September is Library Card Sign-Up Month! This month is a time to celebrate your local library and all of the services provided to you with a library card. Whether you use your card to borrow print or digital books, check out free museum passes, attend story time, access library computers and printers, or all of the above, a library card helps you do more of what you enjoy!
Do you or someone you know not have a library card? Signing up has never been easier! Simply click here to sign up for a digital library pass that has all of the same privileges as a physical card!
To celebrate this month, we have put together a book display featuring fiction and nonfiction books all about public libraries! Here are a few highlights from the display:
Full book list:
Print Copy
Book Club Kit
eBook
Audiobook
On the morning of April 28, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. The fire was disastrous: it reached two thousand degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library–and if so, who?
Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a “delightful…reflection on the past, present, and future of libraries in America” (New York magazine) that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before.
Print Copies (Regular and Large Type)
eBook
Audiobook
1913. When Laura Lyons applies to the Columbia Journalism School she finds herself involved with the Greenwich Village Heterodoxy Club, a radical feminist group that makes her question her role as wife and mother. When valuable books are stolen from the library, she’s forced to confront her priorities head on. 1993. Sadie struggles with the legacy of her grandmother, famous essayist Laura Lyons. Her job as a curator at the New York Public Library becomes a nightmare when rare manuscripts begin disappearing. An investigation leads Sadie to some unwelcome truths about her own family heritage.
Print Copies (Regular and Large Type)
eBook
Audiobook
Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?
In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig’s enchanting blockbuster novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.
Despite dire predictions in the late twentieth century that public libraries would not survive the turn of the millennium, those libraries continue to thrive. Two of three Americans frequent a public library at least once a year, and nearly that many are registered borrowers. Although library authorities have argued that the public library functions primarily as a civic institution necessary for maintaining democracy, generations of library patrons tell a different story. In Part of Our Lives, Wayne A. Wiegand delves into the heart of why Americans love their libraries. The book traces the history of the public library, featuring records and testimonies from as early as 1850. Rather than analyzing the words of library founders and managers, Wiegand listens to the voices of everyday patrons who cherished libraries. Drawing on newspaper articles, memoirs, and biographies, Part of Our Lives paints a clear and engaging picture of Americans who value libraries not only as civic institutions, but also as social spaces for promoting and maintaining community. Whether as a public space, a place for accessing information, or a home for reading material that helps patrons make sense of the world around them, the public library has a rich history of meaning for millions of Americans.
In a series of award-winning cover stories for The Nation magazine, investigative reporter Scott Sherman was the first reporter to cast doubt on the New York Public Library’s controversial £350 renovation plan. He found the story about a beloved library caught in the crosshairs of real estate, power and the people’s interests. Here Sherman presents a new investigation, a news-breaking account of the New York Public Library’s entanglements with money, power and big real estate.
For any questions about signing up for a library card, please leave a comment below or call the reference desk at 732-873-8700 opt. 3.
Thanks for reading,
George, FTPL
