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Holiday Closure ~ Have a Happy Fourth!

The Edgartown Free Public Library will be closed on Saturday, July 4, in observance of Independence Day. Our next day of business will be Tuesday, July 7, when our hours, as usual, will be from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

On this great American holiday, we'll leave you with a thought from the man whose gift gave Edgartown its library in 1904:

"There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration."  ~Andrew Carnegie

Summer Fund-Raising Event Honors S. Bailey Norton Jr.;
European River Cruise Is Grand Raffle Prize

The Edgartown Library Foundation will host its major event of the summer, an elegant luncheon at the Boathouse Field Club at Katama, on Sunday, July 12, honoring S. Bailey Norton Jr. with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Tickets to the noon event are $150 per person and will be available through July 6; for more information, just ask at the library front desk.

In addition to honoring Mr. Norton (his beautiful book documenting the people and scenes of his Edgartown, My Long Journey Home, is in our library collection), the Foundation luncheon will feature the drawing for a spectacular raffle prize -- an all-expenses-paid European river cruise for two. Only 250 chances are being sold for $250 each ($110 of which is tax-deductible). For more information, ask at the library desk or contact the Edgartown Library Foundation at Box 1198, Edgartown.

Free Music Series Opens Tuesday, July 7

"Sounds Like Summer," a series of free musical programs featuring Island artists, launches on Tuesday, July 7, on the library front lawn. Opening the season will be The Cattle Drivers, a high-energy acoustic band led by Kevin Keady and featuring Mike Tinus on bass, Becky Tinus on violin and Nate Davis on banjo and mandolin.

Programs continue each Tuesday in July, always beginning at 6:30 p.m. Bring a blanket and the family, and enjoy the music!

Library's July Newsletter
Highlights Summer Space Crunch

It's July, when everything on the Island gets a bit more crowded -- and this is true in spades at the Edgartown Library, which was last expanded more than thirty years ago. The July edition of the library's printed newsletter details the challenges we face maintaining a rich collection and bringing you public programs in a space that was snug when this community was less than half its present size. You're welcome to pick up the newsletter at our circulation desk, or you can download a copy using the link below.

Library Wins Awards for Programs, Communication & Design

We have happy news from the annual convention of the Massachusetts Library Association, held in Springfield the first week in May. The Edgartown Public Library has won five awards for excellence in the MLA's annual public relations contest.

Competing against scores of libraries, including some of the larger institutions in the Commonwealth, the Edgartown Library took honorable mention prizes for its monthly newsletter and for its website (that's right, the page you're reading right now).

Better still, the Library took first-place honors in the state in two categories, for best logo and for best public programming. The logo design, used on everything from our newsletter to the tote-bags for sale at the circulation desk, is built around the image of the arched Carnegie Library window that you can see at the top left-hand corner of this page. The winning public program is Edgartown 101, the six-week civic literacy series we hosted here at the library in January and February.

At the end of the awards ceremony on Thursday, May 7, the Massachusetts Library Association announced one more honor, the "PR for Pennies Award," to the library whose outreach to the community accomplished the most at the least cost. The winner was the Edgartown Free Public Library.

Campaign for the New Library:
Watch the Foundation Video

With New Software Release,
Free Audiobook Service Is Even Better

Overdrive, the service used by the CLAMS library network to connect our patrons with free audiobooks, has just released version 3.2 of its software, Overdrive Media Console. There are several slick new features in the software, but most importantly, Overdrive Media Console now lets you transfer most audiobooks to your iPod® and iPhone™. You can use any PC loaded with the iTunes software to load books into your portable player or phone; the Overdrive media wizard may ask you to adjust your file settings to allow faster transfer, but will always politely remind you to set them back afterwards.

Meanwhile, our initiative of selling inexpensive WMA audio players here at the library continues to be a thumping success. We still have a few Sansa C250 portable players, which are available for a $25 donation to the Edgartown Library Foundation. Part of the bargain is the promise of a free tutorial, here at the library, on using the Overdrive service to download books and music to your home computer. If you bring in your laptop, we'll even help you install the latest software.

