Yo-ho-ho!

The Children's Room Summer Reading Program: "Treasure Reading" was a huge success this year. The kids loved the pirate theme. Our room was decorated like a pirate's lair, we had pirate crafts and displays, and our prizes were piled in a pirate's treasure chest.

This year, 513 children registered to read books and earn prizes. That is the highest number of sign-ups ever for our summer programs.

Our drop-in story hour had 409 children and parents visit over the summer, and 142 children and parents came to our summer movies. Our pirate-themed crafts were huge this year- 1,818 crafts were made! That is 700 more than last year. On a beautiful day in August we held our summer party on the front lawn, and 139 people enjoyed the weather, the party food, the raffles, and our children's entertainer, Stephen Blunt.

It is gratifying to see so many kids involved in reading over the summer- we wish them all the best for the coming school year.

Search the World's Card Catalog!

If you look at the library's Interlibrary Loan page on our website, you'll see that a new little search box has been added. It's small, but extremely powerful! This is our quick link to the tremendous resources of OCLC's WorldCat database. Enter a title, a subject or a person into the search box and WorldCat will hunt through its 1.3 billion records of items in 10,000+ libraries worldwide. Use the database to locate libraries which have the books you want to borrow, then fill out an Interlibrary Loan Request form and we'll ask the owning library to loan it to the Dover Public Library, and thence to you! By entering your zipcode, you'll get a list of the nearest libraries which have the materials and links to the libraries' online cataloging records. The world's largest card catalog...give it a try!

Teen Summer Reading Program Announces Winner

The Teen Summer Reading Program is officially over for this summer, and the lucky winner of the iPodNano is Patrick Jencso. Congratulations!

This Teen Summer Reading Program has been our most successful ever with twice as many kids participating as last year. The participants wrote 86 books reviews and read for a combined total of 925 hours. I am happy to report that reading is alive and well in Dover.

Growing pains

Sometimes, working with modern collections in an old library necessitates fitting a round peg into a square hole.
Yesterday, the 2nd hottest day of the year, we reconfigured two rooms on the main floor of the library, moving heavy furniture and several collections. Our 101-year old Carnegie building was never constructed to hold our ever-growing collections of DVDs, music CDs, and audiobooks in various formats. In 1905, the library opened with sturdy oak built-in bookshelves, only bookshelves. Who could have imagined anything else? Well, 100 years later, we had pretty much stuffed our Browse Room, the "happenin'" place for new books, with all kinds of multimedia and the storage units that hold them. Patrons could hardly move around in there without bumping into free-standing shelving units or other people!
Alternately, our bigger Reference Room was growing smaller, print-wise. So many reference sources are now accessed online that our physical collection of non-circulating books was growing smaller. Hence, the move!
We consolidated and shifted and were able to empty almost 1/4 of the reference shelves. Yesterday, the DVDs, the music CDs, and the movies on video took their new place in the front left of the Reference Room. (By the way, feel free to ask our adjacent reference librarians about any of these items: the librarians there can answer all questions about all collections, not just ones that strictly use reference books!)
Back in the now-spacious Browse Room, we moved the "New Mysteries" and "Fast Reads" sections, the "New Biographies", the audio books, and positioned a table for six in the middle.
New signage is our next project, but in the meantime, just ask!

Cocheco Mfg. Company has electric cars in 1890's.

This is a photo from our online historical Dover photograph collection. This is one of the Cocheco Mfg. Company's electric cars. The photograph was taken in 1909 by C.P. Silva, and a typed note on the back of the photograph states "The mill owners used the most efficient and up-to-date transport available. The electric cars were merely adapted wagons that suited the company's ambitions." c. 1890's.
Apparently there were "smart cars" back in the 1890's! See more of our historic photographs at http://images.dover.lib.nh.us.

The Library Parking lot will be paved Thursday

The Library parking lot will be paved Thursday, July 27. You will still be able to use the parking lot but there will be delays to get in and out.

The 1st Annual Easy Summer Reading Contest (For Grown-ups)

The Easy Summer Reading Contest runs during the month of August and IT'S EASY! First you read a book, then you write a 3 - 5 sentence review describing what was great or terrible about it and whether or not you would recommend it to your fellow readers. Each time you give us a review we will enter your name in our raffle jar for the weekly prize, a terrific gift bag from Starbucks filled with treats and of course coffee! We will draw a winner from the jar each Monday during the month of August. You may bring your reviews to the Adult Circultion Desk or e-mail them to doverpl@dover.lib.nh.us. The rules are: there are no rules. Just read, review and have fun!

The bookdrops have moved

The bookdrops have moved behind the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in the driveway. Now you can drive around the back of the statue and drop off your books without leaving your car!

Teen Summer Reading Program Tops 100

This is the 6th Teen Summer Reading Program that the library has sponsored, but the first time it has topped 100 kids entered! This might have something to do with the fact that the grand prize is an iPod Nano, but I prefer to think that is due to the hard work we have put into it. It is not too late for area teens to enter the program just stop by the library's reference desk to sign up or call 516-6082 for more details.

