Kids and teens who love eBooks and eAudiobooks now have a great way to discover great books to read through our new Overdrive eReading Rooms. These collections include all of our children’s and teen books currently available to check out through Overdrive, plus it will feature tons of new titles as they’re added. You can still find all these books through the regular Overdrive page, but for those who want to see just kids or teen titles, we hope this helps you discover your next great digital read!
The Downtown Library’s lower level of staff work areas was damaged by flooding today. A pump failed and water began streaming into the lower level of the library through the floors and walls.
An alert staff member noticed water right away.
About 20 minutes later that same area looked like this:
Water was seeping in through the walls and floor (and fast) in at least four areas including our Technical Services Department, a storage closet, the emergency exit hallway, and the office of the Marin Literacy Program (pictured below):
The diligent Department of Public Works, the fantastic Fire Department, and legendary Library staff worked together to move books, supplies, technology, and furniture to prevent damage, to replace the failed pump, and to mop up the invading water as quickly as we could. Thanks to cooperation between our three departments we emerged with no materials or furniture damage! We will need to replace a significant portion of carpeting and are still awaiting results of whether there is any structural damage to the floors and walls. But thanks to the quick actions of dedicated City staff, we got the situation under control quickly!
Now we will work to repair the damage and restore operations fully. The good news is that we’re committed to staying open for our community, so the Downtown Library is open tonight until 8pm with full services and we will reopen tomorrow morning at 10am as is normal.
A big thank you to everyone who pitched in to quickly throttle a potentially devastating situation!
Saturday December 20th at the Pickleweed Library, join us for a bilingual Holiday celebration featuring stories, crafts and a special musical concert with famed children’s singer, José-Luis Orozco.
Holiday themed storytime: 11:30 a.m.
Holiday crafts for kids: 12 p.m.
Free concert with José-Luis Orozco: 1 p.m.
¡Unese con nosotros para celebrar la Navidad con cuentos, cantos, arte y música!
The San Rafael Public Library wants to hear from you!
We’re beginning the process of envisioning what a new library would look like for Downtown San Rafael and we’re starting by reaching out to you about what you want in a library and how to make the library as useful as possible to San Rafael.
If you have a moment, please fill out our survey, available online in English or en español. The survey will take 5-7 minutes to complete and is open until Wednesday, December 31st.
Thank you all so very much for your help and for your continued support of the library! We love you all!
No fear, the Library is here to save your bacon (or tempeh, as the case may be)!
Check out these easy side dish recipes from the Food Network–unique, tasty, and sure to make a splash. Why stick with plain mashed potatoes and green bean casserole? How about lemon dill carrots and jalapeno cornbread? Yeah!
Want to make the old tried and true dishes even better? Chris Kimball from America’s Test Kitchen gave an awesome interview a few years ago to NPR about secrets for making standard dishes extra special, including “hidden compartments” in your turkey (don’t worry if that made you pause and go “huh?”–we did too).
And finally, interested in some super stellar crafts to brighten up your Thanksgiving day? The Crafty Crow offers up some innovative kids crafts to keep them busy, and adults smiling, all day long.
Yep, it’s that time of year again! We have some closure days coming up for both of our libraries (Downtown and Pickleweed). But even if our buildings are closed, our robust online branch (http://srpubliclibrary.org) is always open for you to reserve and renew books, download eBooks, learn a new language, read magazines and newspapers cover to cover, and get online homework resources. Below are the days we’ll be closed in the near future:
Friday, November 21st (All Staff Training Day)
Thursday, November 27th and Friday, November 28th (Thanksgiving)
Thursday, December 25th (Winter Holiday)
Thursday, January 1st (New Year’s)
We’re open all other days, including Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. As a 7-day-a-week operation, we strive to be open for you, our wonderful neighbors, as much as we can!
Your library card is your ticket to a world of online resources.
In our Legal and Business databases, you have access to hundreds of full text eBooks and thousands of legal forms. Many of the eBooks are provided through Nolo, the nation’s most respected provider of legal information for consumers and small businesses.
Come to this class to find out how to access them.
This is a demonstration-only class but feel free to bring your laptop or tablet to follow along.
When: November 20, 2014 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Where: San Rafael Library – Library Meeting Room
Cost: Free
The San Rafael Public Library donates all of its de-accessioned books (removed from the collection due to age, condition, and space needs) to the Internet Archive’s Open Library project. What’s that, you say?
Open Library is an online library built by libraries. There are two parts:
The Modern eBook Lending Library: This is where most of our donated books go. We donate a physical copy which is then scanned and warehoused, and the scanned version shows up in this online catalog free for any user of any contributing member to borrow by downloading in many different formats that are compatible with different devices.
Classic Books: Over 1,000,000 classic eBook titles to read online or download in a bunch of different formats.
Kids and teens who love eBooks and eAudiobooks now have a great way to discover great books to read through our new Overdrive eReading Rooms. These collections include all of our children’s and teen books currently available to check out through Overdrive, plus it will feature tons of new titles as they’re added. You can still find all these books through the regular Overdrive page, but for those who want to see just kids or teen titles, we hope this helps you discover your next great digital read!
STEAM = Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math.