Tag Archives:from the library
17
JanFishing for Books and Finding Cats
When my husband Gerry was a boy, he loved to fish the lakes and rivers in and about his Framingham hometown. When he was younger, his mother accompanied him. When he was older, he rode his bike to Lake Cochituate with his rod and reel and flirted with the trout stocked by the Department of Fishery and Game. He remembers the dump trucks that released squirmy, tagged fish near the Carling Black Label plant near Route 9.
At the end of his adventures, Gerry brought fresh trout home, and after filleting them, his mother helped him prepare them for dinner, satisfying his family’s taste and appetite.
Perhaps because fishing intimately interacted with nature, Gerry began to fancy birds – the Great Blues that gravitate to the waters all over New England, and shorebirds he met on his Cape Cod family trips each summer. Later, he nurtured bluebirds in their wooden houses in his backyards.
Out of high school and starting college, Gerry mimicked his father’s love for golf. That first summer, he began sculpting the lawns and greens of the nearby Sandy Burr Country Club in Wayland, having time after work for a round or two on the fairways. This mutual passion with his father led to many of his friendships based on that same craving for the course, the club, and the ball. Many of Gerry’s long-time friends are those who bonded with him, playing golf in the company he has worked with for nearly 50 years. His annual late-spring golf weekend “down Cape” just celebrated its 42nd year.
Years later, Gerry became a gardener. And a colored-pencil artist. And a tie-flying hobbyist, and a home-brewer. Most recently, he’s a beekeeper, a wine connoisseur, a Boxer-lover (the dog breed), and stone-wall builder. Our kids chuckle because Gerry is so easy to please with gifts. There are endless heavy-bottomed whiskey glasses, bird carvings, local brews, and assorted jars of honey for Gerry’s passions.
And then there are books. Gerry’s collections of books are arranged by subject in our home library (which doubles as a family room). When we met over 12 years ago, he declared that he wanted to become a beekeeper. In no time, piles of books I found in the library network on beekeeping fell over on his nightstand. Gerry loves to have his favorite books at home where he can access them, and many books become his favorites. (Although The Queen Must Die! and Other Affairs of Bees and Men, written in 1985 by William Longgood is still his most beloved on beekeeping.)
It’s no surprise that Gerry found his relationship with a librarian was tolerably symbiotic. One book lover supplying another book lover’s habit is mutually beneficial!
I share much of my day-to-day professional work with Gerry. He’s up on the lingo and acronyms of librarianship and understands our strange language that includes strange meanings for the terms “weeding,” “circulation” and “collection development.”
I was surprised, then, when Gerry stumbled upon ComCat (the Commonwealth’s library catalog), and he had never noticed it before. For years, Gerry’s been very adept at finding books at other libraries and having them delivered to his home library. He is sure to tell me when one of his books from another library has arrived in Norwood and “would I check it out and bring it home?”
But what was this ComCat?
ComCat arrived back on the scene a few years ago, rising like a phoenix from the first iteration called the Massachusetts Virtual Catalog. The Virtual Catalog was conceived, created and designed with funding from the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners in the 1990s in the hope that all Massachusetts residents would have access to a “virtual wealth” of materials. The Minuteman Library Network joined the Virtual Catalog in 2000 – and that is when Morrill Memorial Library patrons had access to books and materials beyond the metroplex.
A bigger and better-automated system extended the search even further almost three years ago in the Commonwealth Catalog – or ComCat. Minuteman was the first network that had accessibility when ComCat went live in March 2015.
This Commonwealth Catalog now includes all of the library network catalogs in Massachusetts, including the Minuteman Library Network, Old Colony Library Network, the Metro Boston Library Network, MassCat (a small network serving small and unique libraries in Massachusetts) and the six other networks across the state. The advantage of ComCat is that library patrons can find and request materials from these other regions and have them delivered to their home library. There is no need to call the library or a reference librarian when you find something in ComCat. ComCat has a “modern and easy-to-use interface, including book jacket images and improved search options.” ComCat can be accessed through the Minuteman Library app and the online catalog.
