Change in the hours.

To accommodate families with young children on Tuesdays the hours of the Library have been changed to 10 a.m.-5 p.m. This allows for a story time or other activity for pre-schoolers.

Changes at FPL

As we embark on a new phase in the life of the Fitchburg Public Library the staff begs the indulgence of its faithful customers. The library's days of operation have been diminished to only 3 days a week (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday) and our hours greatly decreased (12 noon - 7pm on these 3 days only). The staff has also been cut drastically, and consequently, there are just not enough people to ensure that the level of service in the library is as time efficient as it has been in the past.

Know that we are doing all we can to fill your holds, check out your books, put things back in their rightful place, get new books out to you, and answer your important questions. We will continue to service out public to the best of our ability, but please take into consideration that our best may take a few more minutes of your time.

We realize that we are not able to provide the public with a working book drop at this time, and that is due to safety issues as well as monetary ones. Please be patient with us as we also adjust to the volume of customers and materials in a shorter amount of time.

We still have many things to offer you - Come and see! Browse our impressive DVD collection. We have hundreds of popular titles, many recent releases, TV shows and series such as the the Sopranos, Upstairs/Downstairs, the Sandbaggers, Slings and Arrows, the Black Adder, Monty Python, and James Herriot. We also boast a large amount of international DVDs, and a great set of Documentaries including travel, History Channel specials, and work out programs.

Our other media collections are also worth checking out. We have over 1000 music CDs in genres such as Classical (works of Bach, Beethoven, Gershwin, Glass, etc.), Popular (everything from Enya to Springsteen), Jazz, Musical Shows, Folk Music, and International.

Books on CD have been increasing in popularity, and we have stayed up with the times. We now own over 900! These come and go all the time, so if you see something that you want to listen to, take it out now, don't wait until next time, because it may not be here!

As always, our new book room is a favorite place to browse. Come look through our regular fiction, new Mystery, Western, and Science Fiction sections. We have added a special Paperback section to this room as well, so come over and take a look at these popular titles in beach bag size. Our new Non-fiction area is a big hit, too, and the new oversize books now have their own spot! Finally, we now have a new Spanish section on the back wall of the New Book Room. This area is one of the most popular spots in the library and things don't stay on the shelves for long!

The Fitchburg Youth Library has often been praised for its family-friendly atmosphere. That has not changed at all! There are more great kids books than ever, whether you want a picture book, a how-to book, a history book, or a really cool adventure story. The DVD collection is growing, and the CDs are always popular. Small children love to play with the Thomas the Train set in the middle of the library, while the older kids search to find special hidden pictures for a prize. Stop by with your family to enjoy all the fun!

We thank you for being loyal patrons of the Fitchburg Public library and thank each and every person who has lobbied for us, attended open meetings, supported us in City Council meetings, called your Representative, waited patiently in line, and given out words of encouragement. You are the reason that we are still here - and we will continue to serve the city of Fitchburg for as long as we can!

Fresh look

Have you visited the library lately? If so, you may have noticed some cosmetic changes. There is a new information/reference desk--some customers call it command central! The periodicals and newspapers have been moved to the back of the library on new shelving to allow older issues to remain on the first floor for a period of time. There are new shelves for the DVD collection with room for growth. In the New Book Room the books actually have room to breathe! New shelving in the fiction room has opened up the fiction and large type collections.

Some other changes include circulating periodicals. Most of the magazines now circulate. You can learn about science, politics, nature, hobbies and crafts. In the fiction room the mystery, science fiction and western collections have been interfiled with the fiction. This allows you to browse the entire fiction collection and find some new authors, or discover that your favorite author has written in a different genre.

Come visit and see what you've been missing.

One little, two little, three little skunkies

Three adorable little baby skunks, a.k.a. Mephitis mephitis (DDC 599.74), were wandering around the lawns next to the library this evening, and one waddled along the sidewalk and right up to the front door and looked in. He had forgotten his library card, so couldn't check out any books, alas.

Library funding in jeopardy

You may have seen articles about the library’s budget hearing before the City Council in the newspapers or on FATV on Wednesday night, but you may not realize how important your support for the library is for you.

A loss of certification due to budget cuts means:

·You will not be able to go into any library in Massachusetts to borrow materials,
·You will not be able to borrow materials through Interlibrary Loan and
·Grant supported programs, such as FLASH, a family literacy program, will be cut.

The library budget discussion was tabled until Wednesday, June 20 at 2:30 pm. Please show support for your public library by attending this important hearing at City Hall. You do not have to say or do anything. Your presence would send a positive message to the city council. If you cannot attend, please call your councilor and express your concern.

Thank you.
Fitchburg Public Library Staff

All you need is a little imagination

Cutest library catalog evah.

Be a Superpatron

From the web: Ten ways for superpatrons to build better libraries. Good advice all around!

It's National Poetry Month...

Do you know where your daffodils are?

