Hurricane Warning: Library Closes Friday & Saturday

At 11 a.m. Thursday, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administraton has issued a hurricane warning for an area of Masschusetts including Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.

The Edgartown Library will join the other departments of Edgartown in closing on Friday, Sept. 3. At the end of the work day Thursday, the decision was made to announce the library's closing on Saturday, Sept. 4, as well.

To answer your questions about hurricane readiness, the Town of Edgartown has some excellent resources on its web page. We've taken the liberty of posting the town's preparedness guide here, in case you'd like to download it directly.

Labor Day Date Is Set
For Community Celebration

Frankly, We Love Our Library, a celebration organized by the Edgartown Library Foundation, was such a success last year that it is being held again this Labor Day -- Monday, Sept. 6, at the Katama Airport.

From 4 to 7 pm. there will be field games and food, airplane acrobatics, a climbing wall, and good company to be enjoyed. Admission is $15 for adults and children 11 years and older, $5 for children 10 and under. Tickets are available at the Edgartown National Bank, at town hall, at the Right Fork Diner, and of course here at the library. We look forward to seeing you there.

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We've Been Busy -- and the Numbers Prove It

The general sense among the Edgartown Library staff is that we've been busy this past year. Now the numbers are in, confirming our impression. In the fiscal year from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009, circulation at the library was 70,984 items. That number jumped to 88,748 items -- an increase of more than 25 percent -- in the fiscal year just ended. A few minutes with a calculator reveals that on average, the library completed a patron transaction, either checking out or receiving an item, about every 30 seconds during every hour we were open in that year.

In a nicely understated memo to the staff, our director, Felicia Cheney, writes: "No wonder it felt like we were moving a lot of materials." It's a great feeling to be of service, and we'd like to thank all our patrons for the opportunity to help you in this busy year.

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Library Building Committee Invites
Proposals from Design Firms

The Edgartown Library Building Committee is actively seeking qualified applicants to submit proposals to provide Design Services, overseeing all phases of the renovation/expansion of the  Library.

Posted here are documents related to this search: The town's Request for Qualifications, a plan of the existing library on North Water Street, archive documents of the existing Carnegie and Union School Buildings, and (still a work in progress) a draft of the building program document, which begins to lay out the scope of plans for the new library.

Charity Blog Features Our Library

"EPL is the epitome of what a community library is supposed to be," writes Betty Londergan in her blog, WhatGives365. Ms. Londergan has set herself the task of giving $100 to a good cause each day for a year, and writing about it on the Internet, and on July 29 she featured the Edgartown Public Library.

Betty even shares a link to our library website in her blog entry, so we thought it only fair to return the favor. Thanks for the donation, Betty -- and for the kind words.

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Go Green -- And Track Your Reading Online

Since "Go Green" is the official theme for summer reading programs across the state, we thought this would be a good time to connect you with a nifty new online service being offered by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners.

If you visit the Online Reading Page of the Edgartown Library, you can create your own account for free, and keep track of the books you read this summer. You can share reviews and read the reviews of others, and at the end of the season you can even print out a list of your reading -- that is, if you want to depart from the paperless approach of this new system.

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Conversational Portuguese:
New Class Is Underway

A free weekly class in Brazilian Portuguese for English speakers is now underway at the Edgartown Libary, meeting for an hour and a half every Wednesday evening at 6.  

Eladio Falcao, the instructor, weaves teaching about Brazilian culture and history into the language classes.

For more information on this class, call the library at 508-627-4221.

Language Learning Service Adds Interactive Features

At the Edgartown Public Library, on behalf of our patrons, we recently expanded our subscription to the online language-learning service, Mango. And now the folks at Mango, who continue to win prizes for their service, have added a rich set of new features for all our language-learners to enjoy.

We've been offering the Mango Languages service free to our all our patrons since early in 2009. This January we expanded our contract with Mango so that our patrons now have access to all 36 language courses offered by the service.

More recently, the Mango Languages team has announced the launch of a new feature called Voice Comparison, which is available to all users. Here's how it works, according to the announcement from Mango: "After a user completes a slide, the voice compare button will appear.  They can then record their voice and play it back to hear themselves speak.  In addition, they can align a visual representation of their recording with the native speaker’s version for comparison.  Users may adjust their pronunciation until it lines up with ours–they’ll be speaking like a native in no time!"

