Wondering what your car is worth? You can find out at Kelly Blue Book online (www.kbb.com). More than a generic estimate based just on car model and year, Kelly Blue Book online allows you to fill in your location and the car's options, mileage, and condition, so you can get a customized estimate of your car's value.

Based on the information you provide, KBB gives three kinds of values:

1. Trade-in: what a dealer might pay when you trade the car in.
2. Private party sale: what you might expect to ask when selling the car privately (to someone other than a dealer).
3. Retail: what a dealer would ask for the car. This tends to be higher than trade-in value because dealers commonly detail and repair cars before offering them for sale.

Prefer something a little more basic? Try the NADA guides. These books are produced by the National Automobile Dealers Association, and they provide a quick lookup for your car based on year, make, and model. They provide trade-in value, MSRP (manufacturer's suggested retail price), loan and retail values. In addition to used cars, NADA guides also cover antique cars, motorcycles, vans, boats, RVs, and more. Stop in at the reference desk for a look at these guides.

The latest issue of the ValueLine Investment Survey arrived today. For those of you who are not familiar with ValueLine, it is one of the largest independent research staffs of investment analysts and statisticians in the world. They collect data and analyze performance of approximately 8,000 stocks, 13,000 mutual funds, 80,000 options and other securities.

Their best known product is The Value Line Investment Survey. The Value Line Investment Survey is a comprehensive source of information and advice on approximately 1,700 stocks, more than 90 industries, the stock market, and the economy.

It has three parts. The Ratings & Reports section contains one-page reports about approximately 1,700 companies and more than 90 industries. The Summary & Index contains an index of all stocks in the publication as well as many up-to-date statistics to keep investors informed about the latest company results. Lastly, the Selection & Opinion section contains Value Line's latest economic and stock market forecasts, one-page write-ups about interesting and attractive stocks, model portfolios, and financial and stock market statistics.

For those who would prefer browsing the electronic editions of these publications, the library has online access to the these publications for one customer at a time. Unfortunately, you have to be at the library to login. To access the online edition here at the library, just speak with a librarian at the reference desk.

Finally, to learn more about ValueLine, visit their website at http://www.valueline.com.

Are you tired of making the same dishes for dinner week after week? We can help! Nashua Public Library has cookbooks covering cuisines from Afghan and African to Yemenite and Yugoslav. The collection includes recipe books such as The whole foods allergy cookbook : two hundred gourmet & homestyle recipes for the food allergic family ; Introducing Macrobiotic Cooking : A Primer And Cookbook; What to eat when you get diabetes : easy and appetizing ways to make healthful changes in your diet and more for people following special diets. You will also find some classics such as The Joy of Cooking, and books by notable chefs Julia Child and Jacques Pepin.

If you can't make it to the library and need a recipe right away, you can always check Epicurious, which has recipes from Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazines, or the Food Network website, which includes recipes from all of your favorite Food Network personalities and television shows. So, if you couldn't keep up with Rachael Ray's 30 minute meal or want to know what Emeril is cooking up, take a look at this site. It also lists the network's programming schedule, so you can be sure to catch your favorite chef.

Have you ever been stumped when a techie mentions something lika a CPU or when you read in the newspaper about the OED? Well, fear no longer. You can find out what any acronym, abbreviation, or initialism stands for by going to the website AcronymFinder.

To find what an acronym means:
Enter the acronym in upper or lower case and press Enter or click the Find button. Acronyms may contain a space or other characters only if that is the way they are actually written e.g. AT&T. Do not put periods after letters in the acronym or search string, e.g NH, not "N.H., unless the acronym actually contains a period e.g. X.500). Also, watch out for plurals. For example, you might want to know what the acronym "pixels" means. Enter the singular pixel, not pixels.

To find an acronym when you know the term but not the acronym (Reverse Lookup):
You can search by words or concepts by using the word in meaning option then typing in a phrase or a list of words. You will see a list of all acronyms containing the phrase or the words you enter. For example, you could find all acronyms containing and thus probably having to do with libraries (enter library) or computers (enter computer). Searching for multiple words or concepts is similar to Google's Boolean search. Type in each word separated by a space (the AND is assumed). If you are looking for an exact phrase, enter the phrase in quotations e.g. Social Security.

HF!

You've seen the movie and can't wait to read the book, or you've read the book and can't wait to see the movie. But where do you find that information? If you love movies and you love to read, this is for you.

