Redmond Library

Carnegie Libraries on a Shoestring: A DIY Nano-Library Guide

2012-05-25T10:54:00.001-07:00

What happens when you cross a birdhouse with a lending library? You get a nano-library! The Little Free Library project is a national program whose goal is to create thousands of nano-libraries to promote literacy and community involvement. Today, there are over 700 nano-libraries in 45 states and 20 foreign countries, including Ghana, England, and Germany. Click here for a map showing

Big Data for a Busy Library

2012-05-15T20:29:00.001-07:00

"Big Data” (i.e. very large data sets) is a hot topic lately in information technology. With millions of items checked in and out each year across dozens of branches, your local library certainly has more than enough data to go around! Enter collectionHQ. Last year, the King County Library System joined nearly 5,000 other libraries with its implementation of this software to assist each

Redmond Community Indicators 2012

2012-05-12T10:24:00.001-07:00

Redmond Community Indicators is a tool for assessing progress toward achieving the eight broad community goals that underpin Redmond's Comprehensive Plan. The 2012 update was recently published, please see a selection of the highlights below. GOAL: CONSERVE (No Overall Trend) Resource Consumption. The amount of waste per single-family customer per week declined

Orientation to Ancestry: A Class for Beginning Genealogists

2012-04-15T15:12:00.001-07:00

The Redmond Library hosts a variety of programs across ages and interests, and classes on genealogy are always popular! On Thursday, April 26th at 7 p.m. join Bob Barnes from Eastside Genealogy Society to learn how to navigate ancestry.com like a pro. With 7 billion genealogical records from across the globe and millions of family trees, ancestry.com is the world’s largest online family

Join the Library Board!

2012-04-06T20:29:00.001-07:00

The Library Board of Trustees consists of five volunteers from the City of Redmond. Our terms are five years and they are offset each year, so every year, by design, one position expires. We are allowed to serve two terms, so we don’t always have a vacancy every year, but this year we do. (You’ll see my thank you post to our outgoing board member shortly, he started this blog back in 2008….)

Dudley Carter: A Life in Pictures

2012-03-15T16:51:00.001-07:00

Dudley Carter, who lived and worked here for the second half of his life, is Redmond’s most-renowned artist. Dudley Carter died in 1992, just before he turned 101. As part of the Redmond Centennial, an exhibit of photos showing Carter and his work is on display in the lobby of the Redmond Library. These photos are on loan from the Carter family thanks to the efforts of the Redmond

Bellevue Library Parking Garage: Under Construction

2012-03-14T15:23:00.001-07:00

For those of you that use other Eastside libraries, the downtown Bellevue Library is expanding its parking capacity to 365 vehicles by building a new 3-story parking structure. During the construction, which is now underway, the only parking available will be 51 spots at the adjacent Ashwood Park. For more details about the project, including parking alternatives, click here. The new parking

A Bird’s Eye View of Washington State

2012-03-13T12:04:00.001-07:00

The world looks different from above. There are many mapping Web sites that show aerial views from satellite imagery, most of these views are looking straight down at a location. However, Bing Maps includes bird’s eye views for many locations worldwide. A bird's eye view displays aerial imagery captured from low-flying aircraft. Unlike the top-down aerial view captured by satellite, bird's eye

There’s Gold on Your Bookshelves!

2012-03-12T12:12:00.001-07:00

While doing my spring cleaning, I came across a thin book that I’d forgotten about. I quickly read the book and was fascinated by the first-hand account of the Klondike Gold Rush. The book, The Immigrant in 1887, is the autobiography of Swedish immigrant John W. Nordstrom, the founder of the Nordstrom retail empire. In 1887, Nordstrom, only 16 years of age, left his family’s farm in Sweden and

The Top Ten Best Selling Books of All Time

2012-03-11T11:53:00.001-07:00

Wikipedia’s List of best-selling books contains estimates of popular books sold over the last several centuries. The list is incomplete since accurate sales figures are difficult to find. Books such as Don Quixote, The Three Musketeers, The Adventures of Pinocchio, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and the individual Harry Potter books are the biggest omissions from the list. Also missing from

Blue vs. Gray in the Evergreen State: The Civil War in Washington Territory

2012-03-10T13:50:00.001-08:00

Join historian, Dr. Lorraine McConaghy, for a talk on the history of the Civil War in Washington Territory. The talk is at the Redmond Library on Thursday, March 22nd at 7pm. If “war” just means “battles,” then there really wasn’t a Civil War here. But if the war was about issues as well, then Washington Territory participated fully in the Civil War. From Walla Walla to Bellingham, territorial

How Things Fly: An Interactive Experience from the National Air and Space Museum

2012-03-09T17:12:00.001-08:00

What makes an airplane fly? How does a spacecraft stay in orbit? Why does a balloon float in the air? These and many other questions are answered in the How Things Fly Web site, a companion to the physical exhibition at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. The goal is to explain the basic principles of flight. While this online exhibit is targeted towards children, the simple

Library Night: Books, Stories, and Pizza

2012-03-08T13:50:00.001-08:00

About 5 times during the school year, Rose Hill Elementary has a Library Night at the Redmond Library. The latest Library night was Tuesday, March 6th. This event is an opportunity to expose schoolchildren and their parents to the library and its resources. Best of all, every child gets to take home a book! Typically, there are hundreds of books for children to choose from. The books are