Dover Library Web Site Tops 1 Million Hits

Fiscal year '06 statistics are in and for the first time the Dover Public Library web site reached 1 million hits! It is exciting to know that all those hours of working on the web site have not been in vain, there are actually people looking at it--205,621 visitors to be exact.

Our Dover Historical Images web site is still in its infancy, but 50,002 visitors previewed some of the 600 photos we have available. If you have not looked at this part of our web site follow the link for "Dover History Online". Besides the usual historical photographs of churches, schools, etc. be sure to look at the Circus Collection, the fire and flood pictures, as well as the mystery photos that you may be able to help us identify.

Comments and suggestions about our web site are always welcome.

Will Harry Potter Die?

J.K. Rowling, the author of the fantastically popular Harry Potter series, says in the seventh and final book two characters will die. She has been very careful not to say who the victims will be but has she hinted. "We are dealing with pure evil. They don't target the extras do they? They go for the main characters, or I do." If you would like to read the complete transcript of the interview, visit the Leaky Cauldron and click on "Transcript of JKR Interview on Richard & Judy".

Who do you think will die?

Are We There Yet?

If you are planning a long car trip with your family make sure to stop in the Children's Room to get recommendations on great audiobooks that will keep everyone entertained.

Summer Reading Begins & Circulation Doubles!

When the Library's summer reading programs began yesterday, circulation doubled! While the average number of items checked out on Mondays in the past four weeks was around 950, staff checked out 1,974 items alone on this particular Monday, June 26. Adults checked out about 220 audios, cds, and dvds, as well as 600 books. Young adults checked out 120 items on the first day of the Teen Reading Program. In the Children's Room the most popular items were picture books with over 300 checkouts and paperbacks with more than 150 checkouts.

DPL Book Club Schedule for 2006 - 2007

We love summer but we love September too because that's when Book Club is back! All titles are available in paperback. For more information about the Book Club call Barbara Winter at 516-6050

September 10 Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
October 22 Boy's Life by Robert McCammon
November 19 The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
December No Meeting - Happy Holidays!
January 21 White Teeth by Zadie Smith
February 18 The Dive from Clausen's Pier by Ann Packer
March 18 The Music Lesson by Katherine Weber
April 15 The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty
May 20 Are Men Necessary? : When Sexes Collide by Maureen Dowd

When Lightning Strikes

I drove home from the Library through a violent thunderstorm last night. As I watched lightning bolts flash across the panorama of the sky I was reminded of two intriguing novels. The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman tells the story of a librarian who is hit by lightning. She joins a lighting bolt survivors group and falls in love with another victim. The novel details the many bizarre ways lightning can affect people; loss of the ability to see the color red, hearing clicking noises, tree shaped images burned into the skin, are just a few symptoms.

One of my favorite novels by Carolyn Haines is Touched. The story takes place in a small southern town that is shaken up by the arrival of a bold, unconventional woman and her young daughter, Duncan. When Duncan is hit by lightning she gains the ability to foretell the future. The townspeople are convinced that she has been marked by the devil. The novel is reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird in the stifling small town atmosphere and the courage required of a few remarkable characters to do stand against common opinion and do what is right.

Read these memorable books while summer thunderstorms rage overhead!

Donald Hall new Poet Laureate of the U.S.

Librarian of Congress James Billington announced today that Wilmot, New Hampshire's Donald Hall has been named as the new Poet Laureate of the United States. Hall was poet laureate of New Hampshire from 1984--1989 and has authored 15 books of poetry as well as memoirs, essays, and children's books, notably the Caldecott Medal-winning The Ox-Cart Man.

Love our email notices?

If you do, make sure you continue to receive all your notices by keeping your email address updated. Now you can update your address online when you go into the library catalog and sign in to "My Account". Go to "profile" and follow the directions. If our email system is new to you and you'd like to get in on it, you may also sign up for email on the same "profile" page by simply typing in your email address and clicking the appropriate buttons.

Internet PCs update

All the Internet stations are functioning again, although not at peak efficiency. The IT department is still doing battle with the virus that took the system down so we cannot guarantee any work you do on the computers.

An apology

Rarely have I ever felt that I have misspent city-appropriated funds designated for purchasing books for our library. But after seeing Ann Coulter on "The Today Show" last Tuesday, I want to apologize for purchasing Coulter's new book, Godless. After hearing her vile statements about the 9/11 widows ("...reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I've never seen people [actually she called them broads] enjoying their husbands' deaths so much"), I regret having added a few City of Dover dollars to her income stream. Yes, we had requests for her new book and yes, we have all her others, but her venomous and deliberately hurtful diatribe turned my stomach. My best hope is that it was just a shocking ploy to sell books. Regardless whether you are a conservative or a liberal, and you'll find both views represented equally in our collection, a human being with any compassion would never be able to write those words. I find her statements repulsive and her comments indefensible.

Internet still unavailable

Unfortunately the problems with our Internet connection continues. While we are freeing up a couple of machines at a time, access remains unreliable. The situation will probably not be remedied until Monday or Tuesday, June 12-13.