Loss of Longmeadow's Library Services

The culture and community of Longmeadow is based on a foundation of learning. We pride ourselves in our School System. It serves 3,100 children. For this system the town budgeted to spend 74% of town revenues this year, or $34,500,000, for schools. Our Storrs Library also is one of our prides. The Library serves all 16,000 of us. This year our town budgeted 1.8% of revenues, or $838,000, for our Library; this amount is one fortieth of what we spend on the schools.

For next fiscal year, your town government is looking to reduce library hours to below the minimum required by State government to obtain their financial support. Should library hours be cut to below 50 per week, Storrs Library will be decertified by the state.

WHAT LONGMEADOW LIBRARY WILL LOSE IF DECERTIFIED !

• All free borrowing privileges and services at area libraries
• State funds to purchase, maintain, and upgrade library computers
• Access to important educational materials for students from elementary school through college
• Professional staff to provide research assistance for school projects, workforce development and online government resource use
• Full programming schedules throughout the year for CHILDREN and adults
• Free and open access to wireless and broadband internet connections
• Timely and convenient access to current newspapers, periodicals, books, DVDs and audio.

Town government must budget next year what is needed to keep our Storrs Library doors open and functioning well 50 hours per week.

To prevent decertification, email or write NOW to your Select Board and Town Manager:

Robert Barkett; Paul Santaniello; Rob Aseltine; William Scibelli; Robin Crosbie; Mark Gold

Write them at Select Board, Town of Longmeadow, 20 Williams Street, Longmeadow, MA 01106

Your Select Board meets next Monday, March 1 and on March 8 to continue their discussion of library funding for next year.

Submitted by Roger Wojcik

Libraries are used more than ever

Libraries are the other half of education serving the needs of all residents and supporting learning for students of all ages. Check out the Massachusetts Library Association Value of Library Service calculator to see the worth of your library usage. Or visit Geek the Library to further explore the value of your public library.

Storrs Library- A Resource for All Ages

For some people in Longmeadow... having access to high speed Internet at home is an expensive non-essential "luxury". However, many of the new "social media" like YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and others being adopted as standard methods of communication require the use of a recent vintage computer as well as high speed Internet. In today's difficult economic environment, having access to high speed Internet is crucial to finding a new job.

Storrs Library with its state of the art computer technology provides an important resource to many people in our town.

Below is just one example....

Long time resident Ruth Brenner watches
her granddaughter's college piano recital on YouTube

As our town leaders work through this years' budget crisis and are confronted with difficult choices regarding cuts in services.... let them not forget that our town library is a critical resource that we cannot afford to lose. Perhaps, rather than closing our Storrs Library we might consider reducing or eliminating the library services at Longmeadow HS (+ middle schools and elementary schools) and centralize these services at Storrs Library so that all town residents can benefit. Access to library services for high school and other students would likely increase significantly since Storrs Library is open at night and on Saturdays.

In addition, many of the resources for Storrs Library are accessible 24/7 via the Internet. If you haven't visited Storrs Library "on the web", please consider doing so. Here is a link - check it out for yourself and I think that you will be impressed!

Just an idea... thinking outside the box!

Rejoice, MAC Users

While PC users have long been enjoying the digital audiobooks available through the OverDrive Media Console, MAC users have been waiting to download and transfer the files using their MACs. The wait is now over! Download MP3 audiobooks at www.longmeadow.org/library. The OverDrive MP3 Audiobook offers iPod®, iPhone™, and iPod Touch support! To download our MP3 content, please make sure you have OverDrive Media Console v3.0 (or newer) for Windows or OverDrive Media Console v1.0 (or newer) for Mac installed on your computer. Simple instructions are available when you click on DOWNLOADABLE DIGITAL BOOKS, AUDIO AND VIDEO at www.longmeadow.org/library.

Some of the more popular titles:

Sideways
The story of two friends, Miles and Jack, going away together for the last time to steep themselves in everything that makes it good to be young and single: pinot, putting, and prowling bars. A raucous and surprising novel filled with wonderful details about wine, Sideways is also a thought provoking and funny book about men, women, and human relationships.

Master and Commander

This, the first in the splendid series of Jack Aubrey novels, establishes the friendship between Captain Aubrey, R.N., and Stephen Maturin, ship’s surgeon and intelligence agent, against the thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars.

