A Knickerbocker Goes West

'A Tour on the Prairies' - Washington Irving - 1832

- Book Recommendation -

For those armchair travelers yearning for 'undiscovered countries', Irving offers just the tale - Rangers, Native-Americans, Prairie Fires, Bison, Campfire Gourmands, Guns & much more!!! These observations, taken from his travels on the western frontier circa 1832, illustrate a fascinating period of westward expansion, exploration and exploitation. Pack your chaps, lassos and pemmican. Also, be sure to pick a stout horse - you'll need one.

New Fiction Titles Available

New Fiction Titles July 2006
Stanly County Public Library
Learning for a Lifetime @ Your Library

Adler, Elizabeth – Sailing to Capri
Block, Lawrence – Hit Parade
Burke James Lee – Pegasus Descending
Child, Lee – The Hard Way
Clark, Mary Jane – Lights Out Tonight
Douglas, Carole Nelson – Cat in a Quicksilver Caper
Finder, Joseph – Killer Instinct
Foster, Alan Dean – Candle of Distant Earth
Furst, Alan – Foreign Correspondent
Gulley, Philip – Almost Friends
Hooper, Kay – Sleeping with Fear
MacDonald, Patricia – Married to a Stranger
Macomber, Debbie – Susannah’s Garden
McCaffrey, Anne – Dragon’s Fire
Muller, Marcia – Vanishing Point
Peterson, Tracie – Desert Roses
Reichs, Kathy – Break No Bones
Rendell, Ruth – End in Tears
Saul, John – In the Dark of the Night
Thayer, Nancy – Hot Flash Club Chills Out
Weis, Margaret – Dragons of the Dwarven Depths

For more new titles, please check our online catalog available at www.stanlylib.org.

NCknows - Live Online help 24/7 - Use it Now!

Live Online Help from Librarians - All Day, Every Day -

Contact the Reference Department at the Main Library in Albemarle for more information on how to access NCLive and NCknows - 704 986 3759 -

What is NCknows? -

NCknows is a service that allows North Carolina citizens to get help from librarians and use their library resources from their computer. By typing messages back and forth, you can communicate with a librarian, browse webpages together, receive articles from NC LIVE, and get answers to questions. It's free, helpful and easy.

Who is NCknows?

NCknows is staffed by librarians from academic, public and specialty libraries. By coordinating with participating libraries across the state and other libraries across the country, we are able to offer help around the clock.

How is NCknows supported?

NCknows is a pilot project supported by a grant under the Federally-funded Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA). The project is administered by the State Library of North Carolina in Raleigh with help from a committee of librarians and directors from North Carolina's libraries.

Very Lonely Planet

Book Recommendation - 'The Brief History of the Dead' - Kevin Brockmeier.

A virulent plague, a motley crew of the recently deceased & the urban cartography of an ever-changing necropolis populate the narrative of Brockmeier's 'Brief History'. More interesting though, are the author's speculations concerning the after-life, how we affect one another though our daily connections and more importantly the memories (or not) we keep within us all. This is a good book for a lazy summer afternoon.

A Polaris Summer...

As the library staff continues to work with Polaris this summer and adapt all of its new features to Stanly County, please remember the next time you visit one of the library branches in Albemarle, Badin, Locust, Norwood, and Oakboro to ask about:

* receiving notices & reminders from the library though your e-mail instead of your mail box;

* maintaining a personal reading log in Polaris of everything you check out and read.

And – all students are invited to help us update their accounts by telling us what school they will be attending in the Fall. This will help our Youth & Children's Services staff in developing the collections and allow us to offer feedback to the Stanly County Schools about student library use.

Thanks, and enjoy your summer (at the library!)

What College Students are Reading

An article in this weeks Charlotte Observer shared what some of the area colleges are having new students read over the summer. Any of these titles would be good discussion books for book clubs.

Appalachian State - "Freakonomics" by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Davidson College - "The Dignity of Difference" by Jonathan Sacks

Furman University - "Blood Done Sign My Name" by Timothy Tyson

Queens University of Charlotte - "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" by Dai Sijie

UNC Chapel Hill - "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri

University of South Carolina - "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder

Wake Forest University - "An Enemy of the People" by Henrik Ibsen

Wofford College - "Paco's Story" by Larry Heinemann.

Some Features of our NEW Polaris System

Did you know that you can view your patron account from inside the library or from your home computer?

Your patron account shows your library registration data, reserve requests you have made, items you have checked out, and fines and fees you owe. You can change your password, cancel requests, and renew items you have currently checkout out. If you choose to do so, you can maintain a reading history, which is a list of items you have checked out in the past.

login In to Your Account
1) Click Patron Account on the top menu bar.

2) Type you library card number in the Barcode Number box.

3) Type your password in the Password box.

4) Click Log In or press Enter on the keyboard.

You patron account information is displayed on the My Record page.