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Last Book Sale Drop-Off

The final drop-off day for the Friends of the Library Book Sale will be Wednesday, August 29th. Items can be dropped off between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. at the Yellow house next door to the library.

A tremendous number of items have already been donated for the sale, so it should be bigger than last year. The sale will be held at the Town Offices building, 50 Billerica Road, Chelmsford (map), and the dates for this year’s sale are:

• Fri. Sept 14 - 9 a.m.-9 p.m.
• Sat. Sept 15 - 9 a.m.-6 p.m.
• Sun. Sept 16 - 9 a.m.-1 p.m.

For more information, please visit the book sale page.

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New Titles Added to Overdrive

A new selection of downloadable audiobooks have been added to Overdrive. To review or download them, go to http://mvlc.lib.overdrive.com and click on “New Titles” from the menu on the left side of the page.

For assistance with searching or downloading audiobooks from Overdrive, please contact the Reference Desk.

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Improvements to the InfoTrac PowerSearch Database

Database vendor Gale has released a set of new features to the InfoTrac databases and the PowerSearch platform. These databases can be used to find articles appearing in magazines, journals and books on a wide variety of subjects.

Many of the features were developed in response to end-user feedback. Some of the key features to note are:

• Enhanced Navigation, including a new “Document Tools” box (print, email, cite, download, translate) on each document
• RSS feeds for instant search and/or journal alerts
• “Did You Mean?” search feature provides alternate spellings and more preferred search terms
• Search Within Results, to help pinpoint specific information
• Enhanced Bookmarks, allowing direct access to articles
• Improved “How-to-Cite” tools

If you’re interested in learning about more enhancements or seeing what the changes look like, Gale has prepared a presentation (requires Microsoft PowerPoint): http://www.gale.com/Technical/PowerSearchSummer.ppt [ppt, 1.25MB]

To begin searching InfoTrac, please log in from the Library’s Databases webpage.

For help with this or any other Library database, please contact the Reference Desk.
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Publication for New Residents

The Chelmsford Library recently started receiving the newspaper The Homesteader, a publication geared towards new homeowners.

Based in Concord, MA, The Homesteader is a monthly newspaper providing a guide to local food and restaurants, destinations and day trips, arts and entertainment, as well as tips on home and garden, pets, and health and fitness.

Copies are available in the Periodicals Room of the Library, or visit their website at http://www.thehomesteader.com

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Do you Twitter?

There are a lot of web tools that help people keep in touch. But Twitter is one for those people who absolutely, positively need to stay in touch.

Twitter is an instant messenger service, which has become popular because it allows people to easy post short message directly to a web page. You can send posts, in the form of a text message, from your from the Twitter website, an IM program, your cell phone, or other mobile device.

Since the messages must be short (at most, 140 characters), people tend to share everything from the mundane and trivial (”I just ordered a ham sandwich for lunch“) to the informative (”My flight just got delayed - now we’re scheduled to take off at 9:45am” ) to the poetic (”Highway driving means/speeding down an open road/but never swerving“).

Messages posted by a twitter user can be read on the twitter website. Or, if you subscribe to a person’s feed (say, a friend of yours), messages can be delivered to your RSS reader, cell phone, or other mobile device.

If you’d like to learn more about twitter, WebJunction has created a Beginner’s Guide to get you started. Or, you can sign up for a twitter account and give it a try.

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