Also for you, Ramsey County Library subscribes to Consumers’ Checkbook online for customer ratings of Twin Cities’ businesses and service providers. Use it from home with your library card. This is a resource all of us condo residents can use. Part II: In Part I, I suggested going beyond Coffman Library to our local Ramsey County Public Library (rclreads.org) for books and other resources not available here. But what to do when we want something not owned by our local public library? Want to use the Saint Paul Public Library in St. Anthony Park? Hennepin County Libraries? You may register your Ramsey County library card with any of seven metro area library systems, and get most of the same library privileges as their residents. Once you have registered, materials from those libraries can be delivered to Roseville Library. Our regional library system, MELSA (Metropolitan Library Service Agency, melsa.org) promotes cooperation between libraries and funds programs and resources for its members. MELSA pays for things like Libby, by Overdrive, for ebooks, e-audiobooks and e-magazines. MELSA funds ALLDATA online for all your car repair needs, and the library edition of ancestry.com for expanded family history research. These databases and more are available via the Ramsey County Library website, although Ancestry and ALLDATA must be used in the library. What else? To move beyond our metro area public libraries via your local library website, go to MNLINK.org, and search for and request materials from most of Minnesota’s public, college, and university libraries. They will be delivered to your home library for pickup. The MNLINK system also provides access to electronic resources that are available to Minnesotans, including electronic journals, images, and e-books. Then there is worldcat.org. “By connecting thousands of libraries’ collections in one place, WorldCat.org makes it easy for you to browse the world’s libraries from one easy search box…. Do a search, click on a result, and you’ll see a list of libraries that have told us they have that resource.” To use WorldCat, you need to contact a librarian at Ramsey County Library by phone or click on the Ask a Librarian link. We have a world of libraries at our fingertips.
The club includes a militant union leader, known in the old days as “Red Ron;” Ibrahim, a dapper Egyptian psychiatrist; Joyce, a nurse whose chattiness masks an innate shrewdness; and Elizabeth, a woman of mysterious background who clearly knows about bodies. This eclectic group combines its talents to aid—and sometimes outsmart—the local police. Ingenious plot twists and red herrings keep the pages turning, but the book is also a sympathetic portrayal of elder life, with its Zumba classes, cataracts, Inspector Morse reruns, and visits from grandkids. The older characters are sometimes underestimated, but not for long. And Coopers Chase is more than just a setting: For Ibrahim, “It was so alive. So full of ridiculous committees and ridiculous politics, so full of arguments, of fun, of gossip. All the new arrivals, each one subtly changing the dynamic. All the farewells too, reminding you that this was a place that could never stay the same. It was a community, and in Ibrahim’s opinion that was how people were designed to live.” Sound familiar? Pick up this book, laugh, sympathize, and enjoy. As Joyce says, “a few glasses of wine and a mystery—very social, but also gory. It is good fun.” |
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April 2024
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