Welcome!

Learn About Your World with a New Online Resource

Well Put, Mr. Leonard

John Leonard, the cultural critic who established himself as one of America's leading literary voices with a spectacular stint editing the New York Times Book Review in the 1970s, the unabashedly liberal voice who championed such great authors as Garcia-Marquez and Toni Morrison, died Nov. 5, of cancer, at the age of 69.

We're great fans of Mr. Leonard's work, but nothing he wrote pleased us more than these lines from the introduction to his 1993 book, The Last Innocent White Man in America:

"The library is where I've always gone – for transcendence, of course, a zap to the synaptic cleft, the radioactive glow of genius in the dark; but also to get more complicated, for advice on how to be decent and brave; for narrative instead of scenarios, discrepancies instead of euphemism. In the library, that secretariat of dissidents, they don't lie to me."

Our November Newsletter

Have you been wondering how to feed your appetite for news now that our interminable presidential campaign is over? Wonder no more -- the Edgartown Library has just published its November newsletter.

Our cover story is the perennial challenge faced by libraries in tight economic times -- meeting an expanding public need just as budgets are shrinking. We hope you'll pick up a copy on your next visit to the library -- or simply click below and download the newsletter right now.

Michael Crichton, Creator of Jurassic Park,
Is Dead at Age 66

Dr. Michael Crichton, whose prolific literary career explored the moral and political problems posed by modern technology and science, died on Tuesday, Nov. 4, of cancer. He was 66 years old. In addition to the hit television series, ER, he created novels which became megahits on the movie screen, including the Jurassic Park series, The Andromeda Strain, The Great Train Robbery, and the political thriller, Rising Sun.

Writes The New York Times in its obituary: "A remarkably facile writer, with a restless imagination, Mr. Crichton continued to juggle roles as a novelist, screenwriter and director. His marital schedule was also crowded. Mr. Crichton married five times."

How Edgartown Voted: Nov 4, 2008

In the 2004 Presidential elections, 2,325 Edgartown voters went to the polls to choose between George W. Bush and John Kerry. This week our town clerk, Wanda Williams, and her crew tallied 2,467 ballots, nearly 78 percent of the town's 3,177 registered voters.

For the official printout of the Edgartown vote on every line, from the Presidency to the state income tax and marijuana laws, click on the PDF document below, which was provided by Ms. Williams and converted to downloadable form here at the library.

Voting Returns Are In, and the Winner:
It's Franklin D. Roosevelt

Tapping into the excitement of this year's Presidential race, Kathleen Malmquist of our library staff set up an exhibit of books on American Presidents, asking our patrons to take part in an election of our own -- casting ballots for their favorite President of all time.

This week Kathleen opened the ballot box, compiling all the results. There were no hanging chads or other controversies, we're happy to report, and the hands-down winner, with 11 votes, was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Among the comments on the voting slips: "He was the true champion of freedom and democracy." Wrote another: "He endured so much, Depression, WWII, personal health, and yet was so successful."

Placing second in our historic election was Abraham Lincoln with 8 votes; Ronald Reagan won 7 votes, and Bill Clinton 5. Among the also-rans were Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and George Washington. And possibly thanks to one of our international summer visitors, Vladimir Putin got a vote, with the comment: "He's smart and outstanding!"

Here's a Money-Saving New Service:
Free Access to Consumer Reports Online

Remembering Tony Hillerman

"Hillerman's stories never grow old," New York Times book critic  Marilyn Stasio wrote in 2004. "Like myths, they keep evolving with the telling."

Mr. Hillerman, the author of 18 novels set on Southwest Indian reservations and featuring the characters of Lieut. Joe Leaphorn and Sgt. Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police, died on Sunday, Oct. 26, at the age of 83. A decorated veteran of combat in World War II, he left a successful career in journalism at age 40 to enter graduate school and eventually became chairman of the journalism department at the University of New Mexico. He took up fiction in the late 1960s, he later said, because "The yen builds to work in something more malleable than hard fact, an urge grows to try to deal with the meaning of all this."