To learn more about the Overdrive service, visit this link

Library Receives Funds for Restoration Project;
Trustees Will Await Results of Summer Capital Campaign

At Edgartown's annual town meeting on April 14, after a lively discussion, Edgartown voters handily approved the awarding of a $195,000 grant from the town's Community Preservation Act funds for restoration to the library's historic 1904 Carnegie building.

The building, a gift to the town from steel magnate Andrew Carnegie (on land donated by Caroline Warren), is in serious need of care. The CPA grant will enable a string of restoration measures, including repairs and renovations to interior fixtures and trim, replacement of lighting fixtures which were added in the 1970s, energy-saving improvements to the single-pane windows, restoration of the original hardwood floors and the original entryway to the circulation desk.

After the town meeting, the Library trustees publicly thanked the voters for their support, adding: "We will be watching closely this summer as the campaign to raise funds for the new library progresses, and we will decide how to proceed with this restoration of the Carnegie building once the picture of our larger building plans is clear."

Counting Down the Days:
Library Faces Urgent Funding Deadline

Last summer, the town of Edgartown received wonderful news: Massachusetts has set aside $4.6 million to help build the new Edgartown Public Library design approved by the state Board of Library Commissioners.

But an unforgiving deadline attaches to these funds. If Edgartown does not commit to building its new library -- in the design approved by the state -- by Dec. 31, 2009, the funds are gone, and Edgartown will go to the very back of a long line of communities which are seeking state help with library construction projects.

As a reminder of the approaching day when Edgartown's $4.6 million opportunity expires, we've hung a little display behind the circulation desk which tallies the days remaining until Dec. 31. Above the numbers is a single word which sums up the situation:

"Countdown."

Budget Cuts Threaten Libraries Statewide

On Martha's Vineyard, one of the favorite subjects for political debate is local control versus regional cooperation. We like to think our public libraries have found the perfect sweet spot -- lively community centers on one hand, yet knit together in an efficient network, CLAMS, that gives our patrons access to more than a million and a half titles at the click of a computer keyboard.

But now, even as people turn increasingly to libraries for free materials and services in these tough economic times, cuts to library budgets are endangering their certification with the state -- and without certification, it's not possible for patrons to borrow outside their own systems. The state's reasoning is simple: It wouldn't be fair to let one town gut its library budget, then let that town's patrons get a free ride by ordering their books, videos and music from communities that are being more responsible.

Could loss of accreditation happen here? Not any time soon. But as this excellent story in the Boston Globe reports, one state requirement is that towns must increase their library budgets each year by 2.5 percent, compared with the average spent in the three previous years.

The Edgartown Library budget is flat-funded this year, at the request of town leaders. We're still above the state's minimum threshold -- but each year of flat funding brings us closer to the brink.

Recycling Project Raises $12,000

At the beginning of this year, a volunteer program begun in 2007 passed the $10,000 mark in funds raised for the campaign to build the new Edgartown Public Library. Now the total has climbed to $12,000 -- all of it raised by recycling cans and bottles at five cents apiece.

A friend of the library expansion project has kindly volunteered to manage this program, with collection bins set up at sites around the Island for returnable bottles and cans, and all proceeds going toward the new building fund.

Learning Express Gets an Overhaul,
And It's Free to Our Patrons

No matter which acronym you're studying for -- ACT, SAT, GRE or any of the others -- you’ll want to sign up for the online test-preparation service, Learning Express.

The Edgartown Library subscribes to this service, which on Feb. 9 launched a major site redesign and now is much friendlier for users. Now all our patrons can enjoy free access to practice tools to help prepare for dozens of important tests, from real estate exams to the U.S. citizenship test.

Learning Express also offers free online courses which you can take at your own pace, in academic subjects from math to writing, reading comprehension and even English language skills. It only takes a minute to register -- just use your library card number as your user name, and your four-digit library PIN as a password.

If It's New and Notable,
We've Probably Got It

The New York Times recently published its annual list of 100 notable books, from Curtis Sittenfeld's novel, American Wife (pictured at left), to Patrick French's celebrated new biography of V.S. Naipaul. Just for fun, we cross-checked that list against the holdings in our CLAMS library network -- and discovered that CLAMS holds 92 of the 100 titles. Is this a great network, or what?

And by the way, we're working on the other eight.