Jim G.'s blog

Monroe County Public Library 303 East Kirkwood Ave., Bloomington

February 4 - April 12

Monday and Tuesday: 2:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Friday: 2:00 pm - 5:45 pm

(Arrive early - signup begins at 1:30 p.m. - first come, first served)

Ellettsville Branch Library 600 W. Temperance St., Ellettsville, Phone 812-876-3383

February 1 - April 12 (Call for an appointment.)

Friday: 10:00 am - 1:00 pm

Saturday: 12:30 pm - 2:30 pm

Other locations:  see http://www.monroeunitedway.org/freetaxes

What can you do when your favorite author doesn’t write fast enough?  When you finish a series do you have a hard time finding something else to read?

Using NoveList Plus, you can find suggestions for similar authors or series, lists of award winners, as well as the order of books in a series.  Book lists and book discussion guides can help you find a new favorite book or author.

 In NoveList Plus, you’ll find:

• Fiction and nonfiction titles for all ages
• Expert reading recommendations from professional librarians
• Read-alikes for every title, author, and series
• Easy-to-use interface designed with readers and librarians in mind
• Simple but effective searching
• Quick and easy-to-use resources including:
  • Book Discussion Guides
  • Thematic book lists
  • Reading and book-oriented articles

Try NoveList Plus, a great resource for finding your next favorite book.

MCPL is experimenting with a self-service scanning station that provides an easy way to convert paper documents, photos and drawings into a digital format.

The "Simple Scan" station is an easy to use touch-screen scanning device that scans, saves, and sends all your documents, photos, magazines and more. The Simple Scan Station can automatically auto-crop, auto-straighten and auto-orient each page scanned.

You can save your scanned item in the following formats:

• PDF's
• Searchable PDF
• Word
• TIFF
• JPEG

After you decide how you want your scanned item saved, Simple Scan's touch screen guides you through several ways to save or send it including:

• Save to USB
• Send to email
• Send to Google Docs

We would like library patrons to try it out and help us decide whether we should keep the stations. Stop by the Elletsville Branch or the Main Library (second floor Reference Desk) to try one out today.

What's the third book in the Hunger Games trilogy? What comes after Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire? It's easy to find out using this new website available to you from the Monroe County Public Library. eSequels is an online guide to series fiction that is current and complete so you can find the newest title by your favorite author or spot a title that you may have missed. Novels are listed in the correct reading sequence so you can begin at the beginning . Character, location and subject are indexed as well as author and title. Brief annotations are provided that describe each title without "giving away" any surprise endings.

You can find eSequels and many other great sources of information on our A-Z Research Tools page.

Monroe County Public Library patrons tired of being on waiting lists for popular new titles, both books and DVDs, now have another option: they can get these materials into their hands faster through the library's Bestseller Express collections. These browsing collections make popular books and movies available to more people more quickly. Titles in the collections cannot be reserved or renewed. "We developed Bestseller Express to make more copies of high-demand titles available to our patrons," says Collection Services Manager, Pam Wasmer. "The Express collections are proving very popular. We want everyone to know about this new service option." Read more »

The library has recently purchased this large collection of eBooks from Gale®, part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing. Access thousands of pages in hundreds of eBooks 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Print, email and download articles.

Read more »

Mango is an online language learning system teaching practical conversation skills for a variety of popular languages and ESL courses. It’s fast, easy and available anywhere you get online. Best of all, it’s FREE through your local library!

Lessons include strategically  placed memory-building exercises to help users remember what they are learning  in addition to critical thinking exercises, which help them to intuitively  understand the language and adapt it to similar conversations.

You will have the option to start learning right away as an anonymous user or to create a profile, which will allow you to track your progress and time spent learning each language. If you create a profile, you will receive an activation e-mail with an activation link. This link is to be used only once to activate your account. Every subsequent log in should be through the link on the library's website. After you complete these simple steps, you should be all set to start language learning with Mango!