Testing Resources by ReShicka Hawkins

As we get closer and closer to the summer, a lot of people are getting excited and spending time day dreaming about enjoying some well earned pool time, going on a fun vacation with their family or even being able to flip some burgers out on the grill.  Well, snap out it!  Although summer is so close, we have to get serious because a lot of important deadlines are approaching, especially in the education world.

Some of you may be students or parents of students and know that we are nearing crunch time for studying for the ACT, SAT, AP, CLEP or GRE exams. Lucky for us, we have a fantastic library with all sorts of different studying resources.  Of course, when you think about materials at the library, your first (and maybe only) thought is books. Well you are correct (partially); this library has many test prep books, but we also have a great computer resource as well. 

 

But first, the books.  One book in particular that I have used is called “GRE: Strategies, Practice, and Review.”  This book gave me a walk-through of what the exam should look like, how to approach certain sections of the Graduate Records Exam with detailed explanations, and most importantly, a review of the exam with multiple practice questions. 

Some of our other practice exam books include “The Princeton Review: Cracking the ACT,”

 “Peterson’s Master the SAT” ,and

 “Cracking the LSAT,” just to name a few.

However, the best resource is now online and accessible from your home. Our online testing database, Testing and Education Reference Center (TERC), is located on our webpage (library.stillwater.org) and you just need to have a library card to use it.  TERC has many tools to help students succeed, including ebooks, study courses, practice tests and even a resume builder.  It covers many tests such as AP Exams, ACT, SAT, TOEFL, federal job tests and many graduate school tests. This reference center is something I wish I would have known about when I was in high school and college.

Since you now have so many resources for test preparation, you can relax a little and look forward to the summer!

Communities Matter @ Your Library by Stacy

Attending a volunteer fiesta were (back row from left) Olen Thomas, Gwen Piersall, Nicole Sump-Crethar, Misty Smith, Martha Dean, Debby Houk, Sheryl Shutt, Michael Shaw, Pam Brown, Barbara Adams and Linda Tinney. (Front row from left) Theo Yoast, Arlene Smith, Rose Edwards, Dorothy Carmain, Patsy Bostick and Robin Cornwell.

Last week we had a celebration to recognize the volunteers at our library and all the hard work they do.  Right now, we have thirteen long-term volunteers who altogether donate 50-55 hours of work each week doing tasks like shelving, processing books, preparing displays, blogging, teaching computer classes, assisting in genealogy and much more.  Eight of our volunteer earned the President’s Volunteer Service Award for working 150 hours or more each throughout the year.  In addition, we recognized our amazing volunteers on the library board, trust board and Friends of the Library. 

Our library could not run without these volunteers, but it also couldn’t run as well without many of our supporters and partners in the community.  The theme of National Library Week two weeks ago was “Communities Matter @ Your Library.”  There are many ways to interpret that phrase, but in OUR community it means that many, many people and groups lend a hand to make sure we have the best library possible.  This is a great time to thank them!

Thank you to the Boy Scouts who do a ton of work helping us set up the book sale and recycle books after the sale.

Thank you Oklahoma Quality Printing which provides us with thousands of free bookmarks throughout the year.

Thank you to Stillwater Schools for providing volunteer help and partnerships with local children and teens.

Thank you to all of the area’s media outlets, including Stillwater NewsPress that help keep the community informed about our news and events.

Thank you OSU Arts and Sciences Outreach, Meridian Technology Center, OSU Payne County Extension and Oklahoma Workforce for providing excellent programs for us.

A big thank you to OSU’s Edmon Low Library for years of wonderful partnerships and mentoring.

And a really big thanks to our fellow city departments for helping us with everything from providing barricades for events to publicity to recycling bins and a great deal more.

But the biggest thanks goes out to our library users for making our jobs wonderful!  Thank you Stillwater!

Audiobooks by Paula

I've got a secret that helps me through tough times …like when I'm trying to finish that 3rd mile around Boomer Lake or when I've got to tackle "Laundry Mountain." What is it," you ask? Audiobooks.

