Upcoming Workshops - WV Deli

There will be two additional workshops in March on using ebook readers to access the material in WV Deli. These workshops will both be held at Swaney Memorial Library in New Cumberland. The first will focus on using Kindles and Kindle apps to access the material. It will be held at noon on Tuesday, March 13. The second workshop will focus on using the Nook and similar devices. It will be held on Thursday, March 29th, also at noon. If you are considering purchasing a device, you are welcome to attend either or both workshops.

Happy Birthday to Dr. Seuss on March 2nd

Shown are some Dr. Seuss books that were among the many memorials added to the collection in honor of our former Children's Librarian, Sandy Reardon
Click here for more ways to celebrate all things Seuss!

Invitation for Public Input

The Mary H. Weir Public Library is currently preparing to submit its “5 Year Technology Plan” as required by the West Virginia Library Commission.“The Mary H. Weir Public Library 5 Year Technology Plan” will be written by the Library Board and staff with input and comments from users in the local community. It will be approved by the Mary H. Weir Public Library Board and filed with the West Virginia Library Commission.

“The Mary H. Weir Public Library Technology Plan” will cover July 1, 2012 through June 30, 2017 addressing public information and services and the technology that may be used to provide these services.

The Library has scheduled three public meetings for community input for this 5 Year Technology Plan. Email your planned attendance to refdesk@weirton..lib.wv.us or accept open invitation to:

Weekday meeting -  Wednesday, March 14, 2012  10:00 A.M. to 12:00 Noon.

Evening meeting - Wednesday, March 14, 2012   6:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M.
Weekend meeting - Saturday, March 17, 2012  10:00 AM. To 12:00 Noon.

The Library will accept input by email from anyone not able to attend meetings. The public is invited to respond to one or all questions:

During the next five years,

1 What services do you want your Mary H. Weir Public Library to provide?

2. What could or should the Mary H. Weir Library provide to the community with technology?

3. Can the Library  “do it better” with technology in the future? How?

4. What opportunities do you see for the resources of the emerging technology at the library to benefit you and impact the community?

Please send your response to refdesk@weirton.lib.wv.us by April 3, 2012

A Little Presidential Trivia

Yesterday was Presidents Day. It seems that some presidents have a great deal written about them, while others remain a mystery to us. We don't hear much about President Tyler, but over the weekend I saw one of his grandsons being interviewed on television. Now, in case you're not up on your presidential history, President Tyler was born in 1790! It seems that he had a son by his second marriage when he was 63 and that son had a son by his second marriage when he was 75. Tyler's grandson, Harrison Tyler, is now in in his eighties and living on the family plantation in Virginia.

At the library, we have two books based on odd bits of presidential trivia. Both are written by Matthew Algeo. The President is a Sick Man concerns a little known secret surgery performed at sea on Grover Cleveland. Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure tells the tale of a road trip Harry and Bess Truman took alone after he was president. Today we can hardly imagine a former president getting into a car and traveling across the country unaccompanied by staff or guards, but that is exactly what Harry Truman did.

Then there are presidents who have inspired many books. Our library has over 70 items listed in our catalog about John F. Kennedy and an equal number on Abraham Lincoln. In fact, there have been so many books written about Abraham Lincoln, that historians at the Ford's Theater Center for Education and Leadership have created a tower of books written about him. The tower is 34 feet high and 8 feet in circumference. It contains 7,000 of the approximately 15,000 books that have been written about Lincoln. 

E-Reader Help Session

If you have just received an E-Reader or are considering purchasing one, you may be interested in a help session we have scheduled for this Thursday, January 19th at noon in the library's Activity Room.  We will be discussing the differences between some of the most popular types of E-Readers and how to access library materials with them.

Obituary Index

Quite a few years ago, the library started a project to index all of the obituaries published in the Weirton Daily Times newspapers that we had on microfilm. We decided to work on this project because people were coming into the library to look for obituaries, mostly for genealogical purposes, but they didn't know the date that the notice had appeared in the paper or the date that the person had died.  Locating this information on a roll of microfilm was a very time consuming process and many people were leaving in frustration before they could locate the information they needed. Although some papers now have searchable digitaized versions of the current issues, this was not true when we started this project and  is still not true of many of the back files.

The library staff organized a volunteer project to begin indexing the obituaries in these back issues by having people go through each issue on microfim and write down the name, age, location if listed, and date the obituary appeared. These notes were then typed in to a digital file and transferred to a web page. This has been an ongoing project for well over 10 years now with many volunteers from several different organizations involved. It is a useful tool for our staff to use when helping patrons, and since it is available online, it is also useful to many others. We can tell people are using the index by the hits to those specific web pages.

At this point we have 80 years of the Weirton Daily Times on microfilm and the index is completed for 50 of those years! We are currently working our way up from 1931 through the late 1970s with some volunteers, and a staff member is taking a few minutes every day to keep up with the current newspapers. While transcribing the obituaries for 2011, we discovered that over 2,000 obituaries appeared in the Weirton Daily Times last year!

We often have complete years that have not been posted online, so if you find that you need to locate information for years not posted, call the reference desk. They will gladly check our printed copy to see if the year has been recently completed.