Week 4 of the Summer Reading Program

Week 4 was great! It was our voting week. We voted for our Favorite Australian Animal between a Koala and a Kangaroo. And the winner was: Koala with 47 votes!! (Kangaroo received 25 votes). We were so lucky to have Mr. Fleury come in to show us his sugar gliders. They were very cute! Ms. Fiona also came in to visit us and tell us all about Australia. She told us some interesting things and we really learned a lot! Then on Thursday, we were entertained once again with Majestic Theatre. They performed "The Return of the Glass Slipper" and it really was the best show I've seen!! Lots of kids have been searching for Bindi each week. That's been a lot of fun! Hope you heard this week's clue! Can't wait for Award's Night next Friday!!

Summer Reading Program Weeks 2 and 3

Week 2 had many of us making crafts that had to do with the Great Barrier Reef. We had a blast making Nemo magnets and Sea Urchins from styrofoam balls. We even brought home an Ocean in a Bag!! All the crafts were so colorful, especially our Seahorses. We had a total of 123 participants come in this week!
Week 3 was all about the Outback and the Aborigines. We created beautiful Walking Sticks, but had to delay our Walk-About due to the rain!! We also made some Aboriginal handprints, a bull-roarer that really works, a boomerang, and some great clap-sticks! We learned about decorating with dots! There were a total of 127 for week 3!

Summer Reading Program- first week

The first week of Summer Reading was a huge success and so much FUN!!
We had 140 participants come in to make surf boards and wall decorations for their class wall. And so many pompom fish were created to decorate the window frame!
Many of you found Bindi on her first week out in Hooksett. She has traveled to a new location for the second week. Hope you can find her. Everyone has been doing a great job reading. Keep those surf boards moving up the wave!! Make every day, a G'Day For Reading!!

YA Summer Reading

Calling all Hooksett Tweens and Teens: The HPL’s YA summer reading program is kicking off! It’s easy, fun, and gives you the chance to win awesome prizes just for reading this summer!

There’s no registration, just fill out a SHORT review form, available at the library, for every book or magazine you read, include your name and phone number, and you’re entered to win! It’s that simple!

You can win prizes like gift cards to EB Games, Restaurants, stores at the Manchester Mall, and even an ipod!

If you have any questions, contact Sarah Foster at the Hooksett Public Library

sfoster@hooksettlibrary.org 603.485.6092

Upgrade available for Overdrive Media Console used for downloadable audiobooks service

We've just received word from our downloadable audiobooks vendor, Overdrive, that an upgraded version of their media console is now available for download. You can get it here. The new software upgrade includes the long-awaited CD burner wizard, explained here in Overdrive's press release:

"In response to the overwhelmingly positive feedback we received from our Transfer Wizard, we have added a Burn to CD Wizard. With OMC v3.0, patrons no longer need to launch Windows Media Player to burn to CD. Instead, in just a few clicks, patrons can burn WMA audio titles through OMC. Clicking the Burn button launches the Burn Wizard, which guides the user through this simple and straightforward burn process. For your audiobook users who burn titles to CD, they will be excited to learn that the new Burn Wizard splits OverDrives Audiobook parts into tracks (based on the existing MediaMarkers), allowing users to more easily navigate content they have burned to CD."

What to expect from new library system in August, cont...

Have you ever found a number of titles in our online catalog and wanted to place hold requests on them, but found that you could only place such requests one at a time, and not all at once? Our new system coming in August will enable hold requests to be placed on multiple items at once. In addition, it will also allow hold requests to be placed on individual items, such as particular magazine issues. Say you're interested in this month's issue of Martha Stewart's Living--you'll be able to place a hold on just that issue. We were very excited to hear of these system capabilities and we hope you'll be too when our new system is deployed.

What to expect with new library system, continued...

In a previous post we indicated that our new library system coming in August will support email reminder notices of materials coming due. Another nifty function of the new system will be the ability to limit your searches of the online catalog in many different ways, among which will include limiting searches to items that are currently available. The idea behind this function is to help you find only what's currently on the shelf for the immediate taking in the library and not what's checked out and therefore not of immediate interest.

What to expect with new library system - email reminder notices

As mentioned in a recent post, we'll be converting to a new library system in August. Besides keeping you up to date about the latest developments with respect to the August conversion, we thought that you'd also like to hear in the ensuing weeks about some of the many features that the new system will support. One of the features will be a courtesy email reminder notice of your borrowed items coming due. How do you like that? - Being reminded about borrowed items' due dates before they're due! If you'd like to benefit from such a service, you'll have to make sure that we have your email address. You can give us your email by going to your account here and then editing your account profile to include your email address or by stopping by the front desk during your next library visit.

New Integrated Library System Coming in August

One of the tremendous advantages of being a member of a multi-library consortium is that, by pooling our resources together, we can bring you the latest and greatest in resources that would otherwise be very difficult to provide. Recently, we were able to expand our online request service so that you could place requests on any requestable materials available at any of the 11 consortium libraries, and not just the Hooksett Library, this thanks to our consortium membership.
The good news does not stop there. We are happy to report that, after a year's worth of research and planning at the consortial level, we are going to be able to markedly improve how we serve you technologically. That's because we are going to convert to a whole new integrated library system (ILS), which comes with a more user-friendly, state of the art, online catalog and a lot of behind the scenes stuff that will help us serve you better. Our target conversion date is sometime towards the end of August. We'll keep you posted as things develop. By all means contact us if you have any questions before then.

