BUCK the film

The fall movies are rolling in at the library and one of the most anticipated is Buck, the compelling story of Buck Brannaman, American horseman.  Place a hold today!
From the film's website:
BUCK, a richly textured and visually stunning film, follows Brannaman from his abusive childhood to his phenomenally successful approach to horses. A real-life “horse-whisperer”, he eschews the violence of his upbringing and teaches people to communicate with their horses through leadership and sensitivity, not punishment.
Buck possesses near magical abilities as he dramatically transforms horses – and people – with his understanding, compassion and respect. In this film, the animal-human relationship becomes a metaphor for facing the daily challenges of life. A truly American story about an unsung hero, BUCK is about an ordinary man who has made an extraordinary life despite tremendous odds. http://www.buckthefilm.com/

Do You Read Banned Books?

For the next week, September 24 through October 1, FCLS will be celebrating Banned Books Week, an annual nationwide observance to raise awareness of book challenging and banning.

Have you read a banned or challenged book lately? Books challenged in Montana in recent decades include The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, Fools Crow by James Welch, and The Giver by Lois Lowry. Click here to see more lists of banned books.

Visit your local FCLS branch to learn more or read a banned book, and pick up a bookmark while supplies last.

Library Day Celebration a Success!

Last Wednesday, September 14, Flathead County libraries and libraries across the state celebrated Montana Library Day. We asked for comments from library customers, took photos, and gathered statistics. There were many happy library visitors that day, and storytime at the Main Library was a big hit, featuring stories about gardens and a sunflower craft.

Some of our favorite survey comments finishing the phrase "I love my library because..."

"The staff are friendly. They smile!"
"It gets my son excited about reading."
"I’d be lost without it!"
"A great selection at a great value...free!"
"It has manga!"

Flathead County libraries had 1,368 visitors and 1,797 checkouts on September 14. Our libraries issued 23 new library cards and answered nearly 200 reference questions.

Statewide results will soon be available on the Montana State Library website.

Celebrate Montana Library Day With Us!

Wednesday, September 14, is Montana Library Day!

Libraries across the state are taking the day to gather comments, photographs, and statistics chronicling a typical library day.

Stop by any Flathead County Library branch to take a quick survey and tell us why you use and love your library. If you can't make it to the library, you can take the survey online instead: http://www.msl.mt.gov/LibraryDay/survey.asp.

And don't forget storytime! There are three times and locations on September 14:

• Bigfork preschool storytime, 10:00 am
• Columbia Falls preschool storytime, 10:30 am
• Columbia Falls after-school storytime, 3:00 pm

Montana Library Day is a project of the Montana Library Association, the Montana State Library, all 750 Montana libraries, and the Flathead County Library System. For more information about Montana Library Day, please contact the State Library at (406) 444-3115 or visit http://msl.mt.gov/LibraryDay.

Summer Reading Winners!

We are pleased to announce the list of winners from our Summer Reading Program!

The following children won $25 gift certificates to the Imagination Station toy store. Congratulations and great job reading!

Jacob Cunningham, Bigfork
Arron Davis, Columbia Falls
Marianna Jouppe, Kalispell



In the Teen Program, the following participants won the grand prizes. Hooray! Good work and thanks for joining Summer Reading Program!

iPod Touch (2)
Casey Shea, Columbia Falls
Ashley Jones, Kalispell

Nook eReader
Lauren Christensen, Bigfork

Summer Reading Program Round Up!

This week is our final week of summer reading program events. Kids and teens can still log hours and pick up prizes until the end of the day Saturday. What a great summer! Scroll down to see pictures from our adventures; highlights included reading stories from a Nook ereader, making sand paintings and yarn paintings, designing t-shirts in the teen program, enjoying our wonderful Park Side volunteers, and eating a celebratory snack of foods from around the world.

Special thanks to Park Side Federal Credit Union and the Friends of Flathead County Library for generously funding our program. We also received support from Kalispell Parks and Rec and Norm's News. Thank you so much!

Best Picture Books of 2011 . . . so far

We recently stumbled across this very lovely list of best picture books of 2011 . . . so far. As the new Youth Services Librarian and the staff person newly in charge of picture book ordering, I am ever so VERY excited about picture books. And I am happy to tell you that FCLS has every single one of these fabulous books on order, on the shelf, or checked out and in some lucky child's hands. Visit our website and click on Library Catalog to place a hold.

Stay tuned this week for a Summer Reading Program photo round up!