This service is available to you, as a library patron, from any internet connection — at the library, a coffee shop, or at home. All you need to log in is your 13-digit library card number.

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Progress Report from the Library Building Committee

Since two weeks before this spring's Annual Town Meeting, the Edgartown Library Building Committee has been meeting regularly, charting a path toward construction of a new library facility for our town. We thought that visitors to this site might like to know how the committee's work is going, so we are posting minutes of meetings as they become available.

For your background, we're posting a timeline which tracks the story of the library from the time of the last expansion, in 1975, to the present. We hope you'll check back from time to time -- the committee meets once a week.

Library Adds Genealogical Services

The Edgartown Library has just purchased access for all our patrons -- from any public computer in our building -- to two of the most powerful genealogical tools now available on the Internet.

Just visit the library, sit down at one of our public computers (or bring your laptop and sign into our wireless network) -- and visit either the Ancestry Library or HeritageQuest.

Ancestry Library Edition offers a wide variety of unique content allowing you to trace your family history. HeritageQuest Online is a treasury of American genealogical sources -- rich in unique primary sources, local and family histories, and finding aids.

We hope you will find these tools useful in your genealogical research.

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In Our Stairwell: Artist at Work

At the bottom of the stairway leading down to the Children's Room, a graceful monarch butterfly takes flight, and bright summer flowers bloom. It's all the work of librarian and artist Donna Blackburn, who puts in an hour here, an hour there, making this entryway more attractive.

This mural project is very much a work in progress, Donna says. But we think it has already brightened up its corner of our library considerably. And we invite you to drop by from time to time to see how Donna's painted garden is growing.

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Introducing Our Newest Resource:
Free Access to Online Map Database

On behalf of all our patrons, the Edgartown Library has subscribed to a new service, A to Z Maps Online. This service has compiled more than 60,000 maps -- all of which are available for personal use, without concerns over royalties or copyright infringement.

When you visit A to Z Maps, just enter your 13-digit library card number in the window entitled "Library Bar Code Login," and you'll have access to an amazing number and variety of map resources. Even the historic birds-eye map of Edgartown that hangs in our library's front hallway is available in high-resolution from this site.

If you have any questions about using A to Z Maps, please ask at the library desk and we'll try to help. (And if you're curious about that image at left, it's a precipitation map of Italy.)

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Recycling Project Raises $14,000

A volunteer program begun in 2007 has now passed the $14,000 mark in funds raised for the campaign to build the new Edgartown Public Library -- all of it raised by recycling cans and bottles, five cents at a time. If there's a better example of how little efforts can add a lot to advance the campaign for a new Edgartown Library, we'd like to hear it!

A friend of the library expansion project has kindly volunteered to manage this program, with collection bins set up at sites around the Island for returnable bottles and cans, and all proceeds going toward the new building fund.

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Learning Express Gets an Overhaul, And It's Free to Our Patrons

No matter which acronym you're studying for -- ACT, SAT, GRE or any of the others -- you’ll want to sign up for the online test-preparation service, Learning Express.

The Edgartown Library subscribes to this service, which on Feb. 9 launched a major site redesign and now is much friendlier for users. Now all our patrons can enjoy free access to practice tools to help prepare for dozens of important tests, from real estate exams to the U.S. citizenship test.

Learning Express also offers free online courses which you can take at your own pace, in academic subjects from math to writing, reading comprehension and even English language skills. It only takes a minute to register -- just use your library card number as your user name, and your four-digit library PIN as a password.

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Our New Microfilm Scanner
Is Ready to Assist You

The furnace puffback that closed our main library building for the first half of 2008 took its toll on our electronic equipment, and one of the machines we didn't replace until recently was the microfilm reader.

Now, we're pleased to report, the Edgartown Library has a slick new Canon microfilm scanner, driven by an attached PC, that can make digital files with just a few clicks from our collection of Island newspapers dating back to 1846. These files are perfect for printing, for storage or for emailing to your computer at home. For help with your microfilm research projects, just visit the library front desk and we'll get you started.

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