Library Column for January 22, 2020

@ Your Library

Storytime continues on Thursday mornings at 10:30am. All young children and their caregivers are encouraged to attend and hear stories and rhymes about snow. Storytime is a great opportunity to introduce children to the library, books and reading as well as to begin acclimating them to learning in a group. Storytime is followed each week by play time with our early learning toy collection.

The library has added LiveChat to our website. This program will pop up and ask you if you have ‘any questions we can answer?’ During library open hours, we will answer questions you may have about library services and reference questions. LiveChat will work on phones as well, so if you are out and about and need to know if we have a book available, or if we can get a new title you have just discovered, pull up the library website and the same box will be available to message with library staff.

Wednesday afternoons from 3 – 4:30 pm the library holds an after school program called libratory for elementary students. Each week is focused on different kinds of tasks with the first Wednesday of the month usually focusing on sewing and crafts, the second week cooking, the third week science and math and the fourth week technology. Contact us with questions.

We have begun receiving questions about tax forms. The state of Minnesota no longer supplies libraries with any tax forms. You may call 1-800-652-9094 to order forms and have them mailed to you, file online or have forms printed at the library for the cost of printing. The federal government will provide us with a selection of basic forms at some point in the next three weeks according to the IRS. If you need forms prior to that, we can print forms that you can pay for.

Looking for reliable news? The library offers free access to the New York Times. Visit our website at internationalfallslibrary.us/resources/regiona-and-local-news, copy the access code, then click on the link to the NYTimes website, enter the code and enjoy 24 hours of unlimited access to their news articles. Repeat as needed.

Did you miss that Stephen King published a new book last October? The Institute starts in suburban Minneapolis and becomes riveting as kids with special talents must confront evil at the sinister Institute. Nevada Barr’s latest, What Rose Forgot is a creepy tale of amnesia, memory loss, murder and of course she has no idea why someone wants her gone.

The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted by Robert Hillman is set in rural Australia in 1968. I thought it would be a good time to get to know Australia a bit better and fiction is preferred.

Mike Rowe has gathered his favorite episodes of his podcast along with memories, ruminations, illustrations and insights and created a ‘ridiculously entertaining’ book called The Way I Heard It. He pulls together short mysteries, startling facts and does it all in short chapters for the ‘curious mind with a short attention span.’

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