Kalispell Library is "Bewitching"

Take a virtual tour of the Kalispell Library via "The Librarian Is In" blog. Justine Shaffner highlights public libraries worldwide, and she recently showcased our library.

In addition to raving about the historic building and interior features, she discusses the library branches, the many items available for checkout, programs for children and teens, and the Montana Shared Catalog.

Statistics can tell a story or two.

It's been a long time since I've taken a look at our web site statistics but found a couple of interesting trends popping up since my last peek. Williston, N.D. has cracked the top 10 list of cities visiting FCLS. I was a traveling road construction worker in a former life and spent some pretty boring evenings far from home. It makes me smile to think that those workers, who are driving across the state, are picking up some books to read or movies to watch while they are away from their families. Perhaps, a good audio book makes the long commute a little easier for them.

The other interesting trend is the amount of mobile devices that are accessing our web site. It comes as no surprise, as we have logged the most downloaded audio and ebooks throughout the state in the past few months. This data helps spark ideas on how to make a better experience while visiting our site on a mobile device.

In case you're a nerd like me- here is the order of mobile devices that have accessed our site.
- iPad
- Android
- iPhone/iPod
- Blackberry
- Windows

Megan Glidden Recieves Scholarship

Megan Glidden has been awarded a scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in library and information science through the University of North Texas’s distance program. She will begin classes this fall with other students from the Rocky Mountain region. Glidden’s $14,400 scholarship will go toward the cost of tuition at the University of North Texas’s College of Information. She will attend most classes online and will also travel to meet with her cohort twice during the two-year program for in-person orientation and instruction.

After graduation, as part of the scholarship requirements, Glidden will work for at least two years as a professional librarian in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, or South Dakota. She also will continue her membership in the Montana Library Association and attend the annual conference. Glidden currently works at both the Columbia Falls Branch Library and in the Children’s Department at the Main Library in Kalispell. She is enthusiastic about helping our communities with literacy and learning, and is excited to explore the variety of experiences available as a librarian. When asked about specific career goals, Glidden answered, “Someday I would love to manage a branch library, which would allow me to do a little bit of everything.”

Glidden’s scholarship award is the result of an application she made in April 2010 to the SWIM Regional Collaborative Library Education Project, which is designed to increase the number of professional librarians working in the SWIM (South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana) region. At that time, she was selected by the SWIM Advisory Council as an alternate to receive a scholarship and was placed on a waiting list. The SWIM project received additional funding this month, which made it possible for Glidden to receive the scholarship. SWIM is funded through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ Laura Bush 21^st Century Librarian Program.

Grand Prize winners for session 1

We drew our winners for the session 1 Summer Reading Program grand prizes in the Children's Department!

The following readers each won $25 to the Imagination Station.

Layne Potts-Wood of Kalispell
Eric Bott of Columbia Falls
Reid Barrows of Bigfork

Congratulations, and great job to all who have participated so far. Look for more winners during the week of August 22nd, which is when we will also draw our teen winners.

Summer Reading Nonfiction

If you'd like a real page-turner to monopolize your day or evening, check out Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World's Richest Museum. Fascinating!

"In award-winning reporting for the Los Angeles Times, journalists Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino exposed the dramatic story of the Getty's underhanded art dealings led by their former antiquities curator, Marion True. From back alleys to basement bank vaults, True got her hands on beautiful objects, from an ancient gold wreath to the stone goddess in question — where Felch and Frammolino got the name of their new book: Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World's Richest Museum."

"True isn't the only guilty one, of course. The Getty and many other top American museums are part of a long history of illicit art trade. Looted art has been trafficked for as long as art has been in existence, and Frammolino says this is due to the overpowering effects of antiquity," excerpted from NPR.

SRP roundup

We are heading into our 3rd week of Summer Reading Program activities and thought we would share some photos and details about what we are up to lately.

For our kick-off events, we were lucky to have Jack Gladstone perform songs with his daughter Mariah performing American Indian sign language alongside him. The audience loved them!

Last week we journeyed to Africa. The younger children created elephant masks, and the older children made lion masks. We also read stories and sang songs about Africa, and some of us even learned some Swahili.









We also had a great group of teens come and work on journaling projects. They decorated their own journals and then spent an hour writing about their hopes, dreams, selves, and futures.





Stay tuned for more news and pictures as we continue our adventures this summer!

Summer Reading Program is coming!

