October 8, 2004

October at the library

By Tim Collins
Special to the Times

“There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir.”

That quotation by William Bliss Carman was located thanks to “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations,” a book available here at your local San Jose Public Library. Carman was quite right, the onset of Halloween especially brings out the wild side of normally sedate folks. Not prepared for Halloween yet? We can help. Come to the library for books about costumes, make-up, or just plain scary, creepy stories.

Story times and Special Programs
Our regular story times take place during October as follows:

- Toddler Time: Thursdays at 11 a.m.

- Fun For Ones Fridays at 10:15 a.m.

- Pre-School Story-time: Fridays at 11 a.m.

Of course, October at the library would not be complete without a few story times of things that go bump in the night. So we offer the following spine-tingling tellers of tales:

Tues., Oct. 12 at 6:30 p.m. Elizabeth Sonnier, the Witch with the Bee, regales us with scary stories to be told in the dark. We’re alerting PG&E … there just might be a power failure! After the story, she will do some face painting. This story time is for children age five and up.

Tues., Oct. 26 at 6:45 p.m. Michael Katz tells Spooky Tales guaranteed to give you the shivering shakes! Join us if you dare! These stories are for children age nine and up.

A Day in the Park, Oct. 16 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

San José Public Library and the Evergreen Friends of the Library group will be present at the festivities at A Day in the Park. The Friends group will have some of the nicest of the donated books on sale there. The Friends support our library in many and various ways.

This annual Day in the Park gathering is a family event, with representatives from various city departments strutting their stuff. It’s being held at Lake Cunningham Park, near Raging Waters, bordered on three sides by Capitol Expressway, Tully and White Roads.

Other Events

- TeensReach Meeting Oct. 20 at 3:30 p.m.
Join us for a discussion of volunteer opportunities at the library.

- Teens Booksale- Saturday, Oct. 30 from 10 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Children’s books and media will be for sale outside the library.

- Courtmobile- Wednesday afternoons, 1:30-4:30 p.m.

The Santa Clara County Courtmobile comes to the Evergreen Library parking lot, providing free legal information on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Medical Information
San Jose Public Library has a terrific database available to all of its cardholders: the Health and Wellness Resource Center. Here you can search for health-related articles, available in full text. Other major divisions of this database include a medical encyclopedia, a drug finder, health assessment tools, a health organization directory, a medical encyclopedia, links to other health sites and recent health-related news.

Just to give a few examples: when I typed in the word “aspirin” in the drug finder feature of this database, it came up with two articles whose subject was aspirin from PDR (Physician’s Desk Reference) publications, plus 103 other articles that in some way relate to “aspirin.”

The article on “influenza” in the medical encyclopedia was six pages long. Need something shorter? My search on the word “halitosis” resulted in an entry gleaned from Mosby’s Medical, Nursing and Allied Health Dictionary, edition 5, 1998, complete with the etymology (Latin halitus, breath; Greek osis, condition).

Frequently customers come to the library looking for a medical dictionary. The few print medical dictionaries we own are almost always checked out. But the medical database, as part of San Jose Public Library’s e-branch, is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

To access this database, and any other San Jose Public Library database for that matter, go to our Web site http://www.sjlibrary.org. Click on the words “Articles and Databases” on the left.

When using your home computer, click on the words “SJPL Remote and Branch Databases.” In this column, I’ve focused a bit on the Health and Wellness Center database, but there are many databases here that focus on literature, on news articles, on history, on biographies and many other subjects.

San Jose Public Library (SJPL) has many good sources available, both print and electronic. But outside of SJPL, if you ever need to do some really intensive medical research, a good medical library in the area is the Planetree Health Library in Los Gatos (http://www.planetreesanjose.org).

As always with things medical, our library can provide information; but for an informed, professional opinion, see a doctor, nurse or other medical practitioner.

Reminder – Voter Registration deadline is Oct. 18
Mail-in voter registration forms are available here at the library. The deadline to register for the November election is October 18.

Tim Collins is the adult services librarian at the Evergreen Branch Library, 2635 Aborn Rd., between White Road and Capitol Expressway. Evergreen Library is one of the 17 branches of the San Jose Public Library System. The library’s phone number is (408) 238-4434. Visit San Jose Public Library’s Web site at http://www.sjlibrary.org.