There are a number of good websites, several posted by public libraries, which provide information about books into movies, and movies into books. Take a look at some of these and you’ll be ready the next time someone asks “Which did you like better, the movie or the book?”

The first website is posted by the Mid-Continent Public Library headquartered in Independence Missouri. The link provided is to their Reader’s Advisory section where one of their databases is “Based on the Book” It is well organized and easy to search as books and movies are categorized by Title, Release Year and Book Author. The information here is updated regularly and goes back as far as 1980. It provides a good starting point, but plot descriptions are not included.

Another alphabetical listing by movie title called “From Books to Movies” is done by the Arrowhead Library System and Hedberg Public Library in Janesville, Wisconsin. The title of the book is included if it differs from the movie title. This listing does include the author’s name, but not the year of publication or movie release.

The Book Report Network consists of a number of websites. One of these is Bookreporter, which has been on the web since 1996. “Books to Movies” is a link found on the toolbar at the top of the web page. “Books to Movies” provides information on the movie and the book. Here you can get all the information about the movie including the release date, rating and stars. A good plot description is included. The title of the book serves as a link to Amazon.com where information including reviews and availability of books can be found.

The last suggestion is the Internet Movie Database or IMDb. This site contains massive amounts of information on movies. Try searching using the Movie Keywords Analyzer or MoKA for keywords such as "based on the book" or "based on the novel". A search using "based on the book" brings up 20 categories such as "based on the children's book". Each category indicates the number of movies that are included. Each title is a link to extensive information about that movie including user ratings and comments.

Happy reading and viewing! Feel free to leave us a comment with your reviews of these sites.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed when you look for information on the Internet? Search engines such as Google and Yahoo can yield hundreds, thousands, or even millions of results, especially when your query contains common words, phrases or topics. For example, a Google search for Martin Luther King, Jr. returns over 2,700,000 hits! You can't look at all of these web pages, and some sites might not be helpful to you, appropriate for your project, or even reliable. Is there a better way?

To help you find credible and relevant information, NPL has compiled a list of suggested sites. Rather than enter a term into a search engine, take a look at our links page. From the homepage, click on links, and then links by topic. The General Adult Services link includes the Best of the Internet and the Librarian's Index to the Internet. Both are arranged by subject and will lead you to sites recommended by librarians. The list also has links for finding college rankings, bibliography and citation formats, the perfect quotation for any occasion, and other good references.

Remember, you should always evaluate web sites when you do research on the Internet--even if the pages are recommended by librarians.

Did you know that there is really such a thing as the Invisible Web? Is it something that you need rose-colored glasses to see?

The term "Invisible Web", also known as the "Deep Web", refers to the information that search engines and directories do not have direct access to, such as databases. Unlike pages on the "Visible Web" (the Web that you can access from search engines and directories), information in databases is generally inaccessible to software spiders and crawlers. That is because search engines cannot type or think to construct searches or enter passwords to access databases such as EBSCO, Lexix-Nexis and ERIC. In addition, there are sites that may build in technical barriers so that search engines cannot crawl them, sites that search engines reject to eliminate clutter, and sites that are dynamically created and thus do not have a stable address.

The Invisible Web is BIG. BrightPlanet estimates the invisible web as being 500 times bigger than the searchable Web. Google, for example, accesses about 8 billion web pages). The fact that search engines only access a very small portion of the web makes the Invisible Web a very tempting resource. There is much more information out there . And the Invisible Web will only become larger.

There are several ways to search the Invisible Web:
> You can find searchable databases containing invisible web pages in the course of routine searching in most general web subject directories. Examples are Librarians Index, AcademicInfo, Infomine, Direct Search, the Resource Discovery Network from the United Kingdom, and Virtual Library.

> Use Google and other search engines to find searchable databases by searching a subject term followed by the word "database". See the difference between entering "obituaries" and "obituaries database" in Google.

> Various websites are set up to search the Invisible Web. CompletePlanet.com is a directory of "over 70,000+ searchable databases and specialty search engines". "Academic gateways" can help you also. The SJSU Academic Gateway enables you to access the San Jose State University library as well as San Jose public libraries. In addition, there are various governmental (US) databases such as Ask Eric which provide access to educational resources, the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and many more

To Learn More About the Invisible Web
Related Library Books:
The hidden web : finding quality information on the net by Maureen Henninger.

