Job Hunting Resources @ the Library

Are you in the market for a new job? Are you thinking about updating your resume or looking to improve your interviewing skills?

The Ridgefield Library has many career resources to help you. JobNow is an online resource that offers a variety of templates to create a resume, plus a lab to submit your resume anonymously for feedback from industry professionals. JobNow also includes interview practice with a live coach, interview tips, and career assessments. Lynda.com is an online learning resource with videos on many job topics including resume writing, cover letters, and job search strategies. Lynda.com helps anyone learn business, software, technology and creativity skills to achieve personal and professional goals.

JobNow and Lynda.com are available on computers in the Library as well as from our website www.ridgefieldlibrary.org. Click on Research & Reference and navigate to the College, Careers & Job Search webpage to get started.

Contributed by Reference Librarian Christie Mitchell

Twenty years of Great reading

This month, the Library’s longest-running book discussion series, the A.M. Book Group, marks its 20^th anniversary. Since its first meeting on January 10, 1996, the group has read and discussed 220 books.  Several hundred individuals have participated over the years, and there are even a few original readers from 1996 still attending regularly!

While the group principally reads works of classic and contemporary literature, its successful experimentation with other genres led to the launch of The Nonfictioneers, the Poetry Discussion Group and the Murder by the Book mystery discussion group. Its readers have tackled Steinbeck, Joyce, Dickens, Proust and Fitzgerald as part of thematic community reading initiatives and have delved into children’s classics. They have read their way through the decades in honor of the Library’s centennial, sampled local authors during the town’s 300^th anniversary and commemorated the Civil War and the International Year of Astronomy.  But the constant theme is an enthusiasm not only for reading but for sharing responses with a group of fellow enthusiasts.

New readers are always welcome, and it is not necessary to register or to come to every session. This winter our selections run from “Pilgrim’s Progress” to Ian McEwan.  Please join us!  Details are available at www.ridgefieldlibrary.org. 

What Did You Read in 2015?

The list makers have done their work, and the Best Books of 2015 have been announced by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time magazine, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, the editors at Amazon, and even the mighty Oprah, among others.  Among the perennial top vote-getters you’ll find here are Anne Tyler, Geraldine Brooks, Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, Jon Meachem, Erik Larsen and David McCullough.  But there are also some sleeper hits that have attracted critical and reader attention, such as Lauren Groff’s novel “Fates and Furies” and the National Book Award-winning meditation “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates.  There are the latest installments to long-running series and surprising debut efforts.

How many have you read?  How do you decide which to put at the top of your “To Be Read” pile? Library staff have compiled the most influential rankings into handy brochures complete with annotations and library shelf locations, one for fiction, one for non-fiction and one for mysteries and thrillers.  You can pick up copies in Adult Services at the Library or find them in printable form on the Reader’s Lists page on our website (look under “Reader’s Resources”).  Here’s to great reading in the New Year!