Browsing By Appointment Coming in April!

Abbot Public Library is pleased to announce the expansion of our services to include an additional way for patrons to select and borrow tangible materials. Based on the results of our Library Services Survey, we will be offering limited browsing, by appointment, one day per week, while continuing to provide our very popular Curbside Pickup Service, five days per week.

Our hours for Curbside Pickup and the Browsing By Appointment Services will be as follows, starting the week of April 8th:

Curbside Pickup Service

Monday: 2:00 pm – 5:30 pm

Tuesday: 2:00 pm – 5:30 pm

Wednesday: 10:00 am – Noon & 2:00 pm – 5:30 pm

Friday: 2:00 pm – 5:30 pm

Saturday: 9:30 am – 12:30 pm & 1:30 pm – 4:30 pm 

Browsing By Appointment Service

Thursday: 10:00 am – 12:30 pm & 2:00 pm – 5:30 pm

Appointments will be ½ hour long with ½ hour between appointments for sanitizing and cleaning. 

Registration for browsing appointments will be open on Thursday, April 1st. The first appointment date will be Thursday, April 8th. Appointments will be a half hour long, and browsers will be required to wear masks (patron-provided) and gloves (library-provided). Browsing will be limited to designated areas where new and recent additions to all categories of the Library’s collections will be gathered.

Appointments will be specific to the department you would like to browse – either Children’s/Teen, or Adult. If you would like to browse multiple areas, you will need to make separate appointments for each space.

To browse the adult sections on the Main Level, please register for an Adult appointment by calling the Main Desk at 781-631-1481, Ext. 201 or 223 or emailing mar@noblenet.org. 

To register for an appointment in the Children’s Room AND/OR the Teen Room on the Lower Level, please call the Children’s Room at 781-631-1481, Ext. 217 or 237, or email the Children’s Department at marchild@noblenet.org or the Teen Department at marteen@noblenet.org. 

Adhering to social distancing space requirements, we are able to accommodate up to four adults on the main level, and an additional four total patrons – children, teen, or adult – on the lower level in the Children’s Room and/or the Teen Room, per half-hour appointment. 

Please watch for further details of our expanded services by following us on Facebook, or by visiting our website or here on our blog.

Thank you for your patience and your continued support, as we navigate through these unprecedented times!

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Check Out Our Lineup of Virtual Programs for October 2020!

In case you missed it on the Abbot Public Library’s website or Facebook page, our October 2020 calendar of virtual events has been revealed! This month, you can look forward to the continuation of many of our regular events, including the monthly Poetry Salon (this month featuring Major Jackson) and Story Time Yoga with Lindsey Kravitz; the weekly Songs with Spencer and Story Time A-Go-Go (see the latest video of each below); and the bi-monthly Music with Dara!

In October, you can also look forward to the return of the Teen Advisory Group, for teens in grades 7-12, which will continue on Discord! Teens will need their own library card to register for this program through our online registration service. If you do not have a library card in your name, email the Teen Librarian at marteen@noblenet.org or call her at 781-631-1481, Ext. 218 to find out how to get one. On the afternoon of Monday, October 19th, you’ll also be able to hear the Teen Librarian give reading suggestions on YouTube for ya books to enjoy this fall!

We’ll also be working with the Swampscott Public Library and JCCNS to bring Medicare 101, presented by Scott Maibor, to Zoom! This free program will help those turning 65 to better understand the Medicare system.

All the programs are free, so please join us! Read more details about them on our website, where you will find the PDF version of the print calendar we will have available in the Curbside Pickup area.

More Features of NoveList To Help You Choose What To Read Next!

Here are more exciting features of NoveList Plus for the avid reader! We first mentioned this useful book selection tool in a blog post back in April. Here are some features you may not know about!

NoveList has a wide variety of Book Lists. There are fiction lists and narrative nonfiction lists, each separated by age groups. You can browse through different genres such as Fantasy, Science Fiction, Mystery, and Historical Fiction. You can also check out forthcoming titles as well as many specific subgenres.

For example, if you are interested in reading cozies, search under Adult > Fiction > Mysteries > Getting Cozy, where you will find such titles as M. C. Beaton’s The Witch’s Tree (which happens to be in Overdrive and hoopla) and Buried in Books by Kate Carlisle (available as an audiobook on hoopla).

There are extensive lists of Award Winners, which are also separated by age and include fiction and nonfiction. The most recent Pulitzer Prize winner, The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, is one of the books displayed under Recent Awards, and it can be checked out on Overdrive.

As we mentioned in the previous NoveList blog post, when you see a book you like and click on the title, a wonderful feature is that you can click on the Series and get a list of the whole series in order, as well as Read-alikes listed on the side.

There are a wide variety of narrative nonfiction book lists, including Biography and Memoir, History, Travel Writing, and Nature and Science. These are also broken down into subcategories.

If you find a title you like, you can visit Overdrive/Libby or hoopla to see if the library has an electronic version of it.

Click here to access NoveList, and feel free to email the Reference Staff at mar@noblenet.org for assistance with using this resource, as well as getting further book recommendations.

ARTfull at Home with the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum

The deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum wants you to get your creative energy flowing! Part of their ARTfull at Home program, they have put together a handy virtual guide of creativity prompts to inspire kids and kids at heart alike to create art with what they have.

Designed to get little ones engaging with their built and natural environments in experimental ways, the guide includes a list of objects from your home or backyard that can be used for art projects, as well as prompts for creating, such as sound sculptures, shadow art, paper planes, and looking for patterns in nature. 

The deCordova has a lot of other great virtual content, including an ARTfull at Home Story Time featuring Andrea Beaty’s Iggy Peck, Architect (you may also know Iggy’s friends Rosie Revere, Engineer and Ada Twist, Scientist, too!). They’ve also got a lot of content for the not-so-littles (i.e., grown ups), like a virtual tour of the sculpture park, that is not to be missed.

For more inspiration to jumpstart your creative projects at home, check out these titles from our digital collections:

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Books for Art Project Inspiration:

Art Lab for Kids and Art Lab for Little Kids by Susan Schwake

Art For Spring (from the Outdoor Art Room Series) by Rita Storey

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Books About Artists:

A Splash of Red: The Life and Art of Horace Pippin by Jen Bryant, ill. by Melissa Sweet

The Noisy Paint Box: The Colors and Sounds of Kandinsky’s Abstract Art by Barb Rosenstock, ill. by Mary GrandPré

Viva FridFrida Kahlo,a by Yuyi Morales

Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat by Javaka Steptoe

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Books About Art & Design in Our World:

The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds (also available on hoopla as an audiobook)

The Art Lesson by Tomie dePaola

Maybe Something Beautiful by F. Isabel Campoy & Theresa Howell, ill. by Rafael López

Iggy Peck, Architect by Andrea Beaty (also available on hoopla as an ebook, audiobook, movie, and Read Along!)

“Find Your Place” on the Abbot App Map

April 19-25 is National Library Week! This year’s theme is “Find Your Place at the Library,” which was chosen before COVID-19 forced us all to close the doors of our physical spaces. But, you can still find your place in the library! Libraries across the country have been dedicated to providing more online resources—ebooks, movies, music, virtual story times, programs, and more. Help us celebrate by diving into our virtual world!

This “app map” shows the ways you can enjoy the Abbot Public Library’s e-collections! You can access all of these by downloading the Libby, RB Digital, and hoopla apps here or in your device’s app store, or by clicking the buttons on the eBooks, Movies, and More! page to read, watch, or listen from your computer!