Altamont Library Notes for Thursday, September 16, 2021
As I’m certain you all know, September is National Library Card Sign-up Month. I’m sure that everyone is busy planning their annual barbecues and fireworks displays to commemorate the celebration, so I’ll be brief.
I wish I still had my first library card from the grand old Huntington Public Library down on Long Island. It was a simple yellow cardstock affair that became very flimsy and bedraggled over time.
I remember how carefully and neatly I tried to write my name on it, because getting my very own library card was such a momentous occasion for me. It was my first slice of adulthood: The first thing I owned that wasn’t an undersized, kid-ified version of what my parents used when they used the library. Mine looked and acted just the same as theirs did. It felt powerful, and it was.
I’ve only ever really moved to a new city twice, first to New Paltz, New York for college, and afterwards to Albany. One of the first things I did when I moved to Albany was to get a library card, and I still have and use that one.
It’s 19 years old, almost half as old as I am, and, despite some cracks and some fading, it still works just as well as it ever did. I’ve added new barcode stickers to it over the years, and taped and laminated it to prevent additional deterioration, but the underlying card itself is solid and sound. I never leave home without it, and that will never change.
What has changed in the 35-odd years since I got my first library card is what I’m able to do with it, which is so much more than what I was able to do with my childhood library card, because libraries do so much more now than they ever have before. Where once you could use your card to check out books, LPs, and maybe movies, your library card now opens up an entirely broader world of art, culture, learning, and empowerment.
With an Altamont Free Library card, for example, you can access every word that The New York Times has ever printed online and for free. (Just go to AltamontFreeLibrary.org/Times for all the details.)
You can access a catalog of tens of thousands of ebooks, digital magazines, and digital audiobooks from anywhere in the world, and, again, for free, through the Libby and Hoopla smart device apps.
You can borrow museum passes for free entry to some of the greatest museums that our region has to offer. You can research your family history from anywhere and — one more time — for free through the powerful genealogical databases available through Ancestry.com.
Most recently, thanks to our friends at Guilderland Public Library, we added a new way to watch movies and TV for all ages for free by using your library card using the Kanopy streaming service. (Follow this link for more instructions: https://guilderlandlibrary.org/e-library-landing-page/...)
My old card couldn’t do any of those things, but yours can!
Not to mention, of course, that you can check out books. Not only our books, but the books and movies and museum passes at any of the other libraries in Albany and Rensselaer counties. If we don’t have something here, we can usually get it for you from one of those other libraries. If it isn’t at any of those libraries, we can have them sent to us from farther away.
In the past two weeks, we’ve gotten books for our patrons from libraries in Illinois, Iowa, and New Mexico!
So, if you haven’t used your library card in a while, or lost it, or never had one to begin with, come see us! We’ll be happy to see you, and you’ll definitely be happy to see what you’ve been missing.