling titles in genres such as Christian fiction or science
fiction, or lists of broad subject areas covering popular topics like computers,
management, cooking, etc. In the end, lists only tell you what somebody is
purchasing.
You also tell us everyday what you
want. You do so at our circulation desks or when being assisted by staff at a
reference or children’s desk. What you borrow or what library staff picks up
after you leave lets us know what you read. We also survey. You help us select
books in many different ways.
What I know as a user - and that is
what got me into this trade to begin with - is that there are many books used
only in a library. I consider myself a shade tree mechanic though I suspect my
vehicles pray I do not work on them. I have used library books to diagnose a
mechanical problem and then made a valiant attempt at repair knowing full well
my garage’s mechanic has already rung up the transaction in anticipation.
Painting, plumbing, and building problems have brought me into a library
collection seeking solutions. I enjoy art and photography but only take home
some of what I leaf through. The same goes for gardening, health and most of the
rock ‘n roll histories I have thumbed through over the years. I do not think I
am that different from you in your use of a book collection. At best library
circulation can tell you areas that seem to be popular. There remains a mystery
in what goes on in a library collection between you - the patron - and books.
I remember when Joseph Heller’s Something Happened was released many
years ago. It was the long-awaited book by the author of Catch 22. Despite poor reviews
anticipation drove it to the top of most bestselling lists and libraries were
forced to buy multiple copies. This was when I first broke into the profession
and spent part of every week working a circulation desk. I cannot tell you how
many times I checked back in a returned copy of Something Happened with page 10 turned
down or a book mark left between pages 22 and 23. Just because it is a
bestseller does not make it a best book.
The next time you are in a library and
have a few minutes ask yourself where you would locate a book that shows you how
to finish a concrete slab that you are having poured for a shed you are building
(home mechanic) or an excellent formula to follow to blue a gun (gunsmith).
Where do you turn to locate a title on either subject if you were going to
purchase a copy for your book collection? If you are working in a library and
are lucky enough to acquire something practical covering either topic do you ask
yourself how they are actually used before you discard them. I know from helping
patrons that many song books are just fiddled with until the right tune for the
occasion is found, copied and the book left behind for a staff member to pick up
and return to its home on a library shelf. This is the quandary the library book
buyer faces every day: how to locate the right book to address a need and keep
it on the shelf until something better or more current comes along - and then
hopefully the money is available to make the
purchase.
It is hard work to spend the taxpayers
money well, making sure it is invested in books and not
ephemeral.
Hope to catch you in the stacks
reading.
Adrian
Mixson
Library
Director
To
get more information on your library account, please call the library’s
Circulation Manager at 770-532-3311 ext. 110 or visit the
library
website
and enter your account through the
library's catalog. You will need your library card and pin number, which
may be obtained by visiting any library branch. You may also email the
Circulation
Manager
for additional information.
Web
Picks: Cool Stuff on the Web
Gas
Saving Tips
How to Conserve
Gas: From
howtodothings.com, get great tips to
get the most mileage for your dollars.
Best and Worst Fuel
Efficient Vehicles: The U.S. Department of Energy tracks the
most and least fuel efficient vehicles.
Atlanta Gas
Prices.Com: Tracks gasoline prices in the Atlanta
area or in all of Georgia.
Editors
For
more information please call (770) 532-3311 ext. 134 or visit our website at
http://www.hallcountylibrary.org/
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