Posted by Anne M on Wednesday, Aug 17, 2016
The Iowa City Public Library’s online catalog and digital collections are now available, which means you can place that hold, check out a digital magazine, and download your eAudiobook.
We thank you for your patience and sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.
This morning, these services were down so we could update the operating system on our library system’s server. Our library system is integral to our day-to-day operations. It’s where we keep track of everything in our collection, if an item is on the shelf or has been borrowed. It is what digital services like OverDrive and Zinio reference to lend eBooks, eAudiobooks, and digital magazines to you. It holds your library card numbers and keeps track of what you currently have checked out and when the books are due back. It allows you to renew your books, place holds, and use the self-checks. The system also keeps track of our orders for purchased books, paid invoices, and what issue of magazine didn’t arrive so we can contact our vendor. When the library system is down, everything stops. Well, almost everything.
Because it is so important, we want to ensure we are running the most recent software on updated equipment.
Again, thank you. And we’re glad it’s over.
About the Author
Anne Mangano has worked for the Iowa City Public Library since 2008, serving as the Collection Services Coordinator since 2013. In this position, she oversees ICPL's collection, including the selection, cataloging, processing, repair, and removal of materials, including the library's digital collections. Anne holds a Bachelor of...
I enjoyed Geraldine Brooks’ “Horse.” It read fast, I suppose like it’s main subject, one of the greatest racehorses in US history, Lexington. I loved the central idea: what parts of our history seem so important at the time they occur, then forgotten and discarded, only to be found with new meaning. This story centers on a discarded painting of a horse and some equine bones in a Smithsonian storage facility. From that idea, people, places, events are vividly captured on the page: this horse is important in so many different ways. The novel recreates the relationship between Jarrett, an enslaved horse trainer and Lexington, as well as those who come into contact with the painting of Jarret. There was something disjointed and uneven about the narrative, especially the interplay between the past and present. While Jarrett’s story in the 1850’s and 1860’s was deeply rich, the other characters seemed like afterthoughts, there only to make the connection from the past to the present. Perhaps that is the point. Brooks is trying to draw attention to and bring to life through fiction an individual that was unnoted and forgotten but central to racing history. I’ll be thinking more about this at length, which is all I ask of a book. -Anne M