Murder on the Yellow Brick Road

It is November 1, 1940. In the famous sound stage ofThe WIZARD OF OZ on the MGM lot, a little man is lying face-up on the yellow brick road. Someone has murdered a Munchkin. Toby Peters is summoned to the scene of the crime by a very young and frightened starlet named Judy Garland. He begins to put together the scanty clues. Within an hour, he is hired by Lewis B. Meyer himself to keep the name of Judy Garland (and MGM) clean of the scandal, and to hold off the police and the newspapers.

We hope that MAC and IPOD users will enjoy this new service. If you have any questions, please call us at 413-565-4181. Farida Pomerantz

Question #1 Impact on Libraries

Question 1 on the November 4th ballot, if passed, would eliminate the state income tax. Visit the Coalition for Our Communities to see the estimated state aid cuts for Massachusetts cities and towns.

According to a Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners’ recent news release , the impact on libraries would be severe. Effects include the elimination of funding for automated networks, which allow borrowing of materials from other libraries, elimination of State Aid to Public Libraries in place since 1890, loss of all electronic resources currently funded by the state and the Regional Library Systems and much more. Commissioner Em Claire Knowles stated, “At a time when we are seeing library use surge, the repeal of the state income tax, would take us back to the library of 1890 and really hurt our residents.”

Financial matters on our minds

Confused about financial terms in the news? Eager to have reliable background information on the stock market, hedge funds, investment banks, commercial banks or the Federal Reserve? Visit the library and consult Gale's 2008 Everyday Finance. It is on display, together with several other up-to-date reference books on money matters.

The library subscribes to the print editions of the Value Line Investment Report, the Value Line Small and Mid-Cap Report and The Morningstar Report. As a subscriber to The Morningstar Report, the library provides in-house access to Morningstar Mutual Funds Online at each of the seven internet stations in the Adult Department. Users should consult the folder on the desktop labeled Morningstar Online to obtain username and password. Morningstar Mutual Funds Online is a PDF report service and all reports may be saved to a disk. Each month, updated full page reports appear on the website two weeks before the print issue arrives. Special reports are issued each quarter. Topics covered recently include Model Portfolios for Retirees and the Best Funds for Income.

In these uncertain economic times, these valuable resources, supported by tax dollars, are available to all

Exterior Painting at Storrs Library

On September 5, the Town began the project of painting the exterior of Storrs Library. It is estimated that workers will take approximately 5 or 6 weeks to complete the job which will consist of power washing, replacing rotten wood and painting the entire building. We expect to keep the library open throughout the process, and we anticipate that there may be only minor inconvenience in access to the building. Let us all look forward to our newly painted library building brilliantly white against the Fall foliage and bright blue autumn sky.

Fall Hours at Storrs Library

Starting on Saturday, September 6th, Storrs Library will be open on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. September is a lovely month to stop by and enjoy the inviting sun-filled spaces of our elegant reading rooms, to peruse our extensive collection of magazines, to select a book for weekend reading or pick out a DVD for a movie evening at home.

Now that school has started, the staff invites students to visit the library for help with school assignments. The library has trained staff, an extensive print and digital reference collection, periodicals, primary source materials and computers with broad-band internet connection. Color printers are also available and printouts cost .15 per page. The library hours are Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, 10-8, Thursday and Friday, 10-5 and Saturday, 10-4.

Visit the Digital Bookmobile on August 28th

Have you been to www.longmeadow.org/library and wondered about that link to Digital Books, Audio and Video? Would you like special help getting started with this new offering? Then come to a special event on Thursday, August 28th at the Agawam Public Library, 750 Cooper Street, sponsored by OverDrive Media and CWMARS. A 74-foot, 18-wheeled Digital Bookmobile will be there from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on its only stop in western Massachusetts! This traveling exhibit for public library download services allows readers of all ages to try out digital audiobook, ebook, and video downloads. Library staff will be on hand to help and advise regarding downloading free software, transferring to compatible portable devices and other matters. We invite you to participate in this unique opportunity and become a frequent user of this exciting new offering in Storrs Library services.