I love to sit down and read (that's probably why my laundry often takes on mountainous proportions) but with audiobooks, I'm able to take my story with me. Even better, if I don't let myself listen to the book except when I'm either exercising or doing housework, I find myself looking forward to my next opportunity to do those things just so I'll have a chance to find out what's going to happen next in the story. A tale with suspense or a funny story can really keep me wanting to go on and even go back for more. I loved "Where'd You Go, Bernadette" by Maria Semple which combined both humor and suspense to keep me motivated.

Another fabulous use for audiobooks is as a traveling companion. If you're on a trip with your family, audiobooks are an ideal way to share your favorite childhood books with your kids, discover new and exciting places together, or simply get a feel for what the kids are reading these days. “Winnie-the-Pooh,” “The Magic Tree House” books, “The 39 Clues,” and “The City of Ember” have been some of our favorite audiobooks, uniting our family on a journey in a way that plugging in the dvd player in the backseat never could.  

The library has a wonderful selection of audiobooks to choose from and several different formats to meet your needs. There are compact discs which are great for car trips or when everyone wants to listen to the same thing. These are available for checkout at the library. There is also a fabulous selection of digital audiobooks available for checkout with your library card through the library's webpage. These are nice to download to an mp3 player or a phone for exercise or other times when portability is a priority.

Whatever your chore or wherever you're going, audiobooks can help you get there and help you get your work done while making the task more pleasant as you go.

Tornado Season- Have a Plan by Naomi

 The dreary weather at the beginning of this week is a good reminder that we are in the heart of tornado season.  Nebraska, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas make up Tornado alley, where tornadoes strike regularly in the spring and early summer.  The U.S. has an average of 800 tornadoes every year, and dozens of lives are lost.  Sometimes the difference in surviving a weather event depends on preparing in advance. 

For example, do you know where the public shelters are in Stillwater?  Stillwater’s public shelters are the Ag Hall building (corner of Farm Road and Monroe) and the EngineeringSouth building (east of the OSU library).  The Stillwater Public Library is NOT a public shelter, but in the event that you are at the library when there is severe weather, we have a plan to keep staff members and library users as safe as possible. 

Do you and your family have an emergency plan?  If not, the library can help.  We currently have several handout sheets that will help you make an emergency kit and show you how to practice tornado drills as a family.  These handouts also discuss other types of disasters and attacks and how to be ready for them. 

We also have informative books and videos that explain why and how severe weather occurs.  The books “Twisters” by Lucille Recht Penner and “Twisters and Other Terrible Storms” by Will Osborne are great choices to help you discuss your plans with your children.  Adults will appreciate “Tornado Alert” by Wendy Scavuzzo and “Storm warning: the story of a killer tornado” by Nancy Mathis.  The whole family will enjoy DVDs such as “Storm Chasers” and “Tornado Alley.” 

 

 

So come on in the library this week, to pick up some of these great resources and get prepared!  

The Booksale of the Future by Stacy

Our spring book sale is coming up Thursday, April 18 through Sunday, April 21.  For many of us, it’s the highlight of the year.  It’s not every day you get to pore through 20,000 fascinating or obscure or popular or heartwarming books that you get to take home for a little pocket change.  But I’ve been wondering what these massive book sales will look like in the future?  With more and more people purchasing digital content, will book sales even exist?

In 2005, I was at a national library conference where the keynote speaker was a well-known library expert.  At that time, he said “eBooks are dead.”  The prohibitive cost of reading devices was the reasoning behind his statement.  At that time, readers were well over $500 compared to now, when prices begin around $50.  Since then, of course, prices dropped and ereading exploded.  Many avid readers who can afford it have purchased an ereader and gone almost completely digital.  

One of the biggest concerns I’ve had as a librarian is NOT whether libraries will remain alive with the digital novel revolution (libraries are actually information brokers, not book brokers, so the media on which the information is placed is largely irrelevant to us), but how our book sale will fare.

Having successful book sales is a huge concern because we use proceeds to supplement a bare bones budget that would typically allow for just physical books and staff.  Without supplements, we would not have been able to start our ebook service or have genealogy and testing databases or hold events that attract people to the library like summer reading.

The main concern is the people who often purchased full price books at a store are also those likely to have been able to purchase an ereader.  That means the books they were buying and donating to the library book sale no longer exist in a form in which we are able to take as donations and then resell.