WorldCat is a worldwide catalog and another accessible to patrons who may search the catalog to find an item, however, you must call the library and request the material through one of our librarians. There is a mailing cost associated with the delivery of these items, and librarians will always choose a more local option first.
The day that Gerry discovered ComCat, he was searching for books on custom painting his own bass fishing lures. The one book he found, Making Wooden Fish Lures: Carving and Painting Techniques That Really Catch Fish!, owned by the Newton Free Library was out – of course. He then clicked on the ComCat link (above on the right on the catalog search page) and found a school of books about fishing lures: Fishing With Artificial Lures by Dick Sternberg owned (appropriately) by one of the SAILS (Southern MA) and one of the CLAMS (Cape and Islands) libraries and Making Wooden Fishing Lures by Rich Rousseau.
To be sure, our library will be watching for more books on fishing, both flies and lures. In the meantime, Gerry and Norwood’s patrons alike have a world of books at their fingertips.
Charlotte Canelli is the Director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, MA. Look for her article in the January 17, 2019 edition of the Norwood Transcript.
10
JanBut Does it Have Heated Seats?
When was the last time you went shopping for a car? Purchasing a car is one of the single biggest purchases you’ll ever make, especially if it’s a brand new car. But where do you start? If you have the luxury of not needing a car immediately, what time of year should you start looking? Which sources can you trust when researching cars and comparing features? What do you need to know before you go to a dealership, and how do you know you’re getting the best deal when you’re working with the sales person? Lucky for you, dear readers, I had a recent foray into the wild world of car buying, and I want to share a few lessons I learned along the way.
Like most of us, my first car was a used car. My grandmother left me her powder-blue Chevy Caprice, which was a car so big it was often described as a boat. The poor car was driven on northern roads crusty with winter salt, and therefore suffered from chronic muffler problems – so chronic, in fact, that about three-quarters of the muffler eventually rusted away. My family affectionately called it The B-52 Bomber because they claimed they could hear it coming a mile away. They weren’t wrong.
My first car buying experience was at a small country mechanic shop that sold a few cars on the side, and I traded in The Bomber for a used Honda Accord. Even used, this was a significant upgrade from the ’90s-era Caprice, and I was thrilled. However, this was not the traditional car buying experience, in that selection was extremely limited and I was buying from a small local mechanic, a friend of a friend who wasn’t operating in the same ballpark of sales margin as a suburban dealership.
Nearly a decade and well over 100,000 miles later, and I was ready for a new car. Honda makes very good cars and there wasn’t anything wrong with the Accord, but I was ready. But where to start? I had a list of features I knew I didn’t want to compromise on in a new car. I had only owned sedans in the past and was used to that low-to-the-ground driving experience, but I was also hoping for the sort of storage flexibility you get from a hatchback or small SUV.
As a librarian, research is my go-to, and because I was lucky enough to not be in a crisis of needing a new car right away I starting reading about and comparing vehicles months in advance of a test drive. Consumer Reports was my first stop. We subscribe to the physical magazine and you can look at it at the Reference Desk, but we also offer full online access to Consumer Reports so you can access it at home. Go to our website, norwoodlibrary.org, and at the bottom left of the homepage under the list of Quick Links you’ll see Databases. This takes you to an alphabetical list of all the databases we offer, and to access Consumer Reports all you need is your library card number.
Consumer Reports has a whole section of their website dedicated to buying new and used cars, including vehicle by vehicle ratings and comparisons, articles about how to choose the right vehicle for you, lists of the best and worst vehicles on the market, calculation tools for financing your vehicle, and tips for how to prepare yourself for going in for a test drive and how to bargain effectively at the dealership. Honestly, there’s such an overwhelming amount of good information on the Consumer Reports website that you should plan on making several visits to their page.
