Blog Entries

We’re all aging, even if we don’t want to acknowledge or think about it. And we’re all living longer in a society that fears aging and often looks on aging as a disease.

 What questions really matter as we age?

 How are we facing the inevitable changes aging brings?

 How can we deal with a healthcare system in which the work of medicine is often incompatible with both care and health?

August passed by and September is on its way out. Unbelievably, school has already been in session for several weeks. Teens are now fully committed to schedules of club meetings, study, and sports events. The life of a teen these days almost never slows down! The library has a place specifically for that, though! The Teen Staff at the library understand that everyone needs downtime to relax and reconnect with their friends outside of school. For that purpose, the Teen Zone has comfy furniture and quirky decor made to make teens feel welcome and breathe easy!

Hometown boy makes good certainly characterizes Allen Eskens’ careers, both literary and legal. A mid-
Missouri native and graduate of Helias High School, Eskens’ novel, "Nothing More Dangerous", is the
library’s 2021 Capital READ. Eskens has written six books, all of which have garnered critical praise and
earned him multiple prestigious awards and nominations. At the library, reference staff field frequent
requests for his books, and the books rarely languish on the shelves.

In 1846, a large party of emigrants left Springfield, IL for a new life in California. The first part of their journey went more or less as planned, with few casualties. The farther they went, however, the more perilous their passage became. The routes at the time took groups of settlers over dangerous mountain passes, across raging rivers, and through the dry and deadly salt flats near the Great Salt Lake. Tales of shortcuts passed from party to party, but were largely theoretical and potentially more dangerous than the established routes.

The year is 1988. Tween newspaper delivery girl Erin is biking through her tiny Ohio town in the pre-dawn light the morning after Halloween, when she’s accosted by three teen boys who are still wearing costumes and causing trouble in the neighborhood. As the boys surround Erin, making violent and even sexual advances, the rest of the newspaper girls arrive. Mac, Tiffany, and KJ are all old hands at delivering newspapers and confronting dumb teenagers, and, armed with hockey sticks and barbed tongues, they’re able to drive the boys off into the night.

Summer is finally here and what an awesome time to be a teen! After a year that pushed all the boundaries of patience and stress, you can finally breathe free and roam a bit! Better yet, you can breathe free inside and outside with groups of friends and in public places. It’s time to meet up with friends once again and make some fun plans. But now that you have all this freedom, what are you going to do with yourself?

The Missouri River Regional Library Summer Reading Program is back from June 1-August 7, 2021! Join us at the library for a variety of programs all summer long, plus earn prizes when you read. Printed reading logs will be available at the library, but participants are encouraged to use READsquared online to track their reading. Signup may be found at http://mrrl.readsquared.com.  

Summer Reading Program Kickoff Night at the Missouri River Regional Library Park on Friday, June 4th, 3-6 pm.

We did it!  The Osage Branch is alive and well in its new location at 22 Library Lane, Linn, MO.  Although we have had to make adjustments, we are currently providing full library services.

One big change from our old location to our new location is that we are now open on Mondays!  Our new hours are Monday-Friday 9 AM – 6 PM and Saturday 9 AM-1PM.

STI Technology Solutions has been a long time event sponsor of the Foundation Mini Golf Fundraiser. They are writing a guest blog here today to share some security tips with you! 

 Be Cautious of Links

• Be suspicious of any links in emails. These are common ways for criminals to get your personal information

 Vary your Passwords

As part of National Library Week, Missouri River Regional Library will honor Erin Hart from KAT Country as the 2021 Library Ambassador of the Year.  Hart is an avid library user, and consistently shares about the work the library is doing, both in the community and on social media. She has volunteered as a celebrity reader, is a frequent Book Box participant, and writes blogs often on her experiences at the library.

Missouri River Regional Library will join with libraries across the nation in celebrating National Library Week April 5-10, 2021.  This is the 63rd year that libraries have celebrated NLW. 

“National Library Week is a chance for us to highlight our impact on the community,” says Claudia Cook, Director. “It is also a great time to celebrate our patrons, and welcome back members of the community who haven’t visited us recently.” 

• All week long:

Missouri River Regional Library has created a virtual meeting room that is available for use in Cole and Osage County. Virtual rooms are available to community groups, non-profits, and businesses, and are hosted on the Zoom platform.  By scheduling your meeting through the Library, community members will have an unlimited amount of time for meetings and up to 300 attendees! 

Are you homeschooling and a bit overwhelmed? 

Are your kids learning from home and you need a little extra help?

Missouri River Regional Library can help you out! The Children’s Department would be happy to assist you with your curriculum needs. The staff can put together a selection of books on a specific topic or on multiple subjects. All you need to do is give us a call or send an email and let us know what subjects you need additional information on and what age your child is. 

More than 100 readers participated in the 2020 Winter Words Adult Reading Club. They read hundreds of books in all fiction genres and nonfiction categories. We asked the participants to name a book they read in 2020 that they’d recommend to other readers. Their recommendations follow: 

Fiction

By now you’ve surely heard about our popular Book Box service. The premise is simple: fill out a form with your literary likes and dislikes, tell us how often you’d like to receive books and how many you’d like at a time. Our staff will then select books we think you’ll like based on the information you’ve given us and put them on our holds shelf for you to come and pick up. But what if you’re not sure whether a Book Box subscription is right for you? What if you’ve been getting a Book Box, but it’s not working quite as well as you’d hoped?