Wednesday, February 13, 2013

eBooks at HPL

If you have a Hutchinson (Kansas) Public Library card and are interested in reading e-style, then you might want to check out our website. Click on the E-Everything tab and you will find 2 sources for ebooks and 2 sources for eaudiobooks:

ebooks: 3M Cloud Library
ebooks: OverDrive

eaudiobooks: OneClickdigital by Recorded Books
eaudiobooks: OverDrive

Also, if you have a State of Kansas library card, you can access the resources provided state-wide at the Kansas EZ Library. They also have a selection of ebooks and downloadable eaudio.

All this to point out one of our oldest, yet handiest (I think) electronic tools:  Wowbrary.It's a simple, free weekly e-newsletter with a big punch.Once you are signed up, every Wednesday Wowbrary will send you a newsletter showcasing everything HPL has added to it's collection in the previous week - including ebooks!

Friday, February 8, 2013

SF Book Discussion

Our Science Fiction Book Discussion group met this Thursday for our first meeting of the year. Our new schedule is a monthly book discussion on the first Thursday evening of every month at 7pm. Meetings are held in the Conference Room #2 upstairs at the library.

This month we discussed J.R.R. Tolkien's classic, The Hobbit. The bulk of the discussion revolved (not surprisingly, I suppose) around the book's recent translation to film. We spent a good deal of the discussion talking about the relative merit that should be given to some of the criticism of Tolkien's most famous "children's book".

Next month (March 7th) we will discuss Joe Haldeman's war novel, The Forever War. Written by a well-known and celebrated science fiction author as well as Vietnam veteran, the book is probably his best known. It is an interstellar war story in the vein of Heinlein's "Starship Troopers", but there the similarities end. I am looking forward to reading this book.

On April 4th we will discuss Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination. Written several years after Bester's Hugo Award-winning The Demolished Man, it is a sort of proto cyber punk novel mashed up with a tale of a man who is shipwrecked and abandoned.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

SNAPSHOT: Tell us how to serve you better!

The Hutchinson Public Library is conducting a week-long snapshot survey to help us focus better on the things you really want us to do or provide. Please help us by filling out the survey (if you are or might become a patron here).

There are a couple of simple, specific questions we're asking, but most of the survey is open-ended for you to tell us about what you would like or how we could help you. The entire survey can be completed in about 5 minutes, unless you have a lot to write! Please help, and "Thank you!" in advance.