You can find them at the above link, or in the Fitchburg Public Library stacks at 821.71 Word. Or you can see a slightly different version here:

Inventing English

For all language lovers, there was a wonderful episode today of the NPR program "On Point" called "Inventing English: From Beowulf to Eminem." It's available for listening online.

Fitchburg Public Library is a HOTSPOT!

Thanks to City Hall and Comcast the library is now offering wireless Internet access for all of you who have laptops with wireless capability. You do need a username and password available from the information and reference librarians.

Poem-of-the-Week: "Then we will fight in the shade"

A good line can last forever. (Well, for 2500 years, at least.) And it can appear in different media, in different languages, and in both classic literature and popular culture.

Here's a scene from pop culture that's hitting it big at the box office this month, with a famous 2500-year-old line at the end:



Here's another version of the very same scene from about 100 years ago, and even then it was “news that men have heard before”:

The King with half the East at heel is marched from lands of morning;
His fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air,
And he that stands will die for nought, and home there's no returning.

A prize can go to anyone who finds on the Library's shelves the next and final line of this verse, or identifies its author. (Or perhaps identifies "The King with half the East at heel.")

Silent Cops and Sleeping Policemen

A colloquial term for speed bumps placed across a road to slow down traffic is "sleeping policemen." This is apparently a variant of the term "silent cop" used to designate upright posts often set in the middle of intersections to channel traffic and prevent car jams. When was the term "silent cop" first used for these structures? According to one linguistic researcher, the term "silent cop" first appeared in 1914 in the Fitchburg Sentinel.

Have any other English words or expressions originated in Fitchburg? There's a good research question for someone.

A visitors map for us

I've added a visitors map to the blog sidebar so we can see where people are coming from who visit the FPL blog. Click on it to get a bigger view. (Once a page appears on the web, people from all over the world find it.) These little additions are called "blog widgets" and there are lots of them out there, from visitors maps to weather stickers to clocks and much more.

Poem-of-the-Week

[Here's an example of the kind of thing that could appear in the FPL blog as a regular feature. It would require keeping a bag of candy in the reference desk so appropriate rewards could be given out. Feel free to edit or delete as you see fit.]

Here's a timely poem for us in the month of March. The first ten people who come to the information desk with with the name of the author (maybe shown in a book) will get a piece of chocolate (to be eaten outside), so start searching! You can't leave the answer as a comment; you have to come to the desk in person to receive your reward.

TOSSING his mane of snows in wildest eddies and tangles,
Lion-like March cometh in, hoarse, with tempestuous breath,
Through all the moaning chimneys, and 'thwart all the hollows and angles
Round the shuddering house, threating of winter and death.

But in my heart I feel the life of the wood and the meadow
Thrilling the pulses that own kindred with fibres that lift
Bud and blade to the sunward, within the inscrutable shadow,
Deep in the oak's chill core, under the gathering drift.

Nay, to earth's life in mine some prescience, or dream, or desire
(How shall I name it aright?) comes for a moment and goes—
Rapture of life ineffable, perfect—as if in the brier,
Leafless there by my door, trembled a sense of the rose.

The New York Times on LibraryThing

The New York Times has a story today about LibraryThing.com, the online cataloging system for personal libraries that some people from FPL participate in.

Words of Wisdom

Are you interested in words, phrases, slang expressions and colloquialisms? Check out Michael Quinion's website to learn the definition and origins for words such as cockamamie, eleemosynary, and floccinaucinihilipilification or from where the phrase "push the envelope" comes.

104 years

February 27th is an important anniversary for the Wallace Library, as the picture above illustrates. Thank you, Rodney!
Wallace Library and Arts Building, Built 1884. Photograph June 1, 1959. See comment for more information.

Mimus polyglottos

In the swirl of snow in the courtyard today, our own Library Mockingbird still guards his hedges (but the musical shuttle in his throat is still until spring).

Book blogs

One of the most elegant book blogs on the web is BibliOdyssey (which has links to many other interesting book blogs on its blogroll). We'll start making a list of interesting book and library blogs for people to browse -- watch for them to appear on the sidebar.

Word of the Week

Beclown: v., to make into a clown, as in "He has beclowned himself."

(This is an example of the sort of thing that could be a regular feature of the Fitchburg Public Library blog: a word of the week, an author of the day, a map of the month, a seasonal poem, a book of the month; many such possibilities are open to us.)

(How about a call number of the week?)

Thoreau at Fitchburg, 150 years ago

In February, 1857, 150 years ago this month, Henry David Thoreau came up from Concord to give a lecture for the members of the Fitchburg Athenaeum. Thoreau is the subject of the wonderful recent children's book Henry Hikes to Fitchburg, which you can check out from FPL or even read online.

Even books were new once

Welcome to the FPL blog!

Welcome to the new blog for the Wallace Library in Fitchburg, Massachusetts!