Pets at the library

Tortoises & Chinchillas in the library! Kimberly Weggeland of Hoffers Tropic Life in Milwaukee has been bringing exotic pets to the Tuesday morning storytimes. On November 11th the kids got to pet the softest fur in the world--that of Chili the Chinchilla. Chili showed us how much chinchillas love to take dust baths.

On November 25th, Kimberly brought two tortoises to storytime--one tiny baby, and the other a much larger five-year-old. The storytime kids counted the bumps on the tortoises backs (always 13!) and held the baby tortoise (you hold it like a cheeseburger!) and touched the lumpy scaly skin of the larger tortoise.

Who knows what may come next? Come to storytime and find out: Tuesdays at 10 and 11 a.m. This year's last daytime storytime will be on December 16. Evening storytimes are Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m., until the 17th. Sadly, there are no pets at the evening storytimes--but we have plenty of fun without them.

Go to our flickr account to see lots of photos of our special guests.

When Librarians Go Bad

I must admit it; I have defected to the camp of e-books. I recently purchased an Amazon Kindle. This e-book reader allows me to instantaneously download any one of about 170,000 books, which I then can read on the non-backlit totally page-like screen. I bought it so I don't have to lug around so many textbooks, because I'm taking classes right now, and because I can send any article or assignment to my Kindle and not have to murder trees to print stuff out. But I confess, I never thought I'd like the thing. I'm a big fan of the dead tree--in the book that is. While I love audiobooks, there's really nothing like the smell of paper and ink, and the feel of the paper under your hands.

But then I got the Kindle, and suddenly I don't mind the lack of paper and ink smells at all--because the thing is so lightweight, and convenient, and I can set the text to the largest font size and read in bed without wearing my glasses (which I haven't been able to do since I was 8!)

Suddenly, I'm a convert. But, hey, what about libraries? Why can't we circulate Kindle editions just like other items? Shouldn't we be able to let any Kindle owners with Horicon cards check out these cool e-books? That's up to Amazon, and so far, they're not up for it. And I feel like a lousy librarian--suddenly I'm buying books instead of checking them out! Bad librarian, bad! (Now, will the NetLibrary books work on the Kindle, hmmm? I know I can download free ManyBooks or Project Gutenberg classics...)

But what do you think? Are e-book readers like the Kindle the wave of the future? Will you miss the smell of paper and ink? Or will you be thrilled to leave the trees intact and read without your glasses on? --Shannon B.