“One World, Many Stories” is the theme for Flathead County Library System’s 2011 Summer Reading Program for children. Through stories, songs, and a variety of crafts, children will enjoy activities and stories that will take them on an extraordinary global journey. The 2011 Summer Reading Program is a free program that encourages all children from infants to those entering 5th grade to enjoy books all summer long.

Registration begins on June 13 at any Flathead County Library System branch. Those participating in the Summer Reading Program will receive a reading log to record time spent reading or listening to books. The program concludes on August 22.

Library locations will offer a variety of children’s programs all summer; no registration is required to attend the programs. Brochures listing program schedules are available at Flathead County Library System locations. In Kalispell, programs will be held Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 11:00 a.m. Columbia Falls will have programs at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesdays. Programs at Bigfork will be on Wednesdays at 10:00 a.m. Visit the Summer Reading Program website for more details.

“You Are Here” is this year’s theme for the Teen Summer Reading Program. Area teens entering grades 6 through 12 are invited to sign up for the Teen Summer Reading Program. Teens can keep track of their time spent reading and earn prizes; teens participating in the program will be entered for grand prizes that include an iPod Touch and a Nook eReader. Teens can also join fun events all summer long. Teen Summer Reading Program flyers are available at all library locations, or contact your library for a list of upcoming events and times.

Registration for the teen program begins on June 13 and the program concludes on August 22.

This year, the Friends of the Flathead County Library System will again sponsor Readers to the Rescue, an additional component of the Summer Reading Program. Any extra hours read by children and teen participants will go to the Readers to the Rescue fund and will be converted to a donation (up to $2000). This summer, Readers to the Rescue will support Literacy Volunteers of Flathead County, a community non-profit organization that improves people’s lives through reading and writing skills.

Special thanks to Park Side Federal Credit Union for their generous support in sponsoring FCLS’s Summer Reading Program.

Refresh Refresh

"In a small town in rural Oregon, many husbands and fathers who enrolled as Marine Reserves have been shipped off to fight in the Iraq war.  Left behind, three sons, boys on the verge of becoming men themselves, struggle to grow up fast enough to fill their father's shoes." (from book jacket)

Refresh, Refresh: a graphic novel by Danica Novgorodoff, is based on an award-winning short story by Benjamin Percy.  Some called the original story a shortened version of a Tim O'Brien novel; and Novgorodoff's drawings give this retold version an immediacy that juxtaposes the beauty of the Oregon countryside with the brutality of fighting and war.

Expand your reading list with this excellent graphic novel!

TREME: the complete first season

HBO's Treme is an outstanding new series set in New Orleans beginning three months after Hurricane Katrina.  The show interweaves music, food, and several storylines of people struggling to rebuild their lives after the storm. "Treme" refers to one of the earliest neighborhoods, which early in the city's history was the main neighborhood for free people of color.  Treme remains famous for its music and culture. 

An excellent tie-in that is coming soon to the library collection is Spike Lee's documentary, If God is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise.  Lee revisits New Orleans five years after his magesterial When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.  Check out all these DVDs at your Flathead County Library!

check it out! (or put it on hold)

Currently, your Flathead County friends (and you) have 29,030 holds placed on items owned by the library. And you may be surprised to find out which of FCLS titles have the most holds.

By far the number one title is
1. Unbroken: a World War II story of survival, resilience and redemption by Laura Hildebrand with 110 holds
2. Salt starring Angelina Jolie, with 92 holds
3. The Social Network, starring Jesse Eisenberg, with 88 holds
4. Red, starring Bruce Willis, with 79 holds
5. Life, by Keith Richards, with 71 holds
6. Cleopatra: a life, by Stacy Schiff; & Hells Corner, by David Baldacci, each with 64
7. Monk (TV show), starring Tony Shalhoub; & Tick Tock by James Patterson, each with 60
8. The Kings Speech, starring Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush, with 58 holds
9. Toy Story 3, with 56 holds
10. Black Swan, starring Natalie Portman, with 55 holds

Three nonfiction books, two works of fiction, six feature films, one TV show. Interesting.

check it out! books for Black History Month

I just began the Pulitzer Prize winning, The Warmth of Other Suns: the Epic Story of America's Great Migration. This is a perfect book to read during February, Black History month.

Tom Brokaw says: "The Warmth of Other Suns is a sweeping and yet deeply personal tale of America's hidden twentieth-century history--the long and difficult trek of southern blacks to the northern and western cities. This is an epic for all Americans who want to understand the making of our modern nation." Check it out!