The invisible Web : uncovering information sources search engines can't see by Chris Sherman and Gary Price.

Websites:
Invisible or Deep Web: What it is, Why it exists, How to find it, and Its inherent ambiguity

Medical Resources on the Invisible Web (Scroll down to and select Featured Article: The Invisible Web")

Invisible Web Gateways-Portals to the Deep Web

Those Dark Hiding Places: The Invisible Web Revealed

Related Articles:
Invisible Web Gets Deeper

The Invisible Web

Special: Seek and Ye Shall Find

Flush The Web .com - Worst of the Web Search Engine

Happy searching!

If you got an e-mail making one of these claims, would you think it was true or false?

• "If you forward this e-mail, you could win a trip to Disney World from Bill Gates!"
• "If you forward this e-mail, someone will donate lots of money to the American Cancer Society!"
• "Boycott Starbucks, because they refused to send free coffee to our soldiers in Iraq!"

All three e-mails are compelling, and designed to make you pass the e-mail along to all of your friends. Also, all three are FALSE. How do you tell? When in doubt, check the story on Snopes.com, the Urban Legends Reference Pages.

With e-mail, it's easy to share cute stories, outrageous political news and scary health warnings with your friends. But before you hit the "forward" button on your e-mail, check for the facts on Snopes.com. The staff of Snopes investigate many of the e-mail claims circulating on the internet, and they post the results on their web site.

If you're researching a specific claim, you can use their search engine to locate the report. There's also a browse feature. Each urban legend or e-mail claim is assigned to a category. Categories range from Autos to Weddings, including Legal, Medical, Computers (which includes discussions about virus warnings), Fauxtography (exposes faked photographs), and more.

Sometimes the stories are true, and you can forward the e-mail with confidence. But often, Snopes staff have debunked them, and they give you clear descriptions of how they found out that a tale was false.

So stop inbox clutter, and fight the chain mail--check before forwarding!

The state of New Hampshire has a very handy website. It's loaded with information, all of it free! As the tabs across the top show, the website is divided into four categories: visitors, residents, business and government. Information is frequently referenced in more than one category,so it's hard to miss something important. The toolbar on the left-hand side also links you to important features such as Laws and Rules, Just for Kids, and especially useful at this time of year, ShopNH.

The state website has answers to a number of frequently asked questions. If you want to know who represents your town to the state legislature in Concord and how that person has been voting, take a look at Who's my Legislator?. Select your town by clicking on the map or using the dropdown menu. That will bring up a list of your representatives and your senator. Select a name, and you are connected with the contact information for this person as well as committee memberships, bills sponsored, voting record and personal webpage, if there is one.

Community profiles are also available on the state website. These profiles provide very complete information about each town drawn from a number of sources. Information about town services, demographics, property taxes, employment and wages, housing and largest employers can be found here.

The Visitors tab will connect you to the New Hampshire Events Catalog where you can search for events by date, region or town. The Things to do tab at the top of that page will connect you to attractions, dining, lodging and other must-know information for a wonderful vacation.

Business and tax information are available here as well as forms for New Hampshire taxes. The New Hampshire Almanac is an excellent resource for students and anyone else needing New Hampshire facts. Here you can find all of the state symbols as well as census data and information on the first-in-the-nation primary. This is a must-see website for anyone living in, working in, or visiting New Hampshire!

Once Thanksgiving has come and gone (and sometimes even before), houses are adorned with wreaths and lights; decorated trees line the streets; people circle parking lots to find a spot; and the familiar sound of the Salvation Army bell fills the air. According to Charity Navigator, "50% of all charitable giving by individuals is done between Thanksgiving and Christmas." Unfortunately, scam artists take advantage of this outpouring of kindness. How, then, do you know if an organization is legitimate or reputable? How do you know if your money is well spent? Below are three websites that can help you determine just that.

Charity Navigator has information on over 5,000 charities and is free to use. You can enter the name of a charity in the search bar or browse organizations by category. The site lists the highest and lowest rated charities by cause and has top ten lists covering the best charities you have heard of, charities that stockpile your money, and other topics. You can find these by clicking on the Top Ten Lists tab at the top of the screen. The Hot Topics tab has a holiday giving guide--just what you need this time of year. You can also find studies, articles, and tips for giving on the site.

