Please join us on Monday, November 16, 2009 from 7 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. for “Have Digital Photos, Now What?”

If you have a lot of digital photos and are not sure what to do with them next, Chris Willis from HP Labs’ Media Understanding Laboratory will introduce you to easy ways to edit and share your photos with friends and family. You will learn editing and organizing techniques using Picasa. You will also learn fun ways to manage and share photos using cool sites like Flickr and Snapfish.

The Sunnyvale Library will be closed from Monday, November 9, 2009, through Wednesday, November 11, for renovations related to the installation of a new Automated Materials Handling (AMH) system.

No library materials will be due on these days.  The Library will reopen at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, November 12.

Thank you for your patience as we work to improve our library services!  Learn more about the AMH project here.

Saturday, November 7, 2009                                   

                  2 p.m. – 3 p.m.                                                     

Music from around the world will be played on the Chinese dulcimer,  called Yangqin, by Junko Aono with clarinet accompaniment. 

Yangqin is a traditional instrument that originated in Persia (Iran).  It has over 100 strings, which range over  four octaves.  The strings are struck with thin bamboo rods that have rubber tips on one end.  When struck with the rubber tipped end of the rod, a soft sound is made .  When the strings are struck with the other end of the rod without the rubber tip, a crisper sound is made that is similar to other dulcimers.  Yangqin also can be played by plucking with the end of the rod to create glissandos. 

Junko Aono is a native Japanese artist, who learned Yangqin when she was studying at Waseda University in Japan.  Junko released her first CD, “Fantasy of Silk Road” in 1993.  She has performed in both solo and group concerts.

El Camino Hospital’s library (Mountain View, CA) recently put an interesting article in their October newsletter, Health e-Tips.

For all you bibliophiles, read on:

Can Libraries Help Lift Depression and Alleviate Anxiety?   

Bibliotherapy – or gaining therapeutic benefit from reading – gained popularity after WWII when soldiers found that reading was healing and helpful during their long periods of recuperation. Fast forward to the 21st century, bibliotherapy now encompasses most any way that information can be delivered: via books, through the Internet, and on CDs and DVDs. In the UK, a study was done on book prescribing to see how well the concept of “healthy reading” fit in as an adjunct to regular therapy for treating mild depression and anxiety or as a stand-alone therapy. The doctors and therapists who participated in the study had prescription pads specifically for recommending books and audiovisual materials alongside their prescriptions pads for pharmaceuticals. Doctors here in the U.S. have been known to write out prescriptions for their patients to pick up certain books or workbooks to assist with developing an arsenal of coping strategies to better manage depression and anxiety.

                            Tuesday, November 3, 2009

                                        7 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.         

Learn about the elements of an email campaign and the strategies that companies use to succeed with their email campaigns in this presentation by marketing manager, Van Saravanan.  Walk through the steps to create a mock email campaign and learn about the tools for measuring return on investment.