Another website I found extremely useful, especially when arming myself with research for bargaining, was CarGurus.com. This site was founded by a co-founder of TripAdvisor, and is chock-full of comparison data about new and used vehicles. You can see real prices that people are paying for vehicles you’re interested in, and you can even sell your used car through the site. Their information about real invoice price paid was one of my most important pieces of data for my own bargaining experience.
One more note about vehicle information sites – there were two other sites I used called TrueCar and Edmunds. Both of these sites contract with dealerships to give buyers competitive price quotes, but don’t be fooled into thinking these are the best prices you can get for a vehicle. While they serve the purpose of starting the conversation between the buyer and the dealership about price, be wary; in neither case did they give me the best price I could get, and in one case gave me an estimate that was thousands of dollars above a reasonable value. The dealerships have a deal with these sort of services in order to reach you, the buyer, and try to get you into the dealership faster, so take their recommendations with a grain of salt.
When looking to estimate a fair market value for trading in or selling your used car, try using Kelley Blue Book, found at kbb.com, or NADAguides, found at nadaguides.com or in print at the library’s Reference Desk.
Figure out which car you want, do your research to see what other people are paying for this car and then decide on a number that is the most you are willing to pay. Do as much communicating via email about price as you can with a salesperson at the dealership so that you have the conversation in writing. Start your bargaining by saying you want to pay a price you know is lower than you will likely pay – they will be starting their end of the bargaining at a price that is far too high, and you will both move incrementally toward the middle to settle on a price. If you bring with you printouts of your research and their emailed quotes, this will help your case. This is likely to be a lengthy and even stressful process, so be confident and stick to the amount you’re willing to pay. If the salesperson ultimately won’t agree to your terms, don’t be afraid to get up and walk away. I had to do this at one dealership and was so glad I did. I’m thrilled with the car I finally found, and couldn’t be happier starting the New Year in a new set of wheels.
Liz Reed is the Adult Services Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, MA. Look for her article in the January 10, 2019 edition of the Norwood Transcript.
3
JanBest Books This Christmas
As a young girl, one of my preferred gifts at Christmas was a book. Classics like Heidi, Five Little Peppers, Swiss Family Robinson, and Little Women remain some of my most cherished possessions. I’ve always surrounded myself and my family with books and literally poured books into my children’s hands, overflowing the bookshelves in our home.
We all know librarians fancy books. More than that though, it takes reverence for books to pursue a profession about them. Yet, libraries are evolving places where exciting programs and marvelous things are becoming more and more relevant to a library’s mission. The field is attracting young professionals who are, in addition to clever researchers and keen readers, excited about technology, music, and social synergy.
Not surprisingly, librarians don’t have the corner on book-loving. My family of children and their spouses – educators, graphic designers, marketing gurus – all worship books. Family times always see at least one or two of the adults curled up in a nook – often with a book discovered on one of our many shelves. Our grandchildren held their first books as infants – small cloth or chunky board books were wedged into their strollers and car seats. Their own collections grew until their favorite crawling or toddling activity was swiping them all off the shelf into a heap. They always reached for their favorites: Barnyard Dance by Sandra Boynton, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, or Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin. Most parents (and grandparents,alike) can recite the words by heart through closed eyelids until they open them to turn back to the first page. “Again?” And again. And again.
This year, I bought multiple copies of my two favorite 2018 books as presents for my children and friends. One is The Library Book by Susan Orlean. While I had listened to the audio version, I took out our library’s speed read copy so that I could hold the lovely book in my hand, stroking the cloth cover (no jacket) and flipping through the few illustrations. The back inside cover depicts a library book pocket and date due card. It’s so realistic that you can’t resist touching it with your fingers to find that it is only a photographic image.
