What's in my Book Bag?

Lately I've been reading through the House of Night Series, geared toward young adults. For fans of vampire books and Twilight, here's a series you may enjoy. Currently a series of six, book seven will be released shortly......join me reading this one!

Where does the Library Funding come from????

The economic times are hitting everyone hard, even your local public library. Computer use at the library has doubled in the past year, which is a good thing. HOWEVER, it has doubled due to the increasing numbers of people looking for jobs. The library has free high speed internet for your use. If you have a laptop, you can use the free Wi-Fi service. The Wi-Fi is available daily until 11:00 pm so that even if the library is closed, please feel free to sit at a picnic table or in your car and jump on the internet.

People often ask how the Liberty Hill Public Library is funded, where our money comes from. The paper seems to be a good place to share this information with our rapidly growing community. About seven years ago a group of citizens proposed a bond issue to create a library district, which follows the Liberty Hill ISD boundaries. The proposal was for ¼ percent sales tax, which passed. What this means is that ¼ of a percent of all SALES taxes collected within the Library District boundaries (which follow the ISD boundaries) is returned to the Liberty Hill Public Library. This is where our operating funds come from. We are not funded through property taxes, nor are we a part of the Liberty Hill city or Williamson county. We are a completely independent entity in that sense.

My reason for telling you this? To promote Liberty Hill! Each time you shop locally, rather than running to Georgetown or Cedar Park, you are supporting your library. As you can guess, sales are down recently and as a result, our income has suffered. The library needs your help. Keeping sales within Liberty Hill will help. Current book donations will help. Check out our website (www.lhpl.org) and make a donation through PayPal. We are planning a larger library for the future, but keeping our current library operating is our current focus.

If you haven’t been to the library, pull into Foundation Park and head for the building at the back. We’d love to meet you and introduce you to all our DVDs and current book releases, just waiting to go home with you. Do you commute to work? Our audio book collection has been touted as “one of the best around,” pick up something to listen to on your commute.

Support your Liberty Hill Public Library. We are here to support you in any way we can.

LH Library supports our schools

As the school year nears, it's time to remind all you Liberty Hill-billies that your public library supports your schools. We realize each school has it's own library, but we still are able supplement and help out. The elementary students annually participate in the Bluebonnet Reading program. As your public library, we have all the Bluebonnet books and they are labelled as such and on a special display. We hope to help more children read more of these items by having them available.

Junior High students encounter the LoneStar reading list, all titles which can be found in your public library as well, again, labelled.

We also support the schools by having the AR reading levels and points on our books. This will aid you and your child in picking out books they can test on and in reading at appropriate levels.

Starting Wednesday, September 2, story time resumes. We will be meeting at our usual 10:30 am on Wednesdays in the library. All are welcome to join us as we spend time in September talking about books, libraries and school.

Remember, we are here for YOU. Suggestions are more than welcome and if you haven't been in to visit lately, PLEASE DO!!!

Library Changes

As most of you know, Lynda McClain has retired as Director of the LH Library. I am currently serving as Interim Director as I finish my Masters Degree in Library Science, at which point I will assume the Directors Role.

All this means that we now have a new staff member to introduce you to if you haven't already met her. Susan Rozmiarek joined the library staff almost six months ago on a part time basis. Slipping effortlessly into her new duties made Susan an easy choice to fill the role of Library Assistant on a full time basis.

As we go through these staff transitions, we hope to remain a smooth running operation. As always, stop on in with book suggestions, to use the computer or just to get caught up on the local news. We love knowing all of you and seeing your smiling faces!

New online features

The online catalog for the LH Public Library has been enhanced. Pictures of the book covers have been added, along with reviews, annotations and more information. Just click on the links to see the information.

Did you know you can search the Georgetown Public Library catalog while searching ours? Do your initial search. Once results come up you can check the MODIFY box and then check on Georgetown and APPLY. Then conduct searches. The first column indicates if the book is in Liberty Hill, the second column, Georgetown.

Now, how do you check those books out of Georgetown......have a TexShare card? Once you have had your LH card for 90 days and have established a history of on time returns, you are eligible for a free TexShare Card. Taking the TexShare and your LH card to a participating library (around here everyone participates) will enable you to receive that library's card AT NO COST. Usually you pay a non-resident fee, not with the TexShare.

Just stop by the library and pick yours up!

The House of Night Series

I'm behind, I just finished reading Marked by PD Cast & Kristin Cast. The first of the House of Night Series, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, as will fans of Twilight, I believe. Check out the website above and get a taste for this series.....book six coming in October.

New Movies at LH Library

Check out our shelves....the two newest movie titles available on DVD are Benjamin Button and Something about Harvey.

If you are browsing our catalog online, did you know that if you hit that "what's hot" button, you can see items that have been added in the last month. Have you tried it yet?