by Steve Cram

I hear it all the time. I didn’t know you had > you name it < at the Library! Here is the second article of what your Library can do for you.

Do you need to log onto the Internet but don’t have a connection at home? No problem. We can help you with that! Sign up for a Library card and you’ll be on-line in minutes.

Many people looking for jobs or filing for benefits have to do so on-line. Many of these same people do not have a fast Internet connection at home. But the Library has fast Internet and it’s free for you to use.

If you need to print something out from a website, you can do so for 10c a copy. This includes IRS forms.

Need to do research or have homework to do? You can use a public PC and get it done. The PCs use Windows 7 and we offer Internet Explorer, Firefox or Google Chrome to browse the web.

We also have MS Office Word and Excel.

We also have OpenOffice if you prefer to use that Office suite.

Need some auto repair info? We offer Chiltons On-line Databases for free. Just check out our webpage at http://nbpubliclibrary.org .

Like to do some on-line genealogy? We have books and references for you and you can search online from our public PCs.

You are invited to bring in eReaders, MP3 players, iPods, digital cameras or whatever to plug into our public PCs. You can download eBooks or music / iTunes, upload your pictures to Facebook or other website, or whatever you need to do.


You can connect all of the above - AND MORE - to the computers at the NB Public Library!

Please Note: We have multiple safeguards on our public PCs. If you device will not log into the PC, we WILL NOT disable any protection to allow it. Sorry, but we need to keep the public PCs safe and virus free.

Also, we do not keep spare cables here. If you forget yours you won’t be able to borrow one.

Play on-line games or are a member of a massively multiplayer online game? You can do that here as well. Just observe the time-limits and be polite to others around you who are also using the public PCs.

There are no speakers plugged into our PCs but we do provide earphones for your use.

Please do not use your cell phone while using a public PC. This can be very distracting to other patrons and one of the Library staff will come over and “shush” you if you do.

So come in and get connected. eBay, Craigslist, Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, all the news agencies, YouTube, iTunes, Yahoo, you name it. You can access them all here at the Library with your Library Card.

Stephen Cram

North Baltimore Public Library