Give.org is also free and belongs to the BBB (Better Business Bureau) Wise Giving Alliance. According to the website, "The Alliance does not rank charities but rather seeks to assist donors in making informed judgments about charities soliciting their support." Give.org reports on national charities and organizations, so you will have to check your local Better Business Bureau for local, state, and regional charities. To find an organization, click on Charity Reports on the left side of the screen. Choose the first letter of the charity's name, then scroll through the index to find it. You can also find news, charity standards, tips for giving, and instructions for issuing a complaint against an organization.

Unlike the other sites, GuideStar.org charges for some of its services. GuideStar Premium and Select are subscription services, but GuideStar Basic is free. This site includes 1.5 million--yes, million--organizations that are either registered with the IRS or meet the criteria for exempt organizations. Using the basic service, you can verify the legitimacy of a non-profit, find out if your contribution is tax deductible, view recent IRS 990 forms, and read about an organization's mission, programs, and finances. Just enter the organization's name into the search bar. Click on GuideStar for Donors to find tips, a donor bill of rights, and tutorials for using the site.

The New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services announced on November 29 that NH will become the first state to offer a cervical cancer vaccine as part of its Vaccines for Children program [read the press release]. The Vaccines for Children program promotes immunization of children under 19. To learn more about it, visit the NH Department of Health & Human Services' immunization page. Here you can find out what vaccines are required for school-aged children in New Hampshire, and read about the vaccines and the diseases they protect against.

Another good source of information on vaccinations is the Centers for Disease Control's National Immunization Program web site. This site includes vaccination schedules, guides for parents, information on state requirements, fact sheets on vaccines and their safety, Spanish-language materials, and much more.

If you'd like to see what the press is saying about the new cervical cancer vaccine, try searching the Health Source section of the EBSCO database using the search terms "vaccine" and "cervical cancer".

For more information on the vaccine and on all types of cancer, visit the National Cancer Institute's web site. The site provides a wealth of information for both patients and doctors. It covers treatment and screening, discusses causes and prevention, and has a searchable database of clinical trials. Cancer incidence and survival statistics are also available.

Published by the National Institutes of Health and the National Library of Medicine, MedlinePlus is a great web site for researching vaccines, cancer, and many other medical conditions. It includes a medical dictionary and encyclopedia, and serves as a portal to high-quality information sites such as the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute.

Of course, you can also stop by the library to pick up a book or video on the topic! Here are a few books:
• Cancer made me a shallower person : a memoir in comics by Miriam Engelberg.
• After cancer treatment : heal faster, better, stronger / Julie K. Silver.

'Tis the season for lots of things - including politics. If you have caught a news report lately, you may have noticed the increase in references to political candidates and the New Hampshire Primary. One projected date for the New Hampshire Primary has been mentioned as January 22, 2008. The number of individuals creating presidential exploratory committees grows daily. The number of states trying to find a way around New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation status is growing as well.

If you are a newcomer to New Hampshire or if you will be an eligible voter in January 2008, you may find yourself feeling confused by or uninformed about the whole concept of a first-in-the-nation primary. The library has several books which will help to explain the background of the New Hampshire primary. Two of these books were authored by Hugh Gregg, a former Republican governor of New Hampshire, Why New Hampshire published in 2003 and A Tall State Revisited published in 1993. For more background information, try Primary Politics by Charles Brereton, a writer living in New Hampshire since 1970. Although his book The New Hampshire Primary and the American Electoral Process ends with the 1996 election, Niall Palmer provides a most thoughtful and thought-provoking discussion of the new Hampshire primary and its influence on the electoral process. Another discussion of the primary and its background can be found on the website for the state of New Hampshire

If you are looking for current information on the candidates and the political situation, the choices are unlimited. Keep in mind, however, that many of the political websites will display opinions slanted toward one party or candidate and away from the rest. WMUR, Channel 9 news, maintains a political webpage which will contain current and unbiased information. Those candidates, or potential candidates, currently in the U.S. Senate maintain websites which will provide their views and accomplishments. Among the Democrats, that would incude Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama . Among the Republicans, that would include Sam Brownback and John McCain. Other possible candidates have their websites as well. You can find information on John Edwards through his One America Committee. Tom Vilsack can be located through the state of Iowa website. Rudolph Giuliani has a website called Solutions America which features his viewpoints and travels across America. Information about Mitt Romney can be located on the website for the state of Massachusetts. Another website worth a look is RealClearPolitics. RCP features newspaper columns, magazine articles and web writeups on all aspects of American politics.

