October is Family History Month, which makes it the perfect time to begin researching your family’s heritage using Ancestry.com.
The database, available for in-library use, allows users to search census records, birth, marriage & death records, military records, newspapers, and other documents. There are billions of records available to search from all over the world.
To get started, click Begin Searching, then enter in as much information as you can about your relative.
The results will return a variety of formats, and numerous results that meet the criteria that you entered.
If the results that appear are not what you’re looking for, you can narrow down your search by using the filters along the side. These allow you to specify the document type that you are interested in, the location of the record(s), and the date that the records are from.
Some records have a family tree attached to them which can lead to other family members. This is not available for all records. Ancestry does allow for some documents to be printed, such as family trees and Census records. For others, printing of the original document is not available, instead users can get a print out of the information that was featured on the document.
Looking to learn a new skill, boost your career, or explore a hobby you’ve always been curious about? With your library card, you now have free access to Gale Presents: Udemy—an online learning platform with thousands of video-based courses taught by expert instructors.
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Gale Presents: Udemy offers courses across a wide variety of topics, including:
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Courses are self-paced, so you can learn on your own schedule—anytime, anywhere.
Why Use Gale Presents: Udemy?
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Create a free account and start exploring courses right away.
With Gale Presents: Udemy, your library card is more powerful than ever. Whether you want to grow your career, learn something new, or simply follow your curiosity, this resource makes lifelong learning simple and accessible.
Join us on Wednesday, October 8, 2025 at 11:00 am for a comprehensive refresher on Tutor.com with Maxine Nebro. This will be great for those already familiar with the program, and those who are experiencing it for the first time as we’ll go over every feature available in your program. There have been a number of updates made in the past year, and we are super excited to share them with you! A Q&A will be happening at the end of the refresher, so be sure to bring your questions and stick around until the end.
The training will be recorded and posted to the eLibrary Backstage for those who cannot attend in person.
Join the training by clicking the link below. No registration required.
Have you noticed that the Libby home screen looks a bit different lately? The middle button, which is usually the colorful Libby icon, has turned a mysterious grey color. It’s the menu option to access Libby’s new AI Reader’s Advisory tool, Inspire Me.
I might be a little skeptical about AI functions being smashed into every app and aspect of our digital lives. However, Inspire Me has rolled out to Libby users worldwide this month, and you might get some questions about it. It isn’t completely awful, I promise!
Below, you can see that the Home button has been replaced by that grey-ed out Libby icon. Tapping it takes users to the Inspire Me screen.
Users are first presented with simple options: fiction, nonfiction, and tags. The tags option lets users select from their own self-created tags, which I think is pretty cool.
Note that on this screen, users can scroll past the Inspire Me section to access the usual home menu. I’ve already heard some outcry over the “loss” of the settings and support tools, so it’s good to know the menu is still there. There’s no way to turn off or opt out of Inspire Me mode, but users can scroll past it to get to the regular Manage Cards, Settings, Information, and Help sections.
After the basics, patrons are presented with more granular subjects as well as age groups (kids, teens, and adults). Only one subject can be selected at a time. In this example, users wouldn’t be able to select “aquatic” and “celestial” (though if you have a recommendation, let me know!). I chose “adventurous.”
Behold! Libby presents the AI generated “inspirations,” which are short summaries pulled from Libby’s metadata and passed through an LLM. “Arctic expeditions ending in disaster and loss” (Shackleton/Endurance edit added for dramatic effect)? My favorite!
Once users have picked an inspiration, they can swipe through to choose from five recommended titles. Libby prioritizes titles that are currently available for check out in the catalog.
As we all know, AI and large language models are imperfect and can make mistakes. If the Inspire Me recommendations seem off in any way, users can flag it as inappropriate and explain why. “Inappropriate” here means the suggestion does not match the prompts, e.g. if I got title recommendations about meatball recipes or outer space.
A chart pops up where users can select which suggestion was inappropriate. Submissions are anonymous, so users won’t receive a response from OverDrive, but it helps train hallucinations out of the AI tool.
Personally, I wish there were improvements in their basic search function (can we get an “OR” operator please!) before they jumped on the AI bandwagon, but here we are. Have you used this new function yet? How inspired are you? Have you heard anything from your patrons about it?
