Summer Reading Program and Storytime have been all wrapped up. We'd like to thank all the kids who signed up, the parents who supported them, and the businesses/individuals who donated prizes for the kids:

Bicycles Plus
Breezy Picnic Grounds and Waterslides
Chipotle
Douglas House of Pizza
Friendly's
G'Licious
Gregory's Restaurant & Pizza
Harry's Famous Pizza
Janice Cahill
Sandy Stopyra
The Big E
The Little Coffee Bean
The Picket Fence
Tina and Bill Campbell
USS Constitution Museum
Yankee Candle Village

We'd also like to thank the Friends of the Library for the "Super Reader Lives Here" signs that you may have noticed around town. Wherever you see one of those signs, a child logged over ten hours of summer reading.

The adult summer reading raffle is coming soon. We have a Kindle Fire, three reading-themed tote bats, and a combo of camouflage gloves and a duffel bag.

In other news, we have upgraded the public access computers to Ubuntu 16.04. We are switching back to Ubuntu because it offers an out-of-the-box guest session feature which allows users to log in and work without anything being saved. Linux Mint could be made to do the same thing, but it took lots of manual tweaking that had to be duplicated with every major system update. People were also finding logging into Mint unintuitive.

Our quest to make free, secure, open-source software work in our library has also been noticed by C/W MARS. The network uses an integrated library system called Evergreen to link all of our libraries' collections. Right now, the client software is not supported in Linux (I can make it work on my office computer, but it isn't stable enough to deploy on the circ desk). For the next year, though, we will be experimenting with the IT folk at central site with the goal of reaching a point where all Evergreen updates will be compatible with and completely supported in a Linux environment. This would mean big savings for libraries across the network who choose to adopt it.

Anyway, that's enough geeking out. The incentives of summer reading programs may be over, but don't stop reading! It is its own reward.


Thank you,

Justin Snook
Next Week: 
Chess with the Professor is Tuesday, and we need sign-ups so we know how much pizza to order!
Remember when Professor Jerry Williams whooped everyone at chess during Octoberfest? He'll be back at the library on August 16th! All school aged kids are invited to join us for pizza at noon and an afternoon celebrating the game. We will have lots of boards, so you can play each other when not challenging or observing the champ. Please call or email to sign up!
Epic Movie Night:
July's Epic Movie Night was a hit. We have opened up the event to everyone over 16, so we had a mix of adults and kids. We're continuing on August 18 at 6:00. We'll be watching a German film from between the World Wars that captures many of the social and political concerns of the period. One of the first science fiction feature films ever made, it was named the second best film of the silent era by Empire magazine in 2010. It is also one of the most visually appealing films you'll ever see, as the entire production is influenced by Wiemar period expressionist art. Art Deco fans will dig this.
Not Next Week, but Soon: 
  • August 22 @ 6:30: We're bringing back our adult coloring program, calling it 50 Shades of Awesome! We'll be ramping up a bi-weekly group led by Maryellen Aubin. We provide pencils, pens, crayons, markers, and some designs, but feel free to bring your own if you would like. Coloring helps relieve stress. It also keeps Maryellen from being lonely. You don't want Maryellen to be lonely, so come color. 
     
  • September 13 @ 6:30: The Intrepid Readers will read Dale Russakoff's The Prize: Who's in Charge of America's Schools? This is a disturbing account of what happened when the Zuckerburg family tried to donate $100 million to a struggling school district in Newark. The events that followed exposed a corrupt system that was benefiting almost everyone except the kids and their teachers. I can't wait to see what they'll come up with as a themed snack for this one!
  • September 15 @ 6:30: Josh Tetreau's Greatest Book Club Ever will be coming back from their summer hiatus to discuss Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. Written in 1997, it tells the story of W. P. Inman, a wounded Confederate deserter during the American Civil War, whose journey home mirrors that of Homer's Odysseus. Made into a feature film in 2003, this award-winning novel will keep you enthralled. Almost as enthralled as Josh's hair-raising coffee!