All posts by Brian Herzog

About Brian Herzog

Brian Herzog is the Assistant Director. View Brian's complete profile.

Town of Chelmsford Annual Reports 1874-Present Now Available Online

Town of Chelmsford Annual Reports online archiveThe Annual Reports for the Town of Chelmsford have all been digitized, and are now available full-text online.

This online archive is the result of grant, provided by the Boston Public Library and the Internet Archive to scan the Town Reports. Annual reports from both the Library and the Chelmsford Historical Society are included, and everything is available at http://www.archive.org/details/chelmsfordpubliclibrary.

The reports are full-text searchable, and you can read them online or download them in a variety of formats.

For help with the reports, or questions about Chelmsford history, please contact the Reference Desk.

Presidential Primary: Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Vote!The Presidential primary elections for the November 2012 elections are Tuesday, March 6th, 2012.

Polls will be open 7:00 AM – 8:00 PM

The Town of Chelmsford’s voter information webpage has the list of polling locations [pdf] and the precinct list by street [pdf]. For more information, residents should contact the Town Clerk’s office, or visit the Secretary of State’s website.

Check Out The Online Newsstand

The library is now offering easy access to the latest articles in popular magazines!

For years patrons have had access to these same magazines, but they’ve been sort of buried in our subscription databases. Now, there’s an “Online Newsstand” that displays magazine covers that lets you click right into that magazine.

Online Newsstand
Click a magazine cover to read the latest featured articles & more.

This is available both on our main website and also on our mobile website – that way, you can have easy access to read magazines while you’re on the go. New articles are added as the magazine is published, and you can also scroll to see past issues. There will also be more magazines added soon, too!

If you have any questions about accessing these magazines or any of our databases, please contact the Reference Desk.

2012 Winterfest Photo Contest Winners

2012 Chelmsford Winterfest Photo Contest WinnersThe winning photographs from the Winterfest 2012 photo contest are currently on display outside the library’s Meeting Room. We also uploaded these photographs to the library’s flickr account for an online gallery, but seeing them in person with their ribbons is much more impressive.

The winners in each category are listed below, and are also linked to the online photographs.

Student

Amateur

Professional

The photo contest is a part of every Winterfest, so be sure to carry your camera with you and submit your best shots next year!

How to See New Library Books, Movies, and Music

New Book AlertsWe now have an easy way to view all the brand new books, DVDs, and audiobooks that get added to the library catalog each week.

To see this list, just click the New Book Alerts button on our homepage. Once there, you can use the menus on the left to see just DVDs, or just Childrens books, etc.

Along the top, you can click to see previous weeks, or see more than one week at a time. These new items lists just started last week, so it’ll take a few weeks to build up.

Speaking of book lists, did you know the library has a Reading Room webpage devoted to provided reading suggestions? From there you can find best seller lists and lists of award winners, “read-a-likes” similar to your favorite books and authors, staff picks, and also a list of places from which to download ebooks.

And if you’d like to have reading suggestions delivered to you automatically, via email or RSS feed, check out our Electronic Signups page. You can sign up to receive notifications of new items, best sellers, library events, our Twitter feed and more!

If you have any questions about these options, please contact the Reference Desk.

Celebrate Chelmsford Winterfest 2012!

Chelmsford WinterfestChelmsford Winterfest 2012 is this weekend!

Snow or not, hopefully everyone is planning to head out around town for the many Winterfest activities, from Feb 3-5. Check out the Winterfest Website for a Schedule of Events and also an Events Map to see where in town you’d like to be.

Winterfest kicks off Friday night at 7:00 PM with a Community Social at the Library. This is also the kickoff for the Library’s One Book Chelmsford program – this year we’re not only doing more than one book, we’re doing more than one author! Check out our One Book Chelmsford page for more details and event dates.

There will be lots of great food, fun, and people throughout the town for the entire weekend of Winterfest, so be sure to go out and have a wonderful time. You can also brush up on your “history of Winterfest” knowledge on the website – there’s a video of some of the original founder Peggy Dunn talking with some of the other current coordinators and Town Manager Paul Cohen.

Be sure to take part to make this year another great success!

Electric Car Charger at the Library

Electric Car ChargerThe first two electric car charging stations in Chelmsford were installed last week – one in the parking lot of the main library, and one in Vinyl Square.

Both chargers were funding by a grant from the Department of Energy Resources, and Chelmsford was one of 25 Massachusetts towns to earn the grant to install chargers.

The grant also covers the expense of charging electric cars for the first two years – so anyone charging up their electric car and do so for free. You can read about the chargers in the Chelmsford Independent, Chelmsford Patch, and the Lowell Sun.

More information is available on the library website, or by contacting the Town of Chelmsford’s Department of Public Facilities.

Changes in the Library

Up and Down arrows signIf you’ve been in the library this week, you may have noticed a few things have moved around.

In our continued effort to make information at the library – whether in the form of books, movies, or anything else – easy to find, library staff spent last Thursday morning shifting, merging, weeding, and generally reviewing some of our collections. Here’s the major highlights of what moved and where, and please ask library staff if you have any questions:

  • All non-fiction DVDs moved downstairs, and are now interfiled with our non-fiction books. This way, if you’re looking for, say, travel information to England, books and DVDs are now in the same place
  • All items having to do with languages – books, DVDs, books on CD, etc – are now shelved together in a new “Language” section upstairs, right next to the music CDs. We’re still in the process of labeling all of these items as “Language” both with a sticker on the item and also in the call number in the catalog
  • Most of the movies and audiobooks have shifted a few aisles over, to make room for the new Language section, and to fill in where the non-fiction DVDs were
  • The Young Adult section also has quite a few changes:
    • New books will no longer be in a separate section – they will be interfiled with the rest of the YA fiction books
    • We’re starting a new section for books in a series (like Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, etc) – these eventually will all have a “Series” label both on the book and in the catalog
    • Video games are now on the back wall

If you have any trouble finding anything, or any questions about these moves, please ask any library staff person.

Patron Survey: What Do You Think of Our Catalog?

Evergreen logoWhen the Chelmsford Library, as part of the Merrimack Valley Library Consortium (MVLC), got the new Evergreen catalog earlier this year, part of the funding came from a grant awarded to MassLNC. One of the requirements of that grant is to report back on how patrons like the new catalog.

To that end, all MVLC libraries are asking their patrons to complete a short survey to share their experiences. There is also a spot to make suggestions for features you’d like to see added.

Please take a few minutes to fill out the survey – it will be available through the first week of January 2012.

If you need any help or have questions about using the catalog, please contact the Reference Desk. Thanks!

2012 One Book Chelmsford Announced!

Chelmsford One Book LogoIn 2012, instead of choosing just “One Book Chelmsford” or even “One Author,” Chelmsford will be reading books by two wonderful authors: the famous literary couple of Pulitzer-prize winning authors Geraldine Brooks and Tony Horwitz.

More information is available on our One Book page, but a couple dates to reserve on you calendar now are:

  • Friday evening, February 3, 2012 – “Beat the Winter Blues Party,” the annual Winterfest Community Social. You can get copies of March and Confederates in the Attic
  • Saturday, May 12, 2012, at 11 a.m – Join us for a visit from our 2 authors at the High School’s Performing Arts Center

We’ll be posting more program dates and information as it becomes available, so keep checking our One Book page for details!