The Library Book tells the story of the massive fire that burned in the Los Angeles Public Library on April 29, 1986. The mysterious blaze, officially determined to be arson, destroyed 400,000 books and damaged another 600-700,000 more. It burned for seven hours and was fought by over 350 firefighters from 60 firefighting companies. Fortunately, all 400 visitors and staff in the library at the time of the fire were evacuated. Heat swelled to over 2,000 degrees within the concrete walls and firefighters worked to cut 18 holes in the building to release the smoke and heat, thereby decreasing the temperature.
In 1986 the fire hadn’t received much attention. Chernobyl was the talk of the day that captured the media’s attention. More than 30 years later, the story unfolded through Orleans. Susan Orlean is a passionate author who began her research accidentally when she toured the Los Angeles Public Library and heard that some of the books still smelled of smoke. That smoking gun, so to speak, led to research.
The account in The Library Book is so much more than just the fire. It incorporates a history of the city library and a 1921 effort to finally build a respectable library in a sun-drenched, fantastical place named “The City of Angels.” The story includes interesting characterizations of its first and current librarians. In addition, Susan Orlean describes the notable and remarkable attempts to destroy books and libraries throughout world history. She includes the accomplishment of rebuilding the main library in the 1990s.
I gave copies of my other favorite 2018 book, Becoming by Michelle Obama, to my daughters. While it is principally an autobiography of the life of the “first” African American First Lady, it is most significantly a book about a capable woman who learned to navigate her responsibilities as a young girl and young woman, a mother, and a wife. All of our daughters and daughters-in-law are professionals, wives, and mothers and we watch them in awe as they balance all aspects of their lives. Obama’s act is one to follow and includes some of the immeasurable advice they will read.
Our grandchildren all received books, as they usually do for their birthdays, Christmas, and any other chance I have. It was our granddaughter Maeve’s book, the 75th anniversary edition of the Complete Adventures of Curious George (2016), that created the best reading adventure of 2018. While Maeve has copies of the Curious George Around Town books that she fell in love with earlier this year, I wanted to give her a copy of the seven original Curious George stories in one hefty volume. And hefty it is at 3.4 pounds.
There is debate about Curious George. Some feel (my ex-husband among them) that Curious George is obnoxiously curious and never has to suffer the consequences of his misbehavior. Others simply believe that Curious George is a good little monkey at heart who topples again and again into trouble. My ex-husband refused to read Curious George to any of my daughters; I suspect this might be why it warms my heart and tickles my fancy that my granddaughter Maeve can’t get enough of George!
The Complete Adventures actually includes only seven Curious George stories, but they are the originals published between 1941 and 1966, and written and illustrated by H.A. Rey and his wife, Margret. Our very own Curious George Christmas adventures included at least ten readings of Curious George Goes to the Hospital and Curious George Rides a Bike. Other stories in the book are Curious George Takes a Job and the original story, naturally named Curious George. “This is George. George was a good little monkey, but he was always curious.”
If you are a little bit curious, it’s not too late in the first weeks of 2019 to read some of my favorite gift books from 2018.
Charlotte Canelli is the Director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte’s column in the January 3rd edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.
27
DecGrumps, Cranks, and Misanthropes
Can you stand to read books or watch television programs or movies with unlikable protagonists? It certainly is challenging to connect with characters who do, say, or believe things that breach cultural norms, don’t meet our standards of courteousness, or are just plain wrong! It’s easy to distance ourselves as readers when we encounter characters who clearly take delight in hurting others and call them villains. But what about characters who are unlikable in the middle of very sympathetic situations, like navigating difficult life circumstances? It’s more difficult to forgive missteps as a reader when complicated characters don’t meet our expectations, even when they are trying their best.
Author Toni Morrison once wrote, “The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.” I take Ms. Morrison’s quote to mean that good authors should seek to challenge their readers by helping them question their own assumptions and showing them how their own circumstances shape judgments about others through creating fictional people. Creating unlikable main characters is a great way for writers to explore difficult themes in an otherwise unassuming story about everyday life. Grief is a commonly explored theme in fiction, and these types of stories often produce the most challenging characters to connect with, even though readers might empathize with their terrible losses.
