February 25, 2005
Press Release: Library Service at the Touch of a Browser
Harris County Public Library Creates Toolbar for Online Customers
Houston, TX, February 25, 2005: Customers of the Harris County Public Library System, in Houston, now have library services at their fingertips- literally. The library system announced today a new web toolbar that customers can download. The toolbar allows customers to search the Harris County Catalog , access the Teen and Children?s site and even renew books. The toolbar, which is similar to the Google toolbar, can be downloaded for free.
Grace Lillevig, eBranch Librarian, and Will Willis, Web Designer, designed the toolbar so customers can have a seamless web experience. Grace explained that customers who are reading a web site and see a book or movie mentioned can use the toolbar, search the library catalog and put the item on hold. Customers can then go to their neighborhood branch and pick up the item. She says, ?We believe that we are the first public library in the United States to offer this unique and personalized library web service.?
Harris County Public Library serves the county surrounding the Houston metropolitan area. The library system has 26 branches around the county. Both the Tomball and Cy-Fair branches are partnerships with the North Harris Montgomery Community College. The library system circulated over 8 million items last year.
Posted by Grace at 02:50 PM
February 22, 2005
Baby's Book Time Featured on KHOU
The Baby's Book Time program at our Northwest Branch Library was featured on KHOU Channel 11 (registration is required to view the story) on Monday, February 21. The Baby's Book Time program is for babies age 0-18 months. It is held on Wednesday's at 2 PM - registration is required. You can register by calling the branch at 281-890-2665.
"Reading is the key to success," said Dianne Kelly. "If you don't read you are limited in what you can do. So the choices that families make now will determine the choices their children will have available to them later."
Dianne Kelly leads the Babies and Books program at a northwest Harris County library.
A number of other branches in the system, like Cy-Fair, Katherine Tyra @ Bear Creek, Freeman, and Barbara Bush @ Cypress Creek offer similar infant story times. Please check your local branch's Events & Programs Calendar for more information.
Posted by Grace at 01:06 PM
February 21, 2005
New Bestsellers 1/21/05
The following books are appearing on the best seller lists for the first time this week. For a complete listing see our collection of Best Seller Lists.
NYT = New York Times
PW = Publisher's Weekly
USA = USA Today
WSJ = Wall Street Journal
Fiction
 THE REAL MOTHER, by Judith Michael. (Morrow, $24.95.) Forced to take care of her sisters and brother, a young woman learns lessons about parenthood. (NYT #13)
 Haruki Murakami. Kafka on the Shore
A tour de force of metaphysical reality, it is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. (NYT #16, PW #15)
Nonfiction
 Mark R. Levin. Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America
Mark Levin throws The book at our own judicial system-in particular, American judges who ignore The Constitution and dismantle The rights of American citizens in everyday court proceedings. (NYT #4, PW #8, WSJ #7)
 IT'S MY PARTY TOO, by Christine Todd Whitman. (Penguin Press, $24.95.) The former governor of New Jersey and former head of the Environmental Protection Agency lays out her vision for Republicans. (NYT #13)
 Karen Zailckas. Smashed: The Story of a Drunken Girlhood
From earliest experimentation to full-blown abuse, 24-year-old Zailckas leads readers through her experience of binge drinking in this vivid cautionary tale. (NYT #10, PW #14, WSJ #14)
Business
James B. Stewart. Disney War
Based on hundreds of interviews with company executives and voluminous documents, accounts of critical meetings and strategy sessions, this book explores the company that captures the essence of American capitalism and popular culture like no other. (WSJ #8)
Posted by Grace at 05:03 PM
February 15, 2005
TumbleTalkingBooks - Streaming Audiobook Library
We are pleased to announce our new streaming audiobook service from TumbleTalkingBooks. The TumbleTalkingBooks library offers fiction, nonfiction, classics, and children's book selections. To listen to a book, go to the TumbleTalkingBooks site, select a book and click "Listen Online". TumbleTalkingBooks cannot be downloaded from the site.
TumbleTalkingBooks is our second offering from Tumble Books. We also offer Tumble Books for Children which are electronic books for children.
Posted by Grace at 11:03 AM
February 14, 2005
New Bestsellers 2/14/05
The following books are appearing on the best seller lists for the first time this week. For a complete listing see our collection of Best Seller Lists.
NYT = New York Times
PW = Publisher's Weekly
USA = USA Today
WSJ = Wall Street Journal
Fiction
 Christine Feehan. Dark Secret
In her latest Carpathian novel, the "New York Times" bestselling author reveals the enthralling story of Rafael, a savage hunter from the darkest jungles, and the beautiful prey he will never let escape. (USA #3)
JD Robb. Survivor in Death
In her newest novel in the #1 "New York Times" bestselling series, Nora Roberts writing as J.D. Robb returns to the New York city of 2059, where Lieutenant Eve Dallas will struggle to solve murder of a seemingly ordinary family, and protect one small, terrified survivor. (NYT #3, PW #4, USA #7, WSJ #2)
 THE BEST-KEPT SECRET, by Kimberla Lawson Roby. (Morrow, $23.95.) The further romantic adventures of the Rev. Curtis Black, who, after two failed marriages, tries hard to be faithful to his latest wife. (NYT #16)
 Curtis Sittenfeld. Prep
Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves behind her animated, affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding school's glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel. (NYT #11, PW #15)
Nonfiction
 BIG BANG , by Simon Singh. (Fourth Estate/HarperCollins, $27.95.) A science writer and former particle physicist explains the history of cosmology and the widely accepted theory of the origin of the universe. (NYT #15)
 DEAR SENATOR, by Essie Mae Washington-Williams and William Stadiem. (ReganBooks/HarperCollins, $24.95.) A memoir by the mixed-race daughter of Strom Thurmond. (NYT #8)
Posted by Grace at 04:10 PM
February 08, 2005
TOGO by Robert J. Blake wins Texas Bluebonnet Award
 Togo, Robert J. Blake's story of a Siberian Husky who leads a sled dog team bringing the diphtheria antitoxin from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska in 1925 was announced the winner of the 2005 Texas Bluebonnet Award today.