Lately, each time the sale approaches, I wait with bated breath to see whether or not the book storage room is filling up fast enough.  If there is a time when the number of boxes entering the room stalls, I become very anxious.  But so far, we are seeing just as many, if not more books being donated.  This might be because as people go all digital, they are clearing out their physical collections.  Whatever the reason, it is making book sale shopping all the richer.

I imagine the future holds sales where electronic books are donated, stored and purchased online, probably all year around.  Perhaps smaller physical sales will still take place where the books sold are super rare and hard to find.  I won’t miss all of the work that goes into the giant sales, but I will miss the distinctive smell of thousands upon thousands of delicious books.  At any rate, we’ve still got the big ole sales for now, so come on over and shop, shop, shop!

For the Birds by Carline

 

Spring is finally here!  I have been looking forward to warmer temperatures, the budding trees, shrubs and flowers.  I also really look forward to watching the birds in my yard as they build their nests and raise their families. 

Over the years, my husband and I have put up several types of bird houses and have been lucky a few times when birds have actually nested in them.  Mostly though, we have had birds build nests in our hanging ferns, in the large hosta pots on the front porch, in various types of hanging flower pots, and even in a woodpile!  This has created somewhat of a problem because when we go in and out of the house we usually scare the “mamas” off the nest.  Fortunately, they come right back and we have enjoyed watching the nesting, hatching, feeding and fledging process!

This year we decided to try to build some bird houses ourselves and place them around the yard in out-of-the-way places.  I found a wonderful book at the library, “Bird-Friendly Nest Boxes and Feeders” by Paul Meisel, that is full of different kinds of nest boxes and feeders for a variety of birds, along with detailed diagrams on how to build them.  There is also useful information on feeding habits, ranges, etc.

There are quite a number of books about building bird houses and feeders available at the library.  “The Big Book of Bird Houses & Bird Feeders” by Thom Boswell, Bruce Woods and David Schoonmaker is all about unique, whimsical type houses and feeders with building instructions; “The Backyard Bird Feeder’s BIBLE, the A-To-Z guide to feeders, seed mixes, projects and treats” by Sally Roth is another very informative book.  Most books on this subject can be found in the 500-700’s at the library.

If you love watching birds and listening to their beautiful songs, try putting up nest boxes, feeders and birdbaths.  This will attract birds to your yard and you can have hours of enjoyment watching and learning!

Gardening with Kids by Levonn

 

When spring brings warmer weather, many people start digging around in their gardens.  Some are serious gardeners that have long range plans and fully expect a return on their efforts, some are more fly by the seat of their pants, and they just want to brighten up their front yard or maybe try a few containers for vegetables and then are pleasantly surprised when they harvest anything.  Whatever type of gardener you are you should try to include the children in your family. 

           

Kids learn so many lessons from a garden: identifying plants and to respect them as living things; understanding the growth cycle of plants, identifying necessary ingredients for growth and possibly an understanding of the connection of our food and how we get it.  They also can learn the rewards from hard work and patience.  It is a great time to spend one-on-one with a child.  A time to talk and share without a lot of pressure.  Of course fresh air, sunshine and exercise don't hurt those kids any either.

           

If you're not sure where to start, we have great some books that will be a big help:

"The book of gardening projects for kids: 101 ways to get kids outside, dirty and having fun" by Whitney Cohen – a book for parents with gardening ideas and projects for kids.

  "Water,weed, and wait" by Edith Hope Fine – a lively picture book about Miss Marigold, the garden lady, who visits Pepper Lane Elementary to help them transform a weedy, rocky patch of ground into a garden.

"Ready,Set, Grow"- photographs take young gardeners through gardening process step by step.

 

 "A backyard vegetable garden for kids" by Amie Jane Leavitt - Presents information and advice on choosing vegetables, preparing a place for them to grow, and then planting and caring for them.

 "Grow it, Cook it" - Shows how to grow plants and then how to use them in delicious kid-appealing recipes, involving kids in food right from the start!

"Young gardener" by Stefan Buczacki – a hands-on gardening book that combines useful information with fun projects that can be done by children, alone or with adults.

For more helpful material about gardening with children, come by the Children’s Help Desk.