Nora Webster is Colm Toibin’s poignant character study of a woman widowed in her forties who must continue on with everyday existence for her children. It was the subject of a recent book discussion at the library and people’s responses to the titular character prompted me to reflect on how I respond to difficult characters. Toibin presents Nora as a reserved woman whose husband was the center of her world. She had no other interests or work beyond being a wife and a mother in a very conservative Ireland of the late 60s and early 70s. She’s completely unsure of herself, often impulsive and resentful of the well-meaning attempts of friends and family to help her. It’s so tempting to judge her as a character and, in fact, many book discussion participants railed at her, wondering “What’s the matter with her? Why does she act that way?” But Toibin is a clever author and provides glimpses of how she lived her life before her husband died and how different her inner emotional life is now that he is gone. It forces the audience to ask themselves the uncomfortable question, “How would I feel in that circumstance?” Many of us would like to think they would do better, but a good author might make us less sure.
Most of us know David Sedaris for his darkly comic essay collections that center on his family, his childhood, and his exploits as a traveling author. Calypso, his latest effort, has a dark undercurrent of grief as he illustrates his complicated relationships with his siblings, especially his sister Tiffany who died by suicide in 2013. Calypso chronicles his efforts to gather his family together for vacations and holiday celebrations in a hastily-purchased beach house in North Carolina. Sedaris never shrinks away from casting himself as an unlikable narrator of his own stories, often admitting his flaws and his mistakes in dealing with his sister and the rest of his family. Once again, readers can choose to focus on how differently they might react, but Sedaris’ honesty and humor keep him relatable and encourage us to reflect on our own foibles.
Sometimes unlikable characters engage in bizarre and outlandish behavior so the author can explore how past trauma affects their reality. Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette chronicles a stay-at-home mother’s attempts to assert herself after completely losing all of her social and professional confidence. Bernadette is the cranky, misanthropic mother of Bee, a precocious middle schooler and the only person Bernadette can stand. Her behavior spins out of control as she tries to connect with her daughter and plan a family trip to Antarctica. Semple’s plot is far-fetched and absurd, but it reveals Bernadette’s intense pain about her massive failures as an architect and the miscarriages she endured before Bee’s birth.
Here’s my professional advice if you run into a character you just can’t stand: stick with the book. Yes, life is too short to read bad books, but if you find other parts of the book or other characters intriguing, enjoyable, or valuable, keep engaging with the unlikable main character. Secondly, ask yourself why you harshly judge a fictional person. Is it because this character does incomprehensible things? Try to put aside your own viewpoint and give the character the benefit of the doubt as you would a good friend. It might make their perspective more clear and let you access the story in a way you couldn’t have if you insisted on applying your own judgments to the book. If all authors only wrote characters we could relate to and cheer for, reading would not only be boring, but also lack any artistic merit. Books should and can comfort us, inform us, and reveal things to us if only we let them.
Kate Tigue is the Head of Youth Services at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column in the December 27, 2018 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.
20
DecAn Unlikely Advocate of Aromatherapy
Aromatherapy became an interest of mine, oddly enough, after attending a technology conference. A few years back, I was lucky enough to attend the “Computers in Libraries” conference in Virginia. As an Information Technology Librarian, I have always loved attending this conference. It’s very exciting to see what other libraries around the country (and beyond!) are doing with technology to better serve their communities.
