eBooks available for download at the library

Recently, a patron of the Delaware County Dis­trict Library shared a won­der­ful story that deserves to be share with all of you. A very lovely woman dropped by my office to thank me for hav­ing eBooks avail­able at the library because she enjoyed down­load­ing them to read on her Nook at no cost. The addi­tion of eBooks to the library’s col­lec­tion has pro­vided patrons with yet another for­mat to access their favorite author or book. Any­one with a Delaware County Library card can down­load eBooks to their eReader (except for Kin­dles, at least for the time being), iPad, iPhone, or com­puter by click­ing on “EBooks” on our website.

And that was the real point of her story. She went on to say that Delaware Library’s eBooks were cir­cu­lat­ing inter­na­tion­ally and were being read on the other side of the world.

Her son was sta­tioned in Afghanistan, she explained, and he is using his Delaware Library card to log on to the library’s web­site and down­load eBooks to read and audio­books to lis­ten to while deployed. Fur­ther, he hap­pily shares his down­loads with his pla­toon, many of whom have started to access eBooks from their home­town libraries all over the United States.

Frankly, this story spoke pro­foundly to my librar­ian soul. Using pub­lic funds to pro­vide books and other items to as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble is the essence of what a pub­lic library does and what librar­i­ans fun­da­men­tally believe in. When I learned that the Delaware Library was help­ing to make our troops’ deploy­ment more bear­able and keep­ing them in touch with their home­towns, I was deeply touched.

Com­put­ers and the Inter­net have cer­tainly opened an entirely new world, and how delight­ful to know that the library is reach­ing patrons halfway around the world in a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion to share the joy and com­fort of read­ing! Music to this librarian’s ears.

Was there really a Peanuts char­ac­ter whose name was a number?

Accord­ing to The Com­plete Peanuts, one of the most bizarre char­ac­ters in the Peanuts uni­verse was “555 95472,” or “5” for short. Intro­duced in Sept. 1963, 5 explained that his father was so upset about peo­ple being seen as “just a num­ber,” he renamed the entire fam­ily as a series of dig­its. The family’s last name is taken from their ZIP Code, though when spo­ken, 5 insists there’s an accent on the 4. The ZIP Code, by the way, is the real one for Sebastopol, Cal­i­for­nia, where Charles Schulz lived at the time.

What is key lime pie?

Key lime pie is an Amer­i­can dessert made of key lime juice, egg yolks, and sweet­ened con­densed milk in a pie crust. The dish is named after the small key limes that are nat­u­ral­ized through­out the Florida Keys. While their thin yel­low rind makes them more per­ish­able, key limes are more tart and aro­matic than the com­mon Per­sian limes seen year round in most U.S. gro­cery stores. Key lime pie was invented in the late 19th cen­tury in Key West, although the cre­ator of key lime pie is unknown. It was believed that William Curry, a ship sal­vager and Key West’s first mil­lion­aire had a cook named Aunt Sally who cre­ated the pie. How­ever, some believed that Sally changed the pie that local sponge fish­er­men already cre­ated. This infor­ma­tion accom­pa­nied a recipe for key lime pie in Clas­sic South­ern Desserts.

Where does the expres­sion “sour grapes” come from?

The phrase “sour grapes” is an expres­sion orig­i­nat­ing from “The Fox and the Grapes,” one of Aesop’s Fables, as noted in Brewer’s Dic­tio­nary of Phrase and Fable. It refers to pre­tend­ing not to care for some­thing one does not or can­not have.

If you have a ques­tion that you would like to see answered in this col­umn, mail it to Mary Jane San­tos, Delaware County Dis­trict Library, 84 E. Win­ter St., Delaware, OH 43015, or call us at 740–362-3861. You can also email your ques­tions directly to Mary Jane at mjsantos@delawarelibrary.org. No mat­ter how you con­tact us, we’re always glad you asked!

Posted by Andrew Tobias on Jul 22 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.