Extra vacation, extra library programs for kids

The Stratford Library's Children's Department will offer two extra programs this week to keep kids busy during their extra week of summer vacation. Programs are free. Please register at the Children’s Desk, or call 203.385.4165.

Here are the new events just added to the library's schedule:

Book Cover Craft : Wednesday, Aug. 31 at 2:30 p.m.

Children ages 5 to 12 are invited to make book covers for their first day of school, which was pushed back to Sept. 6 yesterday. Bring your creativity, supplies provided.

School's Out Spelling Bee : Thursday, Sept. 1 at 2:30 p.m.

Kids are encouraged to practice their school skills with this lively, silly spelling bee for children ages 6 to 12. Words for all levels of spellers provided.

The Stratford Library has power, programs and plenty of items for kids and adults. Come in and charge your phone, pick up an audiobook to listen to as the sun goes down, check your email and visit with your neighbors.

Teen relationships on Teen Tuesday

This week our Teen Tuesday program deals with teen dating violence & healthy relationships. MYOthello will present a 3 act performance from "Othello" that will explore themes relating to teen dating violence. A discussion will follow the performance. Tuesday, August 2nd, 6:30 pm in the Lovell Room.

The day you were born: commemorated!

Not too long ago, the New York Times published a book that reproduces the front page of the newspaper for important events in history, like Monday, July 21, 1969 ("MEN WALK ON MOON") or Tuesday, December 8, 1941 ("U.S. DECLARES WAR, PACIFIC BATTLE WIDENS").

That's interesting enough, but that's not all... It also contained CD-ROMs with every single Times front page ever published up to 2008 -- over 50,000 front pages.

That means it's fairly easy to print out a reproduction of the front page of the newspaper for the day you were born -- a great prop for a birthday or anniversary parties.

Come by the library and ask a librarian to help you print out your special day from our copy of this fascinating volume.

The Internet vs. Encyclopedias: you don't have to choose

Remember how most families used to have an encyclopedia in their home, on a shelf in a place of honor? Usually it would be the World Book, or maybe the Britannica. Often it would be ten years old or older, because encyclopedias were a big investment and a family couldn't afford to get a new one very often. Kids would use the encyclopedia to do their schoolwork. The grown-ups would use it to settle a bet about how long it would take to drive from Detroit to Chicago.

Now, those same families probably have the internet in their home, and they'd use the computer when they once used the encyclopedia.

But as most people know, for all of its convenience and speed, the internet is not always the most reliable source of information. Let's say you want to know more about e. coli, the bacteria causing an outbreak of food poisoning in Europe. You can get the reliable, accurate information of a famous encyclopedia, at any of time of day or night, via the Internet, using the Stratford Library's subscription to the World Book Online.

The online World Book is updated constantly, so it doesn't go out of date like the set your parents may have had. And it refers you to information from many sources beyond the encyclopedia. But you can be sure it will all be reliable information from reputable sources, fact checked by the World Book editors.

How do you log on? Go to the Stratfordlibrary.org website, and click on the box that says "Get it online with your library card."

On the next page, you'll see the list of our most popular online resources, including The World Book Online.

Log on using your Stratford Library card number, and you'll be all set to get reliable, up to date information with the speed of the Internet.

Power user tip: The World Book Online offers different versions for different ages: World Book for Kids for the youngest students World Book Info Finder for middle school and high school students World Book Online Reference Center for adults

Up-and-Coming... Recommended Reads

New books that caught our eye! You may not have heard about them yet -- but you will enjoy reading them.

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Shadows Bright as Glass: The Remarkable Story of One Man's Journey from Brain Trauma to Artistic Triumph, by Amy Ellis Nutt.

After a brain hemorrhage nearly killed him, Jon Sarkin awoke with an overwhelming desire to create art. Before the stroke, he was a calm chiropractor, a happily married family man. Now he devotes all his waking hours to furiously drawing and painting.

Journalist Amy Ellis Nutt interweaves Sarkin’s remarkable story with a fascinating look at how our "personality" arises from the brain's neurons and electrical pulses. Nutt brings to life the extraordinary stories of people whose personalities and abilities were dramatically altered by brain trauma, often in shocking ways.

