Beginning in the month of August, the Chester County Library and Henrietta Hankin Branch will no longer be charging rental fees for certain items in our Multimedia collection.
All of the DVDs in our collection can be checked out for free starting Sunday, August 1st, which means you can watch as many of your favorite movies and shows as you want without spending a cent! As before, movies are available for one-week loans, TV series for two-week loans. And even our most popular new releases, a three-day loan, are totally free! But it’s not just movies — this change applies to many other items in the collection as well.
Our Binge Boxes are mini movie collections, usually between 4 to 6 DVDs, set around a theme (see our list of Binge Boxes here!). These are great for vacations, parties, or cozy nights in, and will be available for free one-week loans.
Audiobooks will also be free to check out! These include all of our books on CD as well as our collection of Playaways — small, portable players that you can listen to with headphones or an AUX cord in your car. These are great for long car trips or workouts and, like all of our audiobooks, are available for three-week loans.
Our collection of Great Courses — full-length, in-depth courses taught by award-winning professors; will be free as well to checkout with your library card! They come in both audio and video formats, and can be taken out for a three-week loan. Browse our Great Courses here!
This huge selection of exciting materials will be available at no cost to you — so if there is any part of the collection you’d like to explore, August is the time to start! For any questions concerning this change, please call the Multimedia department at Chester County Library at 610-344-5667 or the Henrietta Hankin Branch at 610-334-4191.
The Chester County Library has long supported small business owners and entrepreneurs by providing access to top-notch, authoritative information needed to help them succeed. Most of the Chester County Library’s business resources can be accessed from home with a free Library card through the online Business and Career Center.
Sam Bardarik, Business and Career Librarian and SCORE Volunteer, helps her clients find targeted resources for their specific needs. She meets with clients one-on-one to explain the databases, review catalogs and other resources that are important to the clients’ research objectives. “Owners and entrepreneurs are often surprised by the breadth and usefulness of the resources we offer,” says Bardarik.
The Library offers business and technical skill-building opportunities, often in conjunction with community partners like SCORE, to support business planning, social media, marketing, financial stability and more.
The Role of Market Research Business owners want to deeply understand the competitive environment and target customers prior to making costly, significant product or service decisions. Data-based choices are key to the development of business, marketing and operational strategies before the official launch.
Reference Solutions (formerly ReferenceUSA) is the No. 1 resource used to identify demographics and spending habits of key customers, build competitive profiles, inform marketing strategies, and determine ideal neighborhoods and locations to open a new business. “It’s a massive database that can focus down to the street level,” Bardarik explains. Reference Solutions compiles all that information into easy-to-interpret charts, tables, and graphs which can be incorporated into an entrepreneur’s business plan.
Other databases, like Statista and Gale Business Insights: Essentials, provide powerful search capabilities and are easy to use. Users can spend less time hunting for answers to their questions and more time on their market analysis and action plans.
References and Training Other courses cover cybersecurity skills and related programming languages such as Python and Linux.
For nonprofit leaders, the Chester County Library provides visitors with free public access to grant maker directories and grant funders with the Funding Information Network, an international network of libraries, community foundations, and other nonprofit agencies.
The Library orders books, e-books, and audiobooks on all critical small business topics. Print books and audiobooks can be placed on hold for pickup at any Chester County Library location.Print and digital magazines can be borrowed or accessed with The Flipster app. All the best titles are available: Bloomberg Businessweek, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, Inc., and Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Forbes, Kiplinger’s and Money.
Most of the Chester County Library’s business resources can be accessed from home with a free Library card through the online Business and Career Center. Stay in touch with Business Center updates on LinkedIn or by signing up for the Business Bulletin newsletter.
SCORE Chester and Delaware Counties is proud to partner with the Chester County Library system, where many local SCORE business workshops were held in-person prior to COVID and are now hosted virtually. Popular topics such as How to Start and Operate a Small Business, Customers and Competitors: Getting the Inside Data and business planning have been featured year after year.
About SCORE SCORE, the nation’s largest network of volunteer business experts, is dedicated to helping small businesses get off the ground, grow and achieve their goals. Since 1954, SCORE has provided education and mentorship to more than 11 million entrepreneurs nationwide. SCORE Chester and Delaware Counties has been operating since 1985, with 100 dedicated volunteers today who provide confidential mentoring at no charge and offer business seminars, workshops and webinars to benefit the community. SCORE is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and a resource partner of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).
Are you enjoying your summer reading? Get some help filling out your Adult Summer Reading BINGO card! Join us on Tuesday, August 3 at 1 pm as we share lists and information about fairytale and folklore retellings.