If you have any other suggestions for good political websites, be sure to let me know and I'll include them in a later update!

Exciting news from NASA.... Recent photos from the Mars Global Surveyor suggest the presence of water on Mars. Articles about the discovery are available in the EBSCO collection of articles, available through the library's web site. You'll find information in the Newspaper and General Magazines collections. Choose "MasterFile Premier" and "Newspaper Source" from the list of databases. On the search page, use keywords "Mars" and "water". Make sure to click the checkbox next to "full text" so that your search results include the full article. Sources such as the Times of London, Astronomy magazine, Scientific American magazine, and USA Today all covered the announcement.

For more on Mars, check out our science collections for books for children...

• Exploring Mars, by D.J. Ward
• Mars, by Mary Kay Carson
• Mars, by Tim Goss

And adults...

• The Rock from Mars, by Kathy Sawyer
• Roving Mars, by Steve Squyres (an account of the Mars Exploration Rover mission)
• NASA's Mars Mission Reports, compiled from the NASA archives and edited by Robert Godwin. Volume 2 includes DVD with images and movies of Mars.
• A Traveler's Guide to Mars, by William K. Hartmann (of the Mars Global Surveyor Mission)
• Smithsonian Book of Mars, by Joseph M. Boyce

You can also browse by category: "Life on Earth", "Exploring the Universe", or "Humans in Space." There are web pages for kids, students, educators, researchers, press, industry, and employees. A multimedia section has photos, video (including a video of the evidence of water on Mars), podcasts, and more. The site also provides links to other space-related web sites, including other countries' space agencies.

Happy exploring!

This past Sunday I read an article from the Nashua Telegraph titled, "Social Sites Find a Fickle Teen Audience." The article discussed how the tides are changing for the infamous social networking site MySpace.com as teens are logging on for fewer and shorter sessions. Meanwhile, its sister site, Facebook is on the rise in popularity.

So while MySpace is soon to be passe, social networking sites are still hot. So here's a safe alternative that I recently read about that I think is worth checking out...famster. This is a free, secure networking site for families that allows you to share a calendar, photos, blogs, instant messaging, scrapbooks, videos, and family trees. It looks like a lot of fun, especially for families that are spread around the country or even the world.

I imagine you've probably read or heard about 'Seinfeld' star Michael Richards' outburst in which he screamed racial epithets at African-American members of his comedy club audience. In doing so, Richards has sparked an often angry discussion on just how far comedians can go to get a laugh. In the aftermath of the incident, Paul Mooney, a prominent African-American comedian, has decided to renounce the slur, vowing never to use it in public again, and said he would campaign to get all blacks to stop using it. (Read more in this story at Recordonline.com.

In thinking about these issues myself, I wondered if the Nashua Public Library had any books on these topics and sure enough we do. The first is
Nigger : The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word written by Harvard Law School Professor Randall Kennedy. According to a review in Booklist, Kennedy "examines the most socially explosive word of insult in the U.S. His approach is comprehensive, both from a historical and a contemporary perspective...Kennedy also explores the contemporary use of this taboo word, notably in rap music and the youth culture."

Back in 2002, Andy Rooney offered a commentary on Kennedy's book which I found in a book recently donated to the library, Years of Minutes: The Best of Rooney from 60 Minutes. In his commentary, titled "The N-Word", Rooney states that the best way for any of us to get rid of a problem is to hold it up to a bright light and look at all sides of it. That's what Kennedy does in this book."

Perhaps Michael Richards' recent outburst and the aftermath is forcing society to do this once again. What do you think? Please leave us your comments.

Other recommended library books:
* White guilt : how blacks and whites together destroyed the promise of the civil rights era / Shelby Steele.
* Sundown towns : a hidden dimension of American racism by James W. Loewen.

Other online resources:
* Google News Search for "Michael Richards"
* TMZ.com article

The Kwanzaa cultural holiday begins today, December 26, and runs until January 1. According to the official Kwanzaa web site, "Kwanzaa is an African American and Pan-African holiday which celebrates family, community and culture."

At the official Kwanzaa web site, you can learn about the seven principles of Kwanzaa, its symbols, celebrations, and meditations. You can also read about the founder of Kwanzaa, Dr. Maulana Karenga.