After my first day at the conference, I was just exhausted. There is so much information to process, and I had two more days to go, so I went back to the small AirBnB that I had rented to relax. On the nightstand next to the bed, my hosts had left an essential oil diffuser with some instructions. I was totally unfamiliar with diffusers and even essential oils at that point, but filled it up with water, put some drops of peppermint oil in, and started it up. It was SO relaxing! I immediately texted my wife and told her about it. She was really excited and mentioned that she had been eyeing several different diffusers online, but thought that I would think she was crazy! When I got home, we ordered a really nice diffuser from Amazon and hit up our local health food store for the oils to go with it. My wife and I have incorporated it into our nightly routine, and after the kids are in bed, we put on a good show and a nice relaxing essential oil blend in the diffuser to unwind. When the kids are particularly energetic near bedtime, we also use a roll-on combination of lavender and a carrier oil (oils should never be applied directly to the skin!) to help calm them down- it works wonders!
As I began to do more research, I learned that diffusing essential oils is part of a holistic healing treatment known as “aromatherapy.” In aromatherapy, inhaling the steam from essential oils stimulates the olfactory system, and the beneficial molecules from the diffused oil then enter into the lungs, where they are then dispersed throughout the body. When the molecules reach the brain, they stimulate (or relax) the emotions. Diffusing different essential oils will, of course, produce different scents, but depending on the essential oil (or oil mixtures) that you use, you can also improve your mood, boost your immune system, improve sleep quality, treat headaches and migraines, and help with relaxation and meditation.
The library offers some great books on essential oils and aromatherapy, in particular through our Hoopla app, which will give you instant access to a plethora of useful titles on the subject. Perhaps one the best and most comprehensive offered through the Hoopla app is “The Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy” by Valerie Ann Worwood. Worwood’s book delves deep into not only the many essential oils that exist, but is also organized into chapters that give essential oil recommendations for specific individuals (men, women, children, athletes, travelers, etc.). Worwood further divides each individual type into a specific ailment or consideration that might pertain to them, for example, babies and young children should only be exposed to certain types of diffused oils and in specific ratios, due to their extra sensitive skin, so the book gives a good overview of what oils are appropriate for which age type to assist caregivers in diffusing appropriate oil types.
If you are new to diffusing essential oils, or essential oils in general, my best recommendation to start with is “the mother of all essential oils:” lavender. Lavender is a great essential oil that has a lot of utility and health benefits. It’s safe for babies (when diluted) and some recent evidence
shows it has been effective in reducing the symptoms of colic in babies (take note, restless parents!). It has a very flowery aroma, and is an antiseptic, antibiotic, and antidepressant. Lavender can also easily mix well with other essential oils like rose, grapefruit, and sweet orange, which smell great and have health benefits of their own. If properly diluted, lavender can also be applied topically to heal rashes and burns.
I have tried many different essential oils and oil blends, and I have a lot of favorites, but my personal favorite, both in terms of scent, health benefits, and mood relaxing properties, is frankincense. In case you ever wondered why one of the Magi presented frankincense to the baby Jesus; it is because it was highly prized due to its powerful rejuvenating and revitalizing qualities (perhaps you can also see the symbolism of the gift). Frankincense is a natural disinfectant that boosts the immune system, refreshes skin, can ease respiratory infection symptoms, and is, to me, the perfect essential oil for meditation. Frankincense is the yin to lavender’s yang. Lavender is soft and floral, frankincense by contrast, has a strong woody, smoky, earthy scent to it, which I really enjoy, but might not be to everyone’s liking. You can learn more about frankincense, and other seasonally relevant scents, myrrh, pine needle, mistletoe, and others from the article “Gifts of Healing… from Herbs of the Season” which can be found though our Gale Database section on the library website.
I hope that you check out what the library has to offer on aromatherapy, learn more, and try diffusing some oils yourself. As a thirty-five year old man, I never thought that I would be writing a column about essential oils, and my discovery of aromatherapy was very unlikely to say the least, but I am a believer in the benefits that it can offer. Remember, if you are new to using our Hoopla app, or would like assistance in setting it up, you can schedule a one-on-one tech appointment here at the library. We are happy to get you connected and on your way to learning more!
Brian DeFelice is the Technology Services Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, MA. Look for his article in the December 19, 2018 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.