Curbside pickup available starting June 9

The library will begin offering curbside pickup of materials on Tuesday, June 9th. Contact-free pickup will take place between the library lobby doors. Pickup will be available from 10:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. These are temporary hours for the library to provide contact-free pickup, not permanent operating hours.

The safety of staff and users is of the utmost importance. During the first phase of the library’s reopening, we will ONLY be offering contact-free pickup of materials; users will not enter the library.
 
Additional services, such as computer use appointments, will be made available as the library moves forward in its reopening plan.
 
To ensure social distancing, pickup will be available by appointment only.
 
If you had materials on hold when the library closed, those materials may still be available for you to pick up. Staff will be calling all users with items on hold.
 

To request an item:

  • Call the library at (716) 761-6378 (leave a message if we’re not available to answer)
  • Email the library at info@minervalibrary.org
  • Send us a message on Facebook

When you place your holds, staff will schedule your pickup appointment. Please only come to pick up your hold during that scheduled time.

Returning items:
 
All items must be returned in the book or DVD drop at the library’s front entrance. Staff cannot take them from you. All due dates have been extended, so please don’t worry about overdue fines on items checked out during the library’s closure. All returns are being quarantined for 72 hours and disinfected before re-circulating.

Digital Magazines are back!

Digital Magazines are now available through OverDrive.  Download and read them now through your Libby app.  Learn how HERE.

We have the following digital magazines available:

  • Backpacker
  • Bloomberg Businessweek
  • Car and Driver
  • Cosmopolitan
  • Country Living
  • ESPN The Magazine
  • Esquire  (Men’s Interest)
  • Food Network Magazine
  • HGTV Magazine
  • Lonely Planet Traveller
  • Macworld
  • Newsweek
  • O, The Oprah Magazine
  • Ok!
  • Outside  (Men’s Interest)
  • Oxygen  (Health – Women)
  • PC World
  • Popular Mechanics
  • Popular Science
  • Reader’s Digest
  • Seventeen
  • Taste of Home
  • The Atlantic
  • Woman’s Day
  • Yoga Journal

Ancestry Library Edition

Discover your unique personal history!

Minerva Free Library has a new resource that uses technology to make tracing family trees easier.  Ancestry Library Edition, a Web-based reference tool distributed by ProQuest, will allow you to start exploring your roots by searching a surname.  Anyone can come into the library to dig into Ancestry Library Edition‘s millions of records — as far back as the 1400s.

Once connected to Ancestry Library Edition, you’ll find a friendly opening screen that asks for the name of the person to be searched.  Key in the name, click on “Search” and Ancestry Library Edition scans its vast selection of U.S. federal and state census data, birth, marriage, and death records, military records, Social Security death records, and immigration lists.  It also includes an extensive collection of information from the U.K., including images, census records, and civil registrations.  Additionally, probate records dating back to the 1500s are included from England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.  The information you find are pieces of a puzzle that you’ll assemble.  These records have “clues” to the past — places where ancestors lived, names of relatives, birth or death dates, etc. — that lead to more information.  Names can be added to form the “tree” or searched to find more clues.

Access Ancestry Library Edition in the library only HERE.