Please stay informed - Camarillo Library became a City Library on January, 1 2011

Ventura County Library computer labs will re-open Tuesday, 28 December!

Home access to the Ventura County Library website, www.vencolibrary.org has not been affected.

The libraries impacted by this are: Avenue, Fillmore, E.P. Foster, Meiners Oaks, Oak Park, Oak View, Ojai, Piru, Ray D. Prueter, Saticoy, Simi Valley and Soliz-El Rio.

Thank you for your patience!

As was decided at the 13 October 2010 Camarillo City Council meeting, Camarillo Library will be withdrawing from Ventura County Library and transitioning to a Municipal City Library run by a subcontractor, Library Systems & Services LLC (LSSI). The date for LSSI to take over library operations is 1 January 2011.

For patrons with Camarillo as their home library: to keep your Ventura County Library services smooth during this transition, the first step is to change your home location to another Ventura County Library location before 15 December 2010.

Up through 15 December 2010, you may make this change at Camarillo Library or any other Ventura County Library location (excluding the Museum of Ventura County's Research Library). If you are not able to make the change during this time, on 1 January 2011, your account will be assigned to another library in our system.

Please watch this webpage for further developments. We have enjoyed a long relationship with the City and community of Camarillo and want to make this transition as smooth as possible for our patrons!

Our OverDrive database has a new look and now features downloadable ebooks as well as audiobooks!

The downloadable ebooks are compatible with the Sony eReader, Nook and Kobo e-readers [the Kindle is not compatible]. OverDrive ebooks will soon be downloadable to the iPad as well.

Keeping track of all the ebook and eaudiobook compatible file types and devices can be daunting - so OverDrive provides a great Help Page for your convenience. Enjoy the new selections!

Celebrate open access to information and your freedom to read during Banned Books Week, September 25 though October 2.

"Intellectual freedom—the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular—provides the foundation for Banned Books Week." (ALA, 2010)

Find a Frequently Challenged Classic to read and celebrate your freedom!

Photo credit: florian.b on Flickr

Have you seen our new catalog features? We've added several new features to the item information page in our Library Catalog:

1) Shelf browse shows titles that are found on the same virtual shelf in our system-wide eLibrary (see the blue arrow in the picture at left)

2) Tags! Linked, natural language tags now appear below the Copy/Holding information (see the green arrow). These tags are clickable.

3) Similar book titles along with Other editions and translations appear under Item Information in the left column (see the red arrow). These titles are linked within the catalog.

We are still working on the catalog pages - keep an eye out for more. We're interested in what you think!
Let us know!

Have you received exceptional assistance from a librarian? Has your library made a difference in your life? The 'I Love My Librarian' award encourages library users to recognize the accomplishments of exceptional librarians.

You can nominate your librarian for the third year of the Carnegie Corporation of New York/New York Times I Love My Librarian Award!  Nominations for 2010 stay open through September 20.