Book Bingo on Tuesday Evenings: 5:00 to 6:00 all during February
Play Book Bingo with your friends on Tuesday evenings during February. Win food and book prizes.
Money Smart Week Programs
Monday, April 23
Cooking from your Cabinet at 4:00 p.m. - Learn how to stock your cabinet with staples to be able to cook creatively and economically. A food demonstration food samples provided.
Shop at Home before Going to the Garden Center at 5:00 p.m. - A focus on container gardening using what you already have, recycling containers and using houseplants and perennials from your garden.
Saturday, April 21
Money Smart Kids "Big Read" at 10:00 a.m. - It's never too early to learn about money: a special hour that will include a story, an age appropriately activity and take home items for the children, ages 3 and up. The "Big Read" is at 10 am for children in all locations for Money Smart Week. We will read Dollar and Sense by Stan and Jan Berenstain.
RAILS LIBRARY SYSTEM PROVIDES INTER-LIBRARY LOAN FOR LOCAL CUSTOMERS:
Towanda District Library is one of 3,700 libraries that belong to the RAILS Library System. RAILS service area covers the northern half of the Illinois. Library systems recently merged to create a new and more sustainable business model that will reduce costs and safeguard services to Illinois libraries during Illinois' unprecedented fiscal crisis. The foresight to merge Illinois' library systems from 10 regional systems to two began nearly 2 years ago. RAILS is the result. Uninterrupted services such as Inter-library Loan for local library customers is also the result. Towanda's Library Director serves on the governing board of RAILS. http://www.railslibraries.info/
Ottilie Womack Remembered
In a tribute to one of the women who served on the library board that built the Towanda District Library and to a teacher who loved libraries and encouraging children to read, this WJBC Forum is a salute to Ottilie Womack. Her love of reading lives on as children come to our library every day! Her vision 22 years ago provided a library building that still serves the youth of our area. We currently have a collection of Ottilie's framed art - depicting children reading - on display.
Towanda District Library Selected for Business Package
Towanda District Library has been chosen to receive almost $4,000 worth of equipment, hardware and software to help businesses and entrepreneurs in our community create new economic growth opportunities. The "Business and Libraries: Working Together" technology package is the result of a $300,000 grant to the State Library from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). Items provided to libraries include a laptop computer with Microsoft Office Suite; projector; screen; DVD player; camcorder with tripod; 2 audio headsets with microphones; DVDs for OSHA required training in both English and Spanish; Business Plan Pro, Sales and Marketing Pro, and Adobe Acrobat software; Acrobat training materials; jump drives; and books on starting and growing business. Participants were selected on the basis of the local unemployment rate, poverty level, proximity to a Small Business Development Center (SBDC), SCORE or other business organization, and statewide geographic distribution.
In the News
News Coverage for Library: This story which mentions Towanda District
Library and local business owners, Linda Garbe and Ryan Bliss, ran on the
front page of the Peoria Journal Star Business Section on March 8th – the
opening day of the Illinois Rural Economic Development Conference.
Get library notices and renew items on
your mobile device! Once you sign up you will automatically get text notices about holds to pick up,
overdue items, and fees. The library does not charge for this service, but
your mobile plan's reguar text-messaging rates apply. Stop at the library
to pick up a brochure that fuly explains the new service with
step-by-step instructions.
Want to refresh your memory about how to
renew your books online or order books from other libraries? Ask a library
staff member to give you a Five-Minute Hands-On Demo. We do it all the
time! And remember, if you forget your PIN, all you have to do is ask the
person at the front desk to look it up for you.
DVD Rentals
This is a great time of year for DVD
releases! The library adds new DVD's to its collection nearly every week.
As always, DVD rental is free at the Towanda Library. All we ask is that
you return the DVD's promptly after one week - so that others may enjoy
them too.
Wii for Fwii at the Library
Tuesday evenings 4:00 to 6:00:
Play Wii games with your friends.
Borrow Books from 200+ Libraries
One of the privileges of using a library
in Illinois is the fact that you may order books online from any of the
surrounding libraries and pick up the books at your own home library. From
the Towanda Library homepage, simply select the RSACat link on the
right-hand side of the page. Find the book you want. Place a HOLD (reserve
the book). Within a week your book will arrive via free delivery. We will
phone you when the book arrives for you. No hassle! No charge!
Economize at the Library
Magazines can be checked out
free-of-charge.
There is no charge for DVD and video rentals.
Summer Reading and other programs are
free.
Books on Tape and MP3 Play-a-Ways
are free.
Wireless access to the internet is free -
on our computers or on your laptop.
The Towanda
District Library has partnered with the Towanda Area Historical Society to
document and display Towanda Area History on the web at towandahistory.org.
A new feature of the Towanda District
Library is a History Corner, with books, displays, and archives
of Towanda area history. Following is a list of history binders contain
information researched, compiled and donated to the library by Nancy J.
Miller of Bloomington:
Census records for 1860,
1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930
Civil War Soldiers from
Money Creek Township
Towanda in the Black Hawk
War - 6/3/1832 - 8/3/1832
History of Elizabeth
'Mattie' Stephenson (1853-1873) of Towanda, Proclaimed a Heroine by Citizens
of Memphis, Tennessee
Miscellaneous Collection of
Newspaper Articles on Towanda, 1850 - 2008
Section 33 and Landowners
in Money Creek Township
History of the William R. Duncan Family and Descendents,
1818 to 2008
Library delivery service
If you
have difficuties getting to the library due to age or health issues,
please call us and we can bring library materials to you. We have two
very dedicated volunteers ready to deliver books and other library
materials to your home monthly. Right now they only have one customer and
they want more! A staff member at the library will select items
based on your requests. Please call the library at 728-2176 and ask for
Karen.
Book Sales
The ‘Friends of the Library’ runs a book sale at
the 4th of Juy flea market. There are also donated used
books for sale at the library year round.
Please donate
your no longer needed books, videos, CDs, DVDs and audio books in
condition appropriate for resale.
Books appropriate for resale include:
Only books published since 1985
Hardcover
fiction books
Up-to-date non-fiction items (ex., travel, medical and
science items less than five years old) or non-fiction items that will
never be out-of-date (ex., how-to’s, biographies, history, etc.)
Paperbacks in good condition (clean, bright
pages, sturdy spines only)
WE DO NOT ACCEPT
textbooks, magazines, Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, “book club edition”
books, encyclopedia sets of any kind, musty books, yellowed books or books
in poor condition because these items can’t be put in our collection nor
do they sell at our book sales and we do not have the resources to pass
them on or recycle them.
On-line Catalogs
RSA Cat:
catalogs of 190 libraries in the RAILS library system, including the
Towanda District Library. You can order books from any of the
libraries in the library system. (Place a 'Hold' on the book and it
will be delivered to the Towanda District Library for you to check out.)
Bloomington:
Bloomington library web site with Bloomington Library catalog (not on
RSAcat)
I-Share:
catalog of the Illinois
State Library and of 76 academic and research libraries in Illinois.
