Ever get frustrated trying to search for books from the library's home page? The library's web site team has recently made some changes that we hope will make things a little easier. For starters, you can now search the catalog directly from the home page, www.nashualibrary.org. Look down at the bottom of the page, underneath the list of Upcoming Events @ Your Library, and you'll see a search box for the catalog. This allows you to do a general keyword search right from the main page. For a more advanced search, or to browse by title, author, or subject, you can still click the button labeled "Books & More" and then go to the Search tab.

The search box at the bottom of the page originally allowed users to search the library's web site in general (not the catalog) or search the internet using Google. You can still do that. Just go to the "Search" dropdown menu in the library banner, and select "Library web site" to search the site or click "World Wide Web (via Google)" if you want to search the internet.

There's also a new addition to the Search dropdown menu: a link to the statewide library catalog, "NHU-PAC." NHU-PAC is a collective catalog showing the holdings of most public and academic libraries in New Hampshire. If NPL doesn't own a book that you need, you can search NHU-PAC to find out whether other New Hampshire libraries have it. If the book is at least six months old, we can borrow it for you from another library. See Jenn's blog entry on interlibrary loan for more details.

Finally, the web team has added a list of popular databases to the Databases dropdown menu in the library banner. This provides more direct access to some of the most commonly used databases that the library subscribes to. Under "Most Popular," you'll find the EBSCO magazine collection, Newsbank newspapers, Obituaries, Novelist, and other databases. For access to the complete database collection, you can still use the "iBrowse Databases" button on the home page.

We hope that you'll find these changes helpful. If you have any questions or suggestions for us, feel free to contact the Reference Desk at (603) 589-4611.