For books about Kwanzaa, try:

• The complete Kwanzaa : celebrating our cultural harvest, by Dorothy Riley. (Adult Nonfiction 394.261 R)
• A Kwanzaa keepsake : celebrating the holiday with new traditions and feasts, by Jessica B. Harris. (Adult Nonfiction 394.261 H)
• Kwanzaa : everything you always wanted to know but didn't know where to ask, by Cedric McClester. (Adult Nonfiction 394.268 M)

The library's Music, Art, & Media Department also has some music CDs to get you into the spirit of the Kwanzaa celebration:

• Kwanzaa music [sound recording] (CD K 98 1)
• Kwanzaa party [sound recording], compiled, sequenced and annotated by Eric V. Copage and Daisann McLane. (CD K 981 1)

Another year has gone by (almost) and it's time to look back with nostalgia or look ahead with relief. This is the time for making lists- we get the "best of" and the "worst of" just about everything. So take a look at some of these websites where you will find lists of things that you liked. Or in some cases, the things that you didn't like.

Amazon.com has posted a list of the Best Books of 2006, fifty books chosen by editors and by customers of Amazon.com. The New York Times book review has also produced a list of best books, the 100 notable books of the year.

Time.com has a variety of "the best of" articles. Here you will find the best 10 books of 2006, the best political cartoons of 2006, the best photos of 2006, the people who mattered in 2006, and in music, the all-time 100 albums. IIf you are looking for more lists of music's best. metacritic may be the website to choose. They have listed the 30 best albums of 2006 as well as the Music Critics year end top 10 lists in a variety of areas. More specific information on music's best can be found through bestmusicpoll.com. The musical preferences of residents of the Boston area regarding local music can be found here.

If movies are more to your liking, IMDB, the Internet Movie Data Base, has a listing of the top 25 movie stars of 2006. This listing is based on searches done by 42 million users of IMDB rather than by box office earnings or critical acclaim.

The Los Angeles Times, sick of all the best of lists, published an article on "the worst of pop culture 2006". It covers everything! Another series of worsts comes from about.com, the worst fashion trends of 2006. If finding out that you may own a fashion loser hurts too much, you can check out the worst Oscar moments in fashion for 2006. Even the stars have their weak moments.

Check these sites out quickly because 2007 is fast approaching. In another few days who is going to remember 2006!

It is that time of year again when many people resolve to improve their lifestyles, their health and countless other aspects of their lives. Many if not most of these good intentions, however, get derailed within a few weeks. There are many websites that can help you not only to make those resolutions but also to attain success in keeping them.

Firstgov (the US Government's Official Web Portal) has published a webpage containing U.S. government resources to help motivate and support your good intentions. It provides information about such popular topics as saving money, losing weight, getting a better job and a better education, reducing stress and volunteering to help others. The University of Maryland Medical Center has published a guide to help you maintain your motivation and avoid common pitfalls for resolutions involving health. To assist your children to make appropriate resolutions, see 20 Healthy New Year's Resolutions for Kids, part of the American Academy of Pediatrics website. Their resolutions are grouped by age category (preschoolers, kids 5- to 12-years-olds and teenagers). In addition, this site links to Tips for a Healthier New Year.

To keep up with those New Year's resolutions, researchers find commitment to be the secret of success. A study conducted at the University of Washington sought to understand the factors that best predict success in keeping New Year's resolutions. The researchers state that to be successful:
• Have a strong initial commitment to make a change.
• Have coping strategies to deal with problems that may arise.
• Keep track of your progress and seek feedback.

The researchers add that ingredients for setting yourself up for failure include:
• Waiting until the last minute to make your resolutions.
• Reacting to the holiday and making your resolutions based on what is on your mind at that time.
• Framing your resolutions as absolutes by saying, "I will never do that again."

The researchers add that should one not achieve success, do not blame oneself. "Instead, look at the barriers that were in your way. See how you can do better the next time and figure out a better plan to succeed. You do get to try again and can make behavior changes throughout the year, not only at New Year's."

Please let us know how you make out with your resolutions. Cheers to 2007!

Area codes and zip codes--you often need them and rarely have them. Although you can't mail anything without a zip code, people often exclude it when they hastily jot down or leave their street address. If you live in a state with overlaying area codes, call another state, or need to call information in another state, you must dial those three extra numbers. Where can you find the zip code for Acmar, Alabama or the area code for Idman, Idaho? Try the following sites.

