The new North Huntsville Library is now open!

The City of Huntsville debuted its latest public amenity on Sparkman Drive to benefit residents living in North Huntsville.  

Mayor Tommy Battle and District 1 Council Member Devyn Keith hosted a ribbon-cutting on April 7 to open the Dr. Robert Shurney Legacy Center, an eleven-acre campus featuring the new North Huntsville Library and recreation facilities. The $11 million project was funded by the City of Huntsville and donations from private and government partners.  

“We are so glad to be investing in such a worthy project for our community,” said Mayor Tommy Battle. “Transforming this site and creating live, learn and play facilities are among the best ways we enhance quality of life.” 

With the new year, the American Library Association (ALA) has released the 2021 Youth Media Awards which recognizes youth and young adult books for outstanding achievement based on certain criteria, below I've listed the awards winners and when available linked the titles we have currently in the library catalog. For a more in depth look at past and present winners and honorees check out our comprehensive libguide, Award Winning Youth Books.

John Newbery Award

The John Newbery Award is named after an 18th century British bookseller and given annually for "the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children."

Have you watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix yet?

The docudrama explores the rise of social media, particularly the damage that it has done to society. Interviews with former high up employees of Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram shed light on the fact that these programs and tech giants are exploiting their users for financial gain through surveillance capitalism and data mining, and how the design of each of these programs is meant to addict the user. Also included are interviews with psychologists, founders of the Center for Humane Technology, and other experts to show that these tools are doing more harm than good.

Language changes, and has always changed. It’s helpful to think of language as a living thing, that evolves and changes as the need arises. We still speak English, but it’s not like the English of Shakespeare’s time, or English in 1776. New words appear every year in both Merriam-Webster’s and the Oxford English Dictionary, and sometimes the addition of a word can be controversial. People feel very strongly about making a slang word “official,” but I would argue that we should embrace language changes. (I’m not arguing that you need to adopt words into your daily lexicon that you don’t like, just maybe don’t feel anger over a new word.)

2020 added a lot of new words and phrases to our daily conversations. “Social distancing”, “COVID-19”, “community spread”, “herd immunity”, and the abbreviation “WFH (work from home)” were all added to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary in 2020.

By Marti Fuerst, HMCPL Systems Librarian

When we are cooped up inside, many of us look at reorganizing our spaces. We often turn to shows like Tidying Up with Marie Kondo and Organize It, along with the books written by their stars, to help us face the chaos on our shelves and in our drawers.

Marie Kondo’s simple minimalism isn’t for everyone, and the extravagant container-based systems of The Home Edit can easily be out of someone’s financial reach. But watching the ladies of The Home Edit organize the books in an after-school center by color got to me.

Editor Note: The week of November 15 is Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, which is an annual program where people come together across the country to draw attention to the problems of hunger and homelessness. We asked Lineise Arnold, Executive Director of the North Alabama Coalition for the Homeless, Inc. (NACH) to guest write for our blog to talk about homelessness in the Huntsville/Madison County area. NACH has a satellite office at the Downtown Huntsville Library.

POINT-IN-TIME COUNT 2020 – Homeless Numbers Increase Again

Week One of NaNoWriMo

“All write, all write, all write.”

Welcome to NaNoWriMo! What is NaNoWriMo you ask? It’s National Novel Writing Month, the annual challenge to write a novel to in 30 days. You can pick any 50,000 words to put in any order and tell a story.

The Library introduces its new #Libraryonwheels

Library’s outreach services play role in connecting services to communities

The Huntsville-Madison County Public Library (HMCPL) unveiled its new Outreach vehicle, thanks to a funding gift from Madison County Commission Chairman Dale W. Strong. The new van joins the Bookmobile in the Library’s fleet of vehicles that brings Library services to the community.

OverDrive is the platform the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library uses to provide the Digital Media Zone's collection of eBooks and audiobooks for checkout. You typically access these books through dmz.overdrive.com or the Libby or OverDrive apps.

If you use the Libby or Kindle App, please disregard this article.

On October 30, 2020, OverDrive is making necessary security upgrades to protect the privacy of user data. These updates mean certain devices with older operating systems will lose access to the OverDrive app and OverDrive websites. If you see a message about losing access to the digital library after October 30, your device is affected by this change.

Like so many public institutions and services, the Technology Training Center is adapting to all of the changes in the world to keep serving the Huntsville community. These changes have resulted in our department to increase our online presence. During July and August, we started offering online instruction for Excel and Word, our more popular classes. We have since expanded our online catalog to include PowerPoint and advanced Excel classes.