The Niagara Falls Public Library is pleased to again host free income tax preparation clinics for the benefit of low-income earners. Individuals must meet income guidelines to participate and must register in advance. All clinics will be held at the Victoria Avenue Library. The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario program takes place on several Wednesday and Thursday evenings in February and March. To qualify, individuals without dependents must have a total household income of less than $20,000. Individuals with dependents must have a total household income below $30,000. If two or more individuals in one household are employed, the combined household income must not exceed the limits. The community volunteer program sponsored by Canada Revenue Agency will be offered on March 5 and March 19 from 9:00 am – 2:30 pm. This program provides trained volunteers who give their time to complete simple returns. The volunteers are not employees of Canada Revenue, nor are they tax experts trained to do complex...

Family Literacy Day is highlighted annually on January 27th to celebrate adults and children reading and learning together, and to encourage Canadians to spend at least 15 minutes enjoying a learning activity as a family every day. Family literacy programs focus on parents as the means to improve the reading and writing skills of all family members. Public libraries have offered a variety of parent and child programs for babies, toddlers and young school age children for decades. All the programs are designed to make both adult and child comfortable with books and reading and to introduce families to the public library. Is it a success? – Just ask the hundreds of families who enjoy the programs. The reality is we are not able to offer enough of these programs to meet the demand. Our Children’s Department produces an excellent “Just for kids” guide to all the programs and services we offer. It is available at all libraries or on our Website www.nflibrary.ca....

Who would have thought even ten years ago that the “video store” would be obsolete in 2012? With the closing last week of the last large chain outlet in Niagara Falls we are reminded again of how fast technology and entertainment formats have changed and impact our lifestyle. It is no secret that the Internet and other “on demand services” have changed the way we are now able to organize our home entertainment – and, the large video outlets have been losing money in their store front rental enterprises. In the late 1980’s public libraries were faced with the dilemma, whether videos were something they should be offering as part of their collections and whether they were going to impact negatively on the local video rental market. At the time, videos were also more expensive to purchase than books. Gradually more and more library decision makers in Britain, the US and Canada agreed that the movie was another format and conformed to the “culture and recreational” mandate that public libraries provide to the community. Many of the videos libraries purchase are educational and cover topics no video retailer ever offered. Librarians also spent more time looking for multicultural and documentary films which resonated with their communities. With budget limitations and the fact that libraries only bought one or two copies of any film, there was never really any impact on retail operations – this despite the fact that there was no cost to borrow. Patrons reserve the titles of interest and may wait weeks to have their turn but then, the library is not a “store”! ...

As we compile all our year end statistics it’s great to be able to report that we have succeeded in bettering last year's record Circulation Stats, not by much, just a couple of thousand items, but, we can honestly say "We had our busiest year ever"! While our in-house circulations were down by one half of one percent - our OverDrive (that is the downloadable books) statistics increased 479%. As we expected we have been inundated with calls since Christmas about using new eReaders and our free download service. We have created some information links on our webpage to help everyone get started. Our next hands on workshop is scheduled for January 26th. Please call 905-356-8080 to register. Big Screen Tuesdays return this week January 10th, with the 2011 remake based loosely on the Alexandre Dumas classic “The Three Musketeers”. There is lots of action, flying airships and swash buckling sword play as the former heroes re-unite to defeat a double agent and her employer from seizing the French throne and causing...

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...