The Tokyo 2020 Summer Games are officially here, starting tonight with the Opening Ceremonies and Parade of Nations – taking place just one day shy of the originally scheduled date in 2020. A few sports such as soccer, rowing, archery, and softball have already started competing, and we wish Team USA all of the best!
Children’s books about the Olympics are really helpful when teaching your kids what the games are all about and how important they are when promoting unity and sportsmanship. Here are a few suggestions: G is for Gold Medal: An Olympics Alphabet by Brad Herzog How to Train with a T.Rex and Win 8 Gold Medals by Michael Phelps What Are The Summer Olympics? by Gail Herman Flying High: The Story Of Gymnastics Champion Simone Biles by Michelle Meadows A Picture Book of Jesse Owens by David A. Adler Long-Armed Ludy and the First Women’s Olympics by Jean L. S. Patrick
Have you ever been on vacation and run out of reading material? Sitting on the beach not wanting to go to the bookstore? Cozy in a cabin in the woods?
Well, if you have access to WIFI and the Libby app, you are in luck. There are thousands of eBooks and Audiobooks to choose from on Libby. The best part is they are free with your library card and the titles are automatically returned after two weeks. No fines! New titles are added regularly and recent additions include early readers, juvenile bridge books, young adult and CCIU Reading Olympic titles. For more information about the Libby app, visit the downloads tab on the Chescolibraries website.
We are holding our existing adult book groups as virtual programs. Please see our August titles and dates below. These groups are all being held online via Zoom. We are requiring registration for these online book groups in order to send out the Zoom meeting information. Click on the date below to register. Information on our adult book groups can also be found on our website: http://bit.ly/chescolibs-bookgroups.
The Page Turners Book Group and the Whodunits Book Group will return in September.
Registration is required for all book groups. Registration will close at least 2 hours prior to the scheduled start time of the book group. A Zoom link will be emailed to registrants 2 hours before the book group starts. Make sure to check the email address you registered with to receive the link. You do not need a Zoom account to attend the virtual book group.
These programs support the PA Forward Civic and Social Literacy Initiative.
Due to the easing of COVID restrictions, the Board of Trustees of the Chester County Library System/Chester County Library will now be hosting their monthly board meeting as a hybrid offering. If you have always wanted to attend a meeting but haven’t had the time, this is your opportunity. Please click this link at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, July 20 to join the Chester County Library System Board Meeting virtually; or attend in person at Chester County Library, 450 Exton Square Parkway, PA 19341. The Chester County Library Board Meeting will immediately follow.
If you are a person with a disability and wish to attend this meeting and require an auxiliary aid, service, or other accommodation to observe or participate in the proceedings, please call Chester County Library’s Administration Office at 610-344-5600 to discuss how we may best accommodate your needs.
Since 1985, people in the United States have celebrated Park and Recreation Month in July to promote building strong, vibrant, and resilient communities through the power of parks and recreation, and to recognize the more than 160,000 full-time park and recreation professionals — along with hundreds of thousands of part-time and seasonal workers and volunteers — that maintain our country’s local, state and community parks.
Join us in the great outdoors to celebrate Park and Recreation Month at our StoryWalk® in Exton Park, a ½ mile paved walkway surrounding two playgrounds and a picnic area. The StoryWalk® project consists of 20 reading stations, each featuring a page in a children’s storybook, which promotes health and literacy in young children by encouraging exercise and reading. Their are even some fun interactive activities along the way that you can access with your cellphone along the way. The book currently featured is Ruby’s Birds by Mya Thompson and the StoryWalk® is changed twice a year in the spring and fall.
This summer, you can learn about careers in engineering when The Franklin Institute presents Facebook Live Ask an Engineer! events. Scientists from The Franklin Institute will host several Facebook Live conversations with guest engineers about their work and career paths. This is the perfect follow-up to the 2021 GSK Science in the Summer Be an Engineer! program.
No pre-registration is required. Click the link at the event time to hear from these scientists.
Even if you missed the registration or weren’t selected in the lottery, your family can still participate in the 2021 GSK Science in the Summer program. This summer, the theme is Be an Engineer! All activity guides, materials lists, and videos are available online. Assemble your own materials and have fun being engineers at home!
Once your family has completed the experiments, don’t forget to sign up to join one or more live virtual event, hosted by educators and scientists from The Franklin Institute! These meetings will be live interactions where your children can share the results of their research with other program participants. Remember, you should complete the activity at home prior to attending the Live Virtual Event. Attendees will participate via chat.
All of the “Be an Engineer” information and the links to register for the Live Virtual Events can be found at http://scienceinthesummer.fi.edu/
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