Storrs Library E-Mail Courtesy Notices Coming Soon

Does the Library have your e-mail address? For some time, patrons with a valid e-mail address on their library record have been receiving holds pickup notification and overdue notices via e-mail. E-mail addresses provided to the library are held in strict confidence and used only for legitimate library business. If you have an e-mail address and have not provided it to the library, now is the time to do it. Soon, the system will also be sending out courtesy notices. What is a courtesy notice? Every day, the CWMARS system will check materials about to become due within two days. The system will then generate and e-mail courtesy notices reminding patrons to renew or get the materials back on time in order to avoid late fees. Take advantage of this useful new service. Log in to your library record and enter your e-mail address or stop by the Library and fill out a form. Many thanks. Farida Pomerantz, Reference

Visit the library for your health!

Every day, all around the country, some of you approach library reference desks with health-related reference questions. Those of you who don't come to libraries often use magazines, TV or the Internet to research health matters. Some of the information you find on your own may be reliable and up to date; however, some can be positively unhealthy! How to tell the good from the bad? Perhaps it might be useful to share with you guidelines librarians follow when we evaluate health-related materials for our print or online collections. What is the source? If it is print , who is the author, publisher, editor, or editorial board? If it is electronic, who has put the information together or who is running the site? Is it a branch of government, a university, a health organization, a hospital? How thorough is the coverage? How current is the information? Is it updated frequently?

On a recent visit to MedlinePlus, the website of the National Library of Medicine, I came across a short online tutorial on evaluating Internet health resources. It runs for about 15 minutes and I would like to recommend it to anyone considering health-related research on the Web.

For those of you who visit Storrs Library on a regular basis, may I suggest the new 4th edition of Magill's Medical Guide, generously donated to the library by the Friends of Storrs Library. This 5-volume print resource has received high praise from every major reference reviewer for its depth and accessibility. Its 3,026 pages, full of illustrations, sidebars and graphs, expertly bridges the gap between a medical encyclopedia for the professional and popular self-help guides. The Guide includes an "In the News" section that both informs and provides users with a critical view of popular reports. Also noteworthy is the addition of a list of "Symptoms and Warning Signs" and a "Pharmaceutical List" surveying brand-name and generic drugs. But, perhaps, the most remarkable feature of Magill's Medical Guide is the online database that accompanies it. All of the content is available 24/7 to patrons with a Storrs Library card!

I hope that this information is useful. Please don't hesitate to visit us in person or online at www.longmeadow.org/library.
Farida Pomerantz/Reference

Storrs Library, old but also new!

It is hard to believe that the addition to Storrs Library is already more than 16 years old!! Those of us who were here at that time remember how cutting-edge the design seemed, featuring a centralized circulation desk, a separate Reference Desk, areas for computerized catalogs, a children’s room on the main level and an elevator to the second floor.
Little did we imagine that sixteen years later, we would have seven public access catalogs, eleven Internet stations, plus wireless capacity throughout the building. Our fiction and nonfiction collections have continued to grow, adding new titles to those already on the shelves and creating a depth and range difficult to find in bookstores oriented to stocking only the latest publications. In 1997, five years after the opening of our addition, we timidly launched our first web presence at http://www.longmeadow.org. Back then we had a few sections—a very basic computerized catalog, sections on library history and policies and a Web gateway with some favorite links. Eleven years later, how things have changed! We are now at www.longmeadow.org/library with a newly designed enhanced library catalog. With a Storrs Library card not only can you search Longmeadow’s holdings from home, expand your search to all Massachusetts libraries and place online requests, but you can read summaries and reviews of most titles right from the catalog. High-quality reference databases include searchable, general interest periodicals, full-text, peer-reviewed academic and professional journals and newspaper backfiles such as the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Springfield Republican. The website provides access to full-length downloadable videos, like the Globe Trekker videos and hundreds of audiobooks that can be downloaded and played on portable devices. One of the databases, Academic Onefile, has free downloadable podcasts from NPR and the New England Journal of Medicine. Issues and Controversies and Issues and Controversies in American History contain excellent resources for students working on contemporary issues, while Science Online provides support to the middle and high school science curricula.

I am delighted to have been invited to participate in Longmeadow Buzz. Be on the lookout for news from the Library and in the meantime, don’t forget to visit at 693 Longmeadow Street or at www.longmeadow.org/library. Farida Pomerantz/Reference

Wild Reads at the Library

Wild Things are happening at the Storrs Library this summer. The summer reading program, part of the statewide Reads In Massachusetts program, offers kids, teens and adults the opportunity to explore the joy of reading. Parents who participate will show their children that reading is fun for everyone. The program runs from June 23 through August 8, 2008. Readers can join anytime during the program. For more information stop by the Library or visit us online.