Harry Potter, anyone?

Through September 18th, visit NOPL@Cicero to see a special exhibit and attend programs exploring the worlds of herbology, astronomy, and alchemy.  All of the details can be found on the library's website: www.nopl.org

The traveling exhibit was organized by the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of  Health, and is coordinated by the American Library Association.  NOPL@Cicero is one of only twelve libraries selected nationwide to participate in this project.

Growing popularity of eReaders

Eavesdrop on any group of librarians and you're likely to hear some discussion of eReaders.  Many of us love the convenience of our Kindles, Nooks, or Sony Readers. We read stacks of print books of course, but since we're likely to be compulsive readers, not happy unless we have a selection with us, and spares for when we finish the book we're currently reading, the technology meets our needs in a lot of ways.

The questions that worry us? What does the increasing popularity of eReaders mean for the future of public libraries?  And how can we meet the needs of our patrons who are becoming converts?  As a librarian and lifetime reader it warms my heart to read the discussions in the Kindle forums - these are READERS!  They discuss books with great enthusiasm.  They recommend titles and sources for free and low-cost ebooks, they discuss the publishing industry and they are excited about new and newly discovered authors.  We don't want to lose them as library supporters. 

Librarians should be out front of the efforts to get the publishing industry to come up with a standard format and a user-friendly way to market ebooks to libraries so that we can lend them, alongside print books, magazines, and the CD's, Playaways, DVD's,etc.that have enriched our collections.

There is an interesting article about the dramatic increase in sales of ebooks in this morning's New York Times.  Take a look....http://tiny.cc/1nlq8