Bangor Public Library Newsletter
Calendar Events
Monday, January 17
The Library is closed in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
Monday, February 21
The Library is closed in observance of Presidents' Day
Thursday, January 6
"Let's Talk About It"
A Mother and Two Daughters
by Gail Godwin
7 PM in the Lecture Hall
Spiritual Book Discussion Group
There will be no meeting in January.
Wednesday, February 9
Empowering Your Soul Through Meditation by Rajinder Singh.
7:30 - 9 PM
Board Room
Children's Story Time
Beginning January 18; call the Children's Room for dates and details.
| Day | Story Time |
| M | Monday
Story Time |
| T | Story Time Craft 9:30 AM Ages 4 to 5 Tuesday Fun 3:45 PM Ages 5 and older |
| W | Time for 2s 9:15 AM 12 to 24 months Tiny Tot Time 10 or 11 AM Ages 2 to 4 |
| Th | Tiny Tot Time 9:30 AM Ages 2 to 4 Lullaby Story Time 6:30 PM Ages 2 to 5 |
| F | Friday Foragers 3:30 PM Ages 9 to 10 |
| S | Saturday Special 11 AM All ages |
Barbara McDade
One new addition to start our millenium year is the addition of a self-check unit in the lobby. This "Rapid Circ" unit will allow you to do a simple check out of a book by just scanning in your library card, the book's bar code and putting the receipt in the book pocket. This does not mean we don't want to talk to you—it's for those times when you're in a hurry and there's a line at the circulation desk. I hope you'll like this service.
The Library was just notified that it received a New Century Community Grant to enhance our Reference Service. With this grant we are replacing our "dumb" terminals with PC's, to give Web access to the URSUS database. We have added licenses to some commercial databases to give you access to more information either from your computer at home or from the computers in the Library. The databases include Maine Newsstand, which has an index to the Bangor Daily News and other Maine newspapers, as well as access to the full text of the article you're looking for. If you need access to the index of a national or international source, we now subscribe to Gale's General Reference Center that indexes the Knight-Ridder newspapers and has access to the full-text of articles for the current 24 months. It also indexes the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and The Christian Science Monitor with access to articles from the latest 2 months of publication. This database contains other reference works such as the Information Please Almanac and indexes to current quotations and indexing with full text articles from several noted reference works on literature. If you have questions about these new services, stop by the Reference Desk to see how they work, or check out our Web site (www.bpl.lib.me.us).
Also, as part of the New Century Community Grant, we are adding a new microfilm reader/printer. This may sound like a retro-step, but until the digital technology settles down, microfilm is still the best way to preserve fragile paper records. In that form, we need some kind of machine to read it and print from it; and, if you've used our microfilm collection lately, you know that our machines seem to always be out of order. We hope the new machine will keep our microfilm readers happy.
And, as part of this grant we are going to add some "classic" videos to our collection. We are going to start with some PBS productions and see how they go.
The New Century Community Grants were given one year's funding by last year's State Legislature. The program was designed to assist Maine communities in preserving and strengthening cultural and educational resources and increasing access to them. I hope that if you like what we are doing you will tell your state representatives, "thank you".
Finally, thank you to our Friends of the Library for helping us say "thank you" to our volunteers. The Friends held a reception on December 22 to honor the many volunteers who help make our library run. Thank you Friends. Thank you Volunteers.