Author: Library Director

Weather Closures

The library is closed today, Saturday, Dec. 6, due to the weather conditions.  

There are several ways you can find out if the library will be closed:

  • call the library and listen to the phone message
  • visit our Facebook page (be sure you are visiting the page with current information)
  • visit our webpage (you are here!)
  • watch for information on news channels WCHS-6, WMTW-8, or WGME-13

Looking for Volunteers

volunteers needed

Have you ever considered becoming a volunteer at the library?

We have a few openings right now to work along side the Library Director

  • Tuesday nights from 4-6pm during the winter months (until about May, but that can be flexible).
  • Saturday mornings from 9-11am or 11-1pm
  • In January we will have an opening for every other Tuesday night from 6-8pm.

We are looking for anyone who would be willing to do whatever is needed.  Because we’re a small library and mostly volunteer-staffed, the job description covers everything from checking books in and out, shelving books, cleaning, etc.  This is a great opportunity to meet others in the community and find out about great books and authors.

We’re also interested in having a list of substitute volunteers we can call on when a “regular” volunteer can’t come in (we keep a schedule handy, so we know when people will be on vacation or have prior commitments)

Please contact Amy if you are interested.  Thank you!!

New books coming in!

Have you been in to check out the changes made here at the library?  We now have a whole shelf dedicated to new release and new-to-us books!  And today I’m adding to that shelf!

Shots Fired by C.J. Box
Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot (A Spenser novel) by Ace Atkins
Robert B. Parker’s  Blind Spot (A Jesse Stone novel) by Reed Coleman
The Blazing Star (Dawn of the Clans #4) by Erin Hunter

Also, on Saturdays, come on in and enjoy a fresh, hot cup of coffee…FREE!!  And there’s plenty of books and comfy chairs to enjoy with that cup of coffee.

Time to renew your library cards!

Wow, time has flown!  We have spent the spring and summer months working on logging all of our books into an online catalog.  There are still lots of tweaks to be made, but we’ve now begun handing out new library patron cards.  These cards have a bar code on them and will not require a yearly renewal.  They are also FREE!  The library board of trustees passed a vote to do away with the 50 cent charge for patron cards.  All this “newness” also means that volunteers (as well as the library director) are having to get used to a new system.  As we go ahead, things may seem a little slow but I think we’ll all get the hang of it and it is going to reap huge benefits!  One of those is that you can now view our online catalog from anywhere and see if we have the book you want, if it’s checked in or out at the moment, and, if it’s checked out, you can put a hold on it…..all from the comfort of your own home (or wherever you are when accessing our catalog)!!!  The link for the online catalog will be permanently added to our webpage, but for the sake of this post, I’ll include it here: West Buxton Public Library Online Catalog (and when it asks for library name and password, you just need to enter the name: WBuxtonLibrary) So feel free to check it out and please bear with us as we make all these new changes!

Spring has sprung, the grass has riz…

Ode to Spring 

“Spring has sprung,
The Grass has riz,
I wonder where the birdies is?
The little bird is on the wing,
But that’s absurd! 
Because the wing is on the bird!”

by Ogden Nash

Well, I’d say it’s safe to finally say spring is here.  Yard work has been getting done even here around the library!  And though the river seemed to shake it’s fist in our direction, just as many long time locals promised, it kept within it bounds and the library stayed cozy, warm and DRY!  😀

We’re still hard at working getting a “virtual card catalog” set up online.  It’s a long process (the library SEEMS like a small library until you have a project like this where you have to actually handle EVERY SINGLE BOOK in here!) but we’re hoping to be done by this fall.  This will mean new library cards as well (that will have a barcode so they’re computer interactive).  However, we won’t be updating cards every year after this AND there is no longer a fee for getting a library card.  More on that as we get closer to the end of the project (we’ve officially made it to about 1/4 of our total inventory cataloged!)

And finally, we have an exciting program coming up this month.  On May 17th at 11 am, Miss Acadia High 2014, Alyssa Patterson, will be co-hosting a book reading with us.  As part of her reign, Alyssa is promoting the Crown C.A.R.E.S program which focuses on anti-bullying.  She’ll be reading from Francine McEwen’s newly released book, Billy Big Ears and Bob the Bully.  The author herself as well as the illustrator, Thomas Block, will be joining Alyssa to discuss the book and their work on it.  This is a free event.  We are still looking for a place to hold the event as the library only holds 25 people and we’re expecting many more than that as the program will be advertised in several local schools as well as on community television.  So stay tuned for more details, and if you know of a place locally where we can hold the event, please contact Amy at director@westbuxtonpubliclibrary.org.

New things happening!

First thing is, as you may have noticed, we’ve got a new webpage!! Many thanks to John Vedral of Mainely Web for setting this up and maintaining it for us. This means I get to blog about happenings here at the library, share fun things, new books, events, etc. This also means that our website is now easily accessed and used on your mobile device.
More new things….we are in the process of getting all of our books entered into a computer catalog!! It will still be a few months before we actually start using it and it will require new patron cards, but it’s getting there! So when you see vehicles at the library during hours other than library hours, you’ll know we’re hard at working getting this all up and running to better serve you. We’ll even have a computer station set up for you to look up books at the library and possibly even have the ability for you to look through our catalog while still in your own home!
As a final thought, with April being National Poetry month, I’d like to share with you a Book Spine Poem (also known as a Cento or a literary work made up of quotations from other works) that I ran across, quite by accident the other day, as I was putting books into our cataloging system.