Library Land

The Riverside County Library System will not reduce any hours of operation for the 2010-11 fiscal year. Even though the overall budget of the Riverside County Library will decrease by about 10%--as are most County departments—hours and levels of service will remain unchanged this year. 
 

Feel like you’re getting older? Well, you’re not alone. According to the California State Library, nearly two-thirds of all the people who have ever lived past the age of 65 are alive today. 

Are you a parent that wants to encourage your children to read? Good, because it is a proven fact reading with your child is one of the best ways to help prepare your child for success in school and later life.   

Recently, my wife and I went to San Salvador, El Salvador. I didn’t intend to go looking for libraries, but one found me anyway.  The first thing we encountered upon arriving at the public square in front of the Metropolitan Cathedral was the Biblioteca Muncipal Ambulante, or Mobile Municipal Library.
 

Have you heard about our Flash Books service?  Using our book printing robot, we can print a 300-page book in less than five minutes from a catalog of around 3 million titles.
 

This Thursday evening, May 13 at 7 p.m., The Riverside County Library System and the UC Riverside Libraries will be hosting the 2010 Arbuthnot Lecture featuring nationally known children’s literature expert, Kathleen T. Horning. The topic of her lecture is this: “Can Children’s Books Save the World?”  We think they can.
 

On Saturday, April 17, over 4,000 people attended the opening of the new Louis Robidoux Library. I can’t prove it, but I am very certain that this represents the largest one-day attendance at a single site in the 100-year history of the Riverside County Library System.  
 

Welcome to our new web page. I hope you like it—we’ve been working on it for months and have added lots of new features including this blog by some staff who want to share interesting stuff they are working on. I hope you sign up for an account and add your comments to ours.
 

Last week I attended the Victor Villaseñor talk at the Palm Desert Library.  Standing in line to get in, I overheard a man behind me say to his wife, "I guess there isn't much point to libraries anymore when everything is on the Internet."  I started to turn around and introduce myself, when his wife piped up with something like, "Oh, no, these libraries are