African photos

Just hung in the lobby, Steven Kanan's African photos.

Tax forms

All the federal tax forms and instructions we've received are out in the lobby for your pick-up. The state is NOT sending forms to libraries this year. You can download/print those off from the NJ Division of Taxation web site. Need something from another state? Visit our tax web site.

New in Reference

The list of new titles added to Reference in the last quarter has been posted. In addition to these books we've added three business databases: Uniworld, Foreign firms in NJ and NJ firms operating overseas; Corfacts NJ Business to Business; and Morningstar Investment Research Library. Corfacts and Morningstar are also available from home (call the Ref desk, (973) 285-6969, for the password).

Star Trek films

Saturday, January 30th, it's a festival of Star Trek films. Starting at 10AM we're showing: II, the Wrath of Khan; VI, the Undiscovered Country (12:10PM) and Star Trek 2009 (2:20PM). See one, see them all.

Smartphone surfing

Find you're doing most of your surfing from your cellphone? We've just added EBSCO mobile view to our MCL microweb, for small screens.

Winter programs

January film schedule is up. Fridays at 2PM, Jan 9th-22nd, we'll be showing: Darius Goes West, Grizzly Man and Frost Nixon (postponed from power black out Friday in Nov!). Our fourth film, on the 29th, has not yet been selected.

The winter schedule of children's activities has been posted.

Genealogy @MCL

We've just uploaded another of our resource guides in Genealogy @MCL. Four guides are available online, our latest-- Jewish Genealogy -- and NJ's top three ancestry groups, German, Italian and Irish

Meet the author

Local authors Michelle Cameron and Marjorie Keyishian will be here to talk about, read from and sign their books, in January and February. Register for seats. Saturday speaker series is monthly, at 2PM.

Wonderful concert

11:20 of fantastic classical guitar playing by Loren Fortna and Darren O'Neill at last Saturday's concert here.

109 yrs of eating

Assembled from local cookbooks (did you know we have a Morris County cookbook collection?) and the Daily Record, how/what we've liked to eat over the last 109 years.

Morris rediscovered

Occasionally reference questions here throw up research into and rediscovery of Morris County events and people. Latest is the Morris Turnpike Co., 1801-1851. Earlier gems were

Historic prices of Morris County, 1900+
"African School" at Parsippany (1817-1823)
Great Depression in Morris County 1929+
Original charter of the Morris & Essex Railroad (1835)

What do we call our growing collection of digitized county history? Suggestions?

New York Times Historic

New York Times Historic (starts in 1851) is now available for your use, from home. Try, for example, these searches
McClellan between Sept 1877 and Jan 1878
(Woodrow Wilson) on Nov 6, 1912
Lakehurst in May 1937

Use parentheses to (phrase words together), connect words with AND. Try
Edison AND inventor for period 10/1/1931 to 10/31/1931
(The whole world held it's breath!) A lot of NJ news and people are in the Times "back in the day". Doing a history paper for school? This is your primary source material. Try, for example
Maine AND explosion, February 1898
railroad on May 11, 1869
Banting in 1922
Custer, June-July 1876 (took two weeks for the news to come east)

Questions? call or e-mail the Reference desk (973) 285-6969

Morris & Essex RR

Found a cache of interesting Morris & Essex railroad documents in local history files this afternoon: 1835 prospectus for the RR and a map--surveyed by Ephraim Beach and JS Green-- of the route, from Newark Bay to "Veal Town"?? (just above Basking Ridge) which we had to scan in six parts
southeast Newark Bay & Elizabethtown
middle east Vauxhall, Comptown and S Orange
northeast Hanover & Livingston
northwestDover, Littleton, Whippany
middle westVeal Town, Green Village, Millville, Springfield
southwest Scotch Plains & Westfield

And, 90 years later, the 1925 timetable for the Morristown & Erie Railroad, connecting Essex Fells and Morristown.

Mini-videos

A new bit of software, screenjelly.com, allowed us to make these two mini-videos on

How to ?
use databases from home
&
sign up for MCL classes, events and programs

Audiobooks in catalog

Thanks to the six staffers in Technical Services who came in today, Saturday, to upload audiobook records into the library catalog. Now you can click on Electronic resource: A downloadable audiobook accessible through the ListenNJnw Project; click for detailsin any catalog record to go right through to the downloadable title.

Social service agencies

Third/latest revision of our Guide to Social Service Agencies for Morris County Residents has been posted--or pick up a copy in the library.

Now 1,608

1,608 households have signed up for Events@MCL, our electronic mailing list of advance notice about programs, classes, concerts, speakers, etc. You can join the list by dropping us a note or call the Reference desk at (973) 285-6969. We keep the list sends to a minimum (everyone has enough stuff in their mailboxes!), one or two short notices a month. You can see past samples in the list archives.

Books on order

What's your favorite reading? Did you know you can review the books now on order, soon to hit the library shelves. Look at the whole list, list by author or title or search/click on the topic that most interests you (career? travel? test prep? parenting? ..) You can even subscribe to new titles if you wanted a notice when more orders go out. Click on a subject below to see what's new or upcoming.

Orchestra Musician's ...

Our music department now has the Orchestra Musician's CD-ROM Library, which the publisher describes as
Complete sets of original orchestral parts from the great symphonic repertoire – over 600 masterworks from the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern periods – are readily available on individual CD-ROMs by instrument.

Use it in our listening room, play the parts over on the digital piano ..and be sure and ask our music librarians. We have circulating scores for nearly everything in this collection. Want more info? Contact the Music desk, (973) 286-6979.

1,200 maps

You can now search the library's map collection online. One of our reference librarians recently completed a full, descriptive inventory of the collection which, thanks to a grant from the Library Foundation, we can now offer via the web.

Economies

The library is a "good deal." You can borrow, not buy, nearly 2 million books, movies, music and books on CD, download audiobooks, etc. Don't want to waste gas trundling around? Books from any of the libraries around the county can be picked up at and returned to your hometown ...or nearest ..Morris library. We offer remote reference and resources and can fax up to 10 pages of material a week to county residents. There is no charge for:
classes (software and the Internet)
career seminars
movies and concerts
speakers program
meeting and study rooms

Morris County Library: your tax dollars at work.
Run your savings estimate through the library value calculator.

Homeschooling?

Is your family homeschooling? The library offers resources and support.

Morris area newsfeed

We've pulled together a Morris area news aggregator If you want to subscribe, use http://www.mclib.info/morrisnews.xml