Place a hold now on Shadows Bright as Glass-- we'll call you when it's ready for you.

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The Sorcerer's Apprentices: A Season in the Kitchen at Ferran Adria's El Bulli, by Lisa Abend

Did you know there is a restaurant in Spain that gets more than two million requests for reservations each year.... the average cost of a meal is $500 and yet it operates at a loss.... and apprentices will work there for free to learn from the "mad genius" master chef, Ferran Adria.This is El Bulli, the most avant-garde and the most sought-after restaurant in the world.

In her lively new book, The Sorcerer's Apprentices Lisa Abend immerses herself in the heat, the anxiety, and the ingenuity of this pressurized little world.

Place a hold now on The Sorcerer's Apprentices--we'll call you when it's ready for you.

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Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything by Stephen Baker.

The recent competition between all-time Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter against a new IBM supercomputer was a bit of a let-down, since the computer easily trounced the two men. But the story of how IBM developed this computer to "answer questions like a human" is anything but predictable.

At its heart, Final Jeopardy is about the future of knowledge. What will Watson’s heirs be capable of in ten or twenty years? And where does that leave humans? As fast and fun as the game itself, Final Jeopardy shows how smart machines will fit into our world — and how they’ll disrupt it.

Place a hold now on Final Jeopardy-- we'll call you when it's ready for you.

The New York Times -- for a fee, or for free?

If you've been keeping up with the New York Times through their website instead of as a newspaper, you've probably come across their announcement that they will no longer allow their online audience to read an unlimited number of articles for free. This could put a dent in your plan to save money while you stay informed with "all the news that's fit to print" on the web.

(Just a thought -- is the news still printed if it appears online?) But as a Stratford library card holder, you have other options. The Library has an electronic subscription to the New York Times with no limits on how often you can use it -- so that's available to you 24/7. There is no limit to how often a library user can read the entire newspaper (and the archive back to 1985) for free through our electronic subscription. Here's the step-by-step.

1) Go to the library's website, http://www.stratfordlibrary.org/.

2) Click on "Get it online with your library card"

3) Then click on "Search by subject" tab.

4) Choose "Current events and News."

5) Choose the New York Times -- or one of the other newspapers we subscribe to in that list, including the Christian Science Monitor or the Times of London.

6) You will be taken to the statewide iConn website, where you will enter the number on the back of your library card under the barcode. This logs you into the New York Times, provided by a service called InfoTrac.

So take advantage of your status as a library card holder, and read the New York Times online to your heart's content.

Caring for your car

With the price of gas breaking the $4 mark, there is every reason to keep your car running efficiently. The library can help. One of the useful services the library subscribes to is the "Automotive Repair Reference Center," which is available online (for free) to anyone with a Stratford library card-- in the library or from your home computer.

This service gives you access to Repair Procedures, Service Bulletins and Recalls, and Wiring Diagrams for most US and foreign cars and noncommercial trucks back to the 1970s.

You may be saying to yourself, "Oh, I would never fix my own car." But even so, this service contains high-priority info alerts called "service bulletins" which can help every car owner, whether they consider themselves handy or not.

Service Bulletins are reports from the car manufacturers about common problems cropping up with certain models. If you look up your own vehicle (say, a 2007 Honda Civic) you will find a list of problems that the manufacturer thought were serious enough to tell mechanics, but not serious enough to warrant a recall. For instance, if your 2007 Honda Civic car clock has been randomly flashing the wrong time, you are not alone! Honda has figured out what makes this happen and you can get that problem solved, pronto.

And for those of you who do like to put on the overalls and break out the wrenches, the repair procedures include step-by-step instructions for repairing the car from bumper to bumper, with helpful diagrams and photographs.

To try out the Automotive Repair Reference Center, go to the library's webpage at http://www.stratfordlibrary.org/ and click on "Get it Online with your library card."

The Automotive Repair Reference Center is one of the services listed on that first page of resources. Call us at 203-385-4164 if you have any questions about using this service!