With the main festivities out of the way, I am looking forward to some down time to spend enjoying the pile of books which I have set aside. They include the international best seller:

 The Book of Awesome, by Neil Pasricha Three sisters around the Greek table : a cookbook by Betty, Elenei & Samantha Bakopoulos   Giller Prize winner Half-Blood Blues by young Canadian talent Esi Edugyan. I also have the first in the trilogy of the much talked about title for teens“The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins in a Playaway audio book. Playaways, if you are not familiar with them are essentially the 2012 version of books on tape or CD but much more compact and easier to use. The player device, about the size of a deck of cards, is all part of the package so you don’t need a CD or tape player. With a car adaptor, you can plug in and play as you drive too. All of these titles are available at our library. Check the website yourself now over the holidays and place some holds!

The Niagara...

With the main festivities out of the way, I am looking forward to some down time to spend enjoying the pile of books which I have set aside. They include the international best seller, The Book of Awesome, by Neil Pasricha ; Three sisters around the Greek table : a cookbook by Betty, Elenei & Samantha Bakopoulos; and the Giller Prize winner Half-Blood Blues by young Canadian talent Esi Edugyan.

I also have the first in the trilogy of the much talked about title for teens “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins...

Is your Library Card up to date? For easy access to our databases and especially if you want to try out your new eReader over Christmas and the library is closed – be sure and check this week that your Niagara Falls Public library card is up to date and under the fine limits, for hassle free access to everything from our website. Your card expires once a year and to renew it you need to verify your information by phone or at any library branch. You can access the library catalogue and your record at all hours with a valid card and that includes using the Overdrive Advantage site to tap into the collection of free eBooks we offer to download to your computer or device. There are Help guides available on the Overdrive site to get started. Library staff is all familiar with the technology and may be able to guide you, if you have questions, however every device is different and they are changing rapidly. We will be offering more workshops in the New Year on eBooks and eReaders and making the most of our library’s...

Enhancements to the Library Catalogue

At the end of November the library bought a product called Novelist Complete, which makes suggestions so that you can find other authors and titles that are similar to the one that you are looking up in the catalogue.

Now when you search for a title a section on the screen called “Reader Ratings and Reviews” gives a “star rating” of up to 5 stars, taken from the Goodreads database. There is also a button to click on to go to Goodreads and read reviews of the title you selected. Goodreads will also lead you to other books of the same type.

If the book you selected is in a series, the next section of the record shows all of the titles in the series in order. If our library system owns them, the title is highlighted so that you can click it to put a hold on it. If it is not highlighted, the library doesn't own it, and can either get it from another library on inter-library loan, or order it for our collections. Often it has been difficult in the past to figure...