Chelmsford Winterfest 2012 is this weekend!

Snow or not, hopefully everyone is planning to head out around town for the many Winterfest activities, from Feb 3-5. Check out the Winterfest Website for a Schedule of Events and also an Events Map to see where in town you'd like to be.

Winterfest kicks off Friday night at 7:00 PM with a Community Social at the Library. This is also the kickoff for the Library's One Book Chelmsford program - this year we're not only doing more than one book, we're doing more than one author! Check out our One Book Chelmsford page for more details and event dates.

There will be lots of great food, fun, and people throughout the town for the entire weekend of Winterfest, so be sure to go out and have a wonderful time. You can also brush up on your "history of Winterfest" knowledge on the website - there's a video of some of the original founder Peggy Dunn talking with some of the other current coordinators and Town Manager Paul Cohen.

Be sure to take part to make this year another great success!

The first two electric car charging stations in Chelmsford were installed last week - one in the parking lot of the main library, and one in Vinyl Square.

Both chargers were funding by a grant from the Department of Energy Resources, and Chelmsford was one of 25 Massachusetts towns to earn the grant to install chargers.

The grant also covers the expense of charging electric cars for the first two years - so anyone charging up their electric car and do so for free. You can read about the chargers in the Chelmsford Independent, Chelmsford Patch, and the Lowell Sun.

More information is available on the library website, or by contacting the Town of Chelmsford's Department of Public Facilities.

If you've been in the library this week, you may have noticed a few things have moved around.

In our continued effort to make information at the library - whether in the form of books, movies, or anything else - easy to find, library staff spent last Thursday morning shifting, merging, weeding, and generally reviewing some of our collections. Here's the major highlights of what moved and where, and please ask library staff if you have any questions:

• All non-fiction DVDs moved downstairs, and are now interfiled with our non-fiction books. This way, if you're looking for, say, travel information to England, books and DVDs are now in the same place
• All items having to do with languages - books, DVDs, books on CD, etc - are now shelved together in a new "Language" section upstairs, right next to the music CDs. We're still in the process of labeling all of these items as "Language" both with a sticker on the item and also in the call number in the catalog
• Most of the movies and audiobooks have shifted a few aisles over, to make room for the new Language section, and to fill in where the non-fiction DVDs were
• The Young Adult section also has quite a few changes:
  • New books will no longer be in a separate section - they will be interfiled with the rest of the YA fiction books
  • We're starting a new section for books in a series (like Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, etc) - these eventually will all have a "Series" label both on the book and in the catalog
  • Video games are now on the back wall

If you have any trouble finding anything, or any questions about these moves, please ask any library staff person.

When the Chelmsford Library, as part of the Merrimack Valley Library Consortium (MVLC), got the new Evergreen catalog earlier this year, part of the funding came from a grant awarded to MassLNC. One of the requirements of that grant is to report back on how patrons like the new catalog.

To that end, all MVLC libraries are asking their patrons to complete a short survey to share their experiences. There is also a spot to make suggestions for features you'd like to see added.

Please take a few minutes to fill out the survey - it will be available through the first week of January 2012.

If you need any help or have questions about using the catalog, please contact the Reference Desk. Thanks!

In 2012, instead of choosing just "One Book Chelmsford" or even "One Author," Chelmsford will be reading books by two wonderful authors: the famous literary couple of Pulitzer-prize winning authors Geraldine Brooks and Tony Horwitz.

More information is available on our One Book page, but a couple dates to reserve on you calendar now are:

• Friday evening, February 3, 2012 - "Beat the Winter Blues Party," the annual Winterfest Community Social. You can get copies of March and Confederates in the Attic

• Saturday, May 12, 2012, at 11 a.m - Join us for a visit from our 2 authors at the High School's Performing Arts Center

We'll be posting more program dates and information as it becomes available, so keep checking our One Book page for details!