The Board and the branch librarians agreed to revisit the schedule of hours for the branches periodically. After reviewing input from patrons and evaluating usage, the branch librarians recommended reopening one evening hour per branch, and the Board agreed. Starting February 1st, the Hallstead-Great Bend Library will stay open until 6pm on Tuesdays, and the Forest City and Susquehanna libraries will stay open until 6pm on Thursdays.

Our circulation system is shared with other Pennsylvania libraries, housed at HSLC in Philadelphia. They had a catastrophic drive failure Monday morning (1/4/10). The system came back up Thursday, but it had be to restored from a backup dated 12/30/09. Most transactions from Thursday 12/31 (9am-1pm, all locations), Saturday 1/2 (9am-4pm, Montrose), and Monday 1/4 (9am-10:30am, all locations), as well as any online renewals and holds, were lost. No personal information of any kind has been leaked (that's not even possible with this system), and we are in the process of cleaning up the mess. Please let us know if anything is amiss with your record--thank you for your patience! If you placed anything in our collection on hold between 12/31/09 and 1/4/10, please call us or go online to re-request the item. Interlibrary Loan and "wish list" items are not affected.

By cutting less-used databases, despite the budget cuts we have been able to restore access to two extremely popular family history resources: HeritageQuest and Ancestry Library Edition. These had been funded by the Northeast Library District but had been canceled. We have now purchased a year's subscription for Susquehanna County. HeritageQuest can be accessed from anywhere with your library card. Ancestry Library Edition, which the district had purchased only for the main location, is now available at all four libraries (Forest City, Hallstead-Great Bend, Montrose, and Susquehanna). You must be on a library computer or on the library's wireless network to access Ancestry, but the wealth of resources is well worth the trip! The HeritageQuest link is on the left, under Resources, and the Ancestry link is also on the left, further down, under At A Library.

One of the best databases available through POWER Library, the Oxford Reference suite, was canceled as of 12/31/09. They have offered us a special deal to provide access for Susquehanna County Library patrons through the end of September, at which point the state may be able to re-add it. This is a great one-stop source for all kinds of general reference. The link is on the left, under Resources.