The CLAMS library network holds more than 150 items authored by Mr. Hillerman. The first novel in his Leaphorn series, if you're interested in starting at the beginning, is The Blessing Way. Mr. Hillerman's personal favorite among the Leaphorn/Chee mysteries, he said, was A Thief of Time.

Louis 'Studs' Terkel

"Why are we born? We're born eventually to die, of course. But what happens between the time we're born and we die? We're born to live. One is a realist if one hopes." ~ Studs Terkel

Mr. Terkel, the celebrated Chicago journalist, oral historian and author, has died at the age of 96. He'll be best remembered for the books he assembled from artful interviews that extracted people's stories of their lives -- Division Street: America in 1966, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression in 1970 and his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1985 book, The Good War: An Oral History of World War II.

Writes The New York Times in its obituary: "Mr. Terkel succeeded as an interviewer in part because he believed most people had something to say worth hearing. 'The average American has an indigenous intelligence, a native wit,' he said. 'It's only a question of piquing that intelligence.'"

The CLAMS library network holds 33 of Mr. Terkel's titles; the Edgartown Library has 11.

Sustainable Book Club Meets

One Can and Bottle at a Time:
Recycling Project Raises More Than $9,000

A volunteer program of collecting returnable bottles and cans, begun last year, has now passed the $9,000 mark in funds raised for the campaign to build the new Edgartown Public Library. Just think -- that's one-tenth of one percent of the fund-raising goal for the new library's capital campaign.

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, with all proceeds going toward the new building fund.

ESL Classes Resume at Library

Nancy Gardella's classes in conversational English have resumed at the library, meeting downstairs from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday evenings. A six-week session is planned, with the last class on Nov. 25. (Note: there's no class on Veterans Day, Nov. 11).

This program is free and open to all.

The New OPAC Is Here!
What's an OPAC, You Ask? Read on . . .

CLAMS, the regional network which includes the public libraries of Edgartown, Vineyard Haven and Oak Bluffs, has launched our new OPAC.

No, it's not the cartel that keeps our gasoline prices so high. The OPAC is the online public access catalog -- the website you visit when you want to search among the 1.5 million books, videos and music disks held by the 30 member libraries of our network. The new catalog site, which works much as before, makes it easier than ever to order materials online. For example, it now recognizes your home library when you type in your card number.

One slick feature of our new OPAC design is this page, where you can log in to request that your library acquire specific materials. It's a great way for patrons to send suggestions to their local library, and we hope you'll give it a try. You'll find it under the "suggest a purchase" link on the new CLAMS catalogue page.

It's Fall: Time for Morning Coffee

Campaign for the New Library:
Watch the Foundation Video

Selectmen's Meeting Minutes

Just click below to read the minutes from meetings of the Edgartown board of selectmen. We'll post minutes as they become available.

Library Foundation Wins $50,000 Grant

The Vineyard Golf Club Foundation has announced a five-year, $50,000 challenge grant program to the Edgartown Library Foundation to support its campaign for a new library.
Under this new initiative, individual contributions from the year-round Island community of $2,000 or less, up to a total of $10,000 per year, will be matched by the golf foundation to encourage support for the library building program.

Shifting into OverDrive:
New Audio Book & Music Download Service Expands

Have You Used Your PIN Lately?

This year at the Edgartown Public Library, all PINs are free. Actually, they always have been, always will be -- we're just trying to get your attention.

Your four-digit PIN, or Personal Identification Number, is your Internet doorway into the CLAMS network. With it, you can explore -- and request items from -- the nearly 1.5 million books, CDs and videos of our regional consortium of libraries.

Getting your PIN is as easy as stopping by the library circulation desk for half a minute, or calling us on the phone during our open hours. We'll be delighted to set you up. Because we want all our patrons to discover the wonderful world of library resources that awaits you online.

Hop Aboard the Learning Express

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 means that 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.