The Show Must Go On: Cavalia Pulls Up Its Tents

2012-03-07T08:31:00.000-08:00

Cavalia ended its 6-week run at Marymoor Park in Redmond last weekend. Several days later, the 110’ tall main tent was all that was left to take down. Here are some fascinating statistics about the main tent: Size of canvas for the tent is 71,000 square feet Seating capacity is 2004 persons Width of the stage is 160’ Stage contains 2,500 tons of sand and dirt Eight other tents

The Rise of 3D in Online Animations

2012-03-06T12:22:00.002-08:00

Animated GIF images and Flash animations are rapidly becoming a relic of the past. Over the last several years, the Web has seen a growing number of visually rich animations using hi-def video formats and sophisticated 3D techniques. There are two main reasons for this: With the proliferation of high bandwidth Internet access, larger streams of richer content can be

A Wall of Words: Full Book Posters from Spineless Classics

2012-03-05T15:25:00.001-08:00

What a great idea! The words of an entire book printed on a single sheet of paper… Spineless Classics now has over 60 titles to choose from, including Beowulf, Peter Pan, and Pride and Prejudice. Each poster contains the complete text of the book, with the words arranged as decorative graphics. Surprisingly, the small-sized text, which uses a 4-point font, is legible. The brainchild of Carl

Preserving Treasures After a Disaster: A Survival Guide for Books, Photos, and other Damaged Materials

2012-03-04T12:34:00.001-08:00

Water and dampness, so common in the Northwest, wreak havoc with many of our prized possessions, especially paper-based items. Fortunately, there are many online references for how to salvage damaged items. The Preserving Treasures After a Disaster resource on the Library of Congress Web site provides an excellent set of guidelines for salvaging items affected by water, contamination, mold, smoke

A Collective Memory: American Treasures of the Library of Congress

2012-03-03T17:31:00.001-08:00

In 1814, Francis Scott Key wrote new words for a well-known drinking song, To Anacreon in Heaven, to celebrate America's recent victory over the British. However, only on March 3, 1931 (following a twenty-year effort during which more than forty bills and joint resolutions were introduced in Congress) was a law finally signed proclaiming The Star Spangled Banner to be the national anthem of the

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

2012-03-02T17:42:00.001-08:00

The most famous children’s book writer of all time, Dr. Seuss, would have been 108 today. Theodor Seuss Geisel, who called himself Dr. Seuss, wrote over 40 children’s books during his life, which have sold more than 200-million copies. Some of his most famous books include The Cat in the Hat, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Green Eggs and Ham, Oh The Places You Will Go!, and Horton Hears a Who!

Our Architecture Legacy: The Stories Old Buildings Tell Us

2012-03-01T23:50:00.001-08:00

Join historic preservation lecturer, Michael Herschensohn, for a talk on how architecture reflects our culture. The talk is at the Redmond Library on Saturday, March 17th at 1pm. Michael Herschensohn has a degree in Preservation Planning and History of American Architecture. For 21 years he has been on the board of Historic Seattle, the city’s only historic preservation organization. This program

Friends of the Redmond Library Annual Meeting

2012-01-29T19:35:00.001-08:00

“WORDS AND MUSIC: How a Singer became a Novelist” Louise Marley Redmond Regional Library February 16 at 7:00 p.m. ”My presentation will focus on the marvelous and energizing phenomenon of a mid-life career change. Since I had been a singer for decades before beginning to publish novels, I learned a lot about how the principles and lessons learned in a first career translate

Orphee et Euridice: A Seattle Opera Preview

2012-01-25T19:14:00.000-08:00

Christoph Willibald Gluck was one of the three greatest opera composers of the 18th Century. His most famous work is his operatic retelling of the Greek myth Orpheus and Euridice. Seattle Opera will be presenting the French version, Orphee et Euridice, which features a tenor in the role of Orpheus rather than a mezzo-soprano as in the Italian version. This splendid operatic masterpiece has not

Redmond Library Open For Business (Partly) :-)

2012-01-18T19:59:00.001-08:00

As if Redmond couldn’t be more beautiful, it’s been blanketed in (several) layers of snow for the past few days. Wednesday was projected to be the worst of the snow, so many King County Libraries were operating on reduced schedules. Given the novelty of this much snow in the neighborhood, and my book on hold waiting for me, I took the opportunity to snowshoe the 3 miles round-trip from my house

Modern Language Association in Seattle

2012-01-06T20:00:00.001-08:00

Oh, the MLA Handbook. How that brings me back to my college days! “Founded in 1883, the Modern Language Association of America provides opportunities for its members to share their scholarly findings and teaching experiences with colleagues and to discuss trends in the academy.”1 Through the weekend, the Modern Language Association is hosting their 127th Annual Convention in Seattle. Some of

2011 Redmond Lights

2011-12-02T21:56:00.001-08:00

If you’re looking for something to do after the library closes at 5 p.m. this Saturday, take a few steps across the parking lot to the City Hall campus and join the crowd for the 13th Annual Redmond Lights. You’ll actually want to arrive closer to 4:45 though, so you don’t miss Santa’s arrival and the tree lighting! Music and activities abound in City Hall, the Senior Center, and the Public