The Bluebonnet Award is a project of the Texas Library Association and is co-sponsored by the Children's Roundtable and the Texas Association of School Librarians, both of the Texas Library Association from suggestions from librarians, teachers, parents, students, and others. Students in grades 3-6 vote in January for the winner.
Posted by Grace at 04:17 PM
February 07, 2005
New Bestsellers 2/7/05
The following books are appearing on the best seller lists for the first time this week. For a complete listing see our collection of Best Seller Lists.
NYT = New York Times
PW = Publisher's Weekly
USA = USA Today
WSJ = Wall Street Journal
Fiction
 Ann Brashares. Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants graduates from high school and spends their last summer before college learning about life and themselves. (USA #3, WSJ #2)
 Rita Mae Brown. Cat's Eyewitness
With Christmas around the corner, and the monastery overrun by the faithful, all Harry's meddling menagerie can do is stay on her trail as she jumps knee-deep into an unofficial investigation--one that becomes more dangerous when another Crozet citizen meets an untimely demise. In this case, it will be a miracle if Harry stays alive... (WSJ #13)
 Bernard Cornwell. Last Kingdom
In this epic novel, bestselling author Cornwell follows King Alfred the Great and his desperate quest to keep England from falling into the hands of the Danish conquerors. (PW #15, WSJ #15)
 Janet Evanovich. Love Overboard
The second novel by the #1 "New York Times" bestselling author--now reissued--is a charmingly funny tale of love and adventure set on the rocky coast of Maine, in which a strong-willed young woman becomes the first mate of a sinfully handsome schooner captain. (USA #13)
 Dean Koontz & Kevin J. Anderson. Dean Koontz's Frankenstein: Prodigal Son
A brilliant re-imagining and updating of the classic Frankenstein story that only Dean Koontz could conceive, PRODIGAL SON is the first volume in a four-book series that opens with the "monster"--Deucalion--coming to modern-day New Orleans, where he will join forces with a street-smart police detective and her partner on the trail of a macabre serial killer...a serial killer spawned, Deucalion will discover, by his own creator, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, now Victor Helios. (USA #5)
 James Luceno. Star Wars: Labyrinth of Evil
Based on information from Lucasfilm and written by bestselling "Star Wars" author James Luceno, this is a Jedi adventure that is a direct prequel to the upcoming movie, "Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. (PW #7, WSJ #8)
 Todd J. McCaffrey. Dragonsblood
The dragons of Pern are dying . . . and the only person who can save them hasbeen dead for over 400 Turns. This new fantasy is written by Anne McCaffrey'sson, Todd, heir to the literary world of Pern. (PW #14)
 Richard North Patterson. Conviction
From the #1 "New York Times" bestselling author comes the harrowing story of a possibly innocent man, the labyrinthine politics of death row, and one lawyer's personal and professional crisis. (PW #6, WSJ #7)
 Amanda Quick. Wait Until Midnight
Murdered psychics, mysterious sances, and a man with a dangerous past. Welcome to a world of shadows, fog and gaslights Victorian London. Adam Hardesty intends to do whatever it takes to protect his family's secrets, but his inconvenient attraction to Caroline Fordyce, a scandalous author of lurid "sensation" novels complicates his life in ways he never imagined. (USA #14)
Nonfiction
 Jim Dwyer & Kevin Flynn. 102 Minutes
The dramatic and moving account of the struggle for life inside the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, when every minute counted. (WSJ #15)
PW Audio Fiction
 John Grisham. The Broker
In his final hours in the Oval Office, the outgoing President grants a controversial last-minute pardon to Joel Backman, a notorious Washington power broker who has spent the last six years hidden away in a federal prison. What no one knows is that the President issues the pardon only after receiving enormous pressure from the CIA. (Unabridged CD & Cassette) (#2)
Posted by Grace at 04:32 PM
February 03, 2005
Westerns
Is your favorite author Louis L'Amour? Do you just love westerns and the old west? Then, you're in for a treat. We have created a new Westerns category in Books & Reading. Along with the category, we've added three new book/movie lists: Western Heritage Award - Western Novel, Western Writers of America - Best Western Novels , and Best Western Movies. In the coming weeks we'll be adding additional western themed lists to the site. Enjoy!
Best Western Movie
Shane
A weary gunfighter attempts to settle down with a homestead family, but a smoldering settler-rancher conflict forces him to act. Directed by George Stevens. Starring Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur, & Van Heflin. Based on the book Shane by Jack Schaefer. NR
Western Writers of America - Best Western Novel
 Jack Warner Schaefer. Shane
In the summer of 1889, a mysterious and charismatic man rides into a small Wyoming valley, where he joins homesteaders who take a stand against a bullying cattle rancher, and where he changes the lives of a young boy and his parents.
Posted by Grace at 04:05 PM
New Books/Movies/Audio Lists Updated
The New Books, Audios, and Movies lists have been updated with titles cataloged in January 2005.
Posted by Grace at 03:34 PM
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