2008 Flume Book Award Winner

The votes are in and the 2008 Flume Book Award Winner is New Moon, the second book of Stephenie Meyer's popular Twilight series. The voting breakdown was as follows:

New Moon	254
Just Listen	87
Marley and Me	42
The Book Thief	40
Life as We Knew It	39
Lord Loss	39
The Glass Castle	38
Heavy Metal and You	35
A Certain Slant of Light	20
The Night My Sister Went Missing	16
King Dork	11
Over a Thousand Hills I Walk with You	10
The Minister's Daughter	5
Total votes cast	636

New website alias

I don't know about you, but I often found it a nuisance to have to type the rather cumbersome web address of our website: "http://www.hooksett.lib.nh.us". Inevitably, I would forget to type a period or forget which order the "nh" and "us" came in. Well, we've solved these issues by adding an alias to our web domain. You can now navigate to our website by simply typing "hooksettlibrary.org" in your browser's address bar. If you use Firefox as your browser, it'll automatically add the "http://" prefix. This alias even applies to our email domain extension, so if you want to reach us via email, you don't have to type "@hooksett.lib.nh.us" for the domain name, but only "@hooksettlibrary.org". Not only does this change make our web address more intuitive, it also makes us more accessible in cyberspace. We hope you like the change.

"Show us your flowers week"

The week of May 5th through May 10th is "Show us your flowers week". Join the staff and wear your flowered shirt, dress or maybe your tie. If you do not have clothing with flowers, wear one in your hair or on your lapel.

Top 10 Banned Books of 2007

Every year the American Library Association tabulates the number of books that are challenged by special interest groups for questionable and/or controversial content. The list of last year's top 10 "banned" books is out and here are the titles:

1. And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
2. The Chocolate War by Rober Cormier
3. Olive's Ocean by Kevin Henkes
4. The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
7. TTYL by Lauren Myracle
8. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
9. It's Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
10. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Read them for yourself and see if you can guess why they were challenged.

Edible Books 2008 Photos

Check out our photos from this year's edible book contest which took place Saturday, April 12th. Kevin Lane's entry was inspired by the book "Who Moved My Cheese". Roxanne Kate's entry was based on the series "Sweet Potato Queens", Lee Ann Chase's, by "Fast Food Nation" or "Super Size Me", and Mark Glisson's, by "Toasting Tina". The votes are in with the following results in the order of highest to lowest votes:

1. "Super Size Me".
   
2. "Who Moved My Cheese".
   
3. Tied for third place: "Sweet Potato Queens" and "Toasting Tina".
   

A big "Thank You" for all who participated.

Changes at the HPL!

Design gurus Mark and Lee Ann put their heads together and rearranged the furniture in the reference section, make sure you come down and check it out! While you’re here, make sure you also take a look at our ever-expanding CD, audio book, and DVD collections!

Library Easter Egg Hunt for the Hooksett-ites

The Hooksett-ites enjoyed a special Easter Egg Hunt that we prepared for them this morning during their regular Friday visit to the library. We thought that this would be a great way to say "Thank You" for their very gracious and generous help in stuffing the Easter eggs for last month's Children's Easter Egg Hunt. Among all the 200+ eggs hidden throughout the library, Elizabeth Stewart found the surprise jumbo egg which we hid in a plant in the Children's room. By finding this prize egg, she won a collector's item in the form of a crystal egg.

New resource added to our reference site

We've added a very content rich medical reference resource to our reference tools page. It's called MedlinePlus, a U.S. Government sponsored site recommended by doctors to help consumers learn more about their health, find information for school projects, look up info on prescriptions and over-the-counter medicines, and prepare for doctor's visits. Check it out and enjoy the resources there!

Spring? It's Coming!

Check out our new Spring has Sprung book display! On the table in front of the quiet study room you will find numerous books to help you whip your garden into shape. Spring is just around the corner, (we hope!), and now is the perfect time to start planning your garden!

Expanded Request Service

We've made it even easier for you to get the material you want by expanding our online request service. Previously, your requests made in our online catalog applied only to Hooksett Library holdings. And, if we didn't have the item, you had to contact us and make an interlibrary loan request or drive to a GMILCS library which had the item and pick it up there. Now, your requests extend to holdings in all participating GMILCS libraries. In addition, if we don't have the item you're looking for, but a participating GMILCS library does, all you have to do is request it online in the "All GMILCS" catalog, and you'll even be able to choose the pick up location for the item. If you'd like to find out more about this expanded service, watch the short presentation here.

Easter Egg Hunt Photos 20080322

Everyone had a blast during this year's Easter Egg Hunt and party. All 120+ participants. We held the event indoors, since the ground was snow-covered outside. Many thanks to everyone who helped out: Hooksett Kiwanis Builders Club of Cawley Middle School, the Hooksett-ites, the Friends of the Library, and many others!