United States Postal Service
Where better to get a zip code than the United States Postal Service? They deliver the mail, after all. You can type in a residential or business address, and USPS will give you the zip code. Although you can search for zip codes by city, searching by street address is more efficient because many cities have more than one zip code. If you need the name of a city or cities within a certain zip code, you can "find all cities in a zip code." The results will list not only the official name of the cities and towns within the zip code, but also other acceptable and unacceptable names for that area. This is handy if you can't read someone's handwriting or if a friend abbreviated the name of his or her town.

Zip-Codes.com
This site is fun. You can search zip codes, area codes, states, counties, or towns/cities. The information on this site is organized by zip code, so you will notice that the zip code in the results of other searches is a link. Once you click on the link, you will find demographic information, the area code, longitude and latitude, elevation, a local street map, and other facts for that zip code location. You can also search for the distance between two zip codes or the zip codes within a certain radius of the one you enter.

ZipInfo.com
If you Google "zip codes" you will find this site. However, the information in the free zip code lookup is incomplete because it is a sample of the company's zip code database, which is available for purchase. If you find your way to this site and try to look up the zip code for Nashua, you will not find it.

NANPA
NANPA, the North American Numbering Plan Administration, is the organization that assigns area codes. This site offers information about NANPA and the numbering system, as well as a searchable database of area codes in the United States. NANPA allows you to find an area code by clicking on a map, or you can choose "tools" from the dropdown menu on the side of the screen to do an area code search or a city/town search. The area code search gives you information about a particular area code, such as its geographic location, whether it is an overlay code, and its time zone. The city/town search allows you to either enter the name of the city/town to find its area code, or the area code to find the list of cities and towns it covers.

All Area Codes
All Area Codes offers two ways to match locations and area codes in the United States and Canada. By clicking on a state name, you will find its area codes and the cities located within the area codes. The site also offers a numeric listing of area codes. If you have a phone number with an unfamiliar area code, this will tell you in which state the area code is located.

WhitePages.com
In addition to searches for addresses and phone numbers (which include area codes and zip codes), the WhitePages.com site has a search specifically for area codes and zip codes. Click on the "area and zip code" tab to search for an area code or zip code by entering a city and state, or do a reverse search by entering an area code or zip code that you already have. The tab also includes a link to a US area code map and a list of international codes.

They say that talking about the weather is the last resort of people making small talk. But I've always thought it was an interesting subject. Take the weather we've been having this winter--people are wearing shorts in New Hampshire in January! On the other hand, Denver is getting socked with blizzards and avalanches. How do we make sense of it all?

For the weather information purist, the National Weather Service is the source to beat. Their web site, www.weather.gov, is a treasure trove of weather information. (Note: be sure to type .gov, not .com--we'll talk about the .com site shortly.) The National Weather Service site provides weather forecasts, but also gives climate information, tracks fire, flood, and storm risks, gives historical weather information, air quality data, and much more.

Television's Weather Channel also has a web site, www.weather.com. One of their specialties is a focus on how the weather will impact your activities. Here you can find the forecast for upcoming events like NFL playoff games. Planning a wedding? You can track the weather forecast for the big day, see what time the sun will set, get tips for an outdoor wedding, and even see what flowers will be in season. Going out of town? Find out what the interstate travel conditions will be like. There's even a section on keeping your pet comfortable. (Oh, and they also have weather forecasts.)

Think this weather has been strange? Check out "Freaks of the storm : from flying cows to stealing thunder, the world's strangest true weather stories" by Randy Cerveny.

Interested in how the weather affects us all? Two recent titles show that it has a bigger impact than you might think:

• The winds of change : climate, weather, and the destruction of civilizations, by Eugene Linden
• Blame it on the rain : how the weather has changed history, by Laura Lee

• Weather : a visual guide, by Bruce Buckley, Edward J. Hopkins, and Richard Whitaker
• Cambridge guide to the weather, by Ross Reynolds.

Or, stop by the reference area for a look at the Encyclopedia of climate and weather, edited by Stephen H. Schneider.

Let it snow!

Some time around the middle of February, which is only a little over a month away, Red Sox players will begin to appear in Fort Meyers, FL. The reporting date has not yet been set according to Spring Training online, but a lot of folks can't wait! If you are having trouble filling the void in your life left since last October 1, there are a couple of websites which just may interest you.

The Detroit Public Library is home to the Ernie Harwell Collection of Baseball History. This collection was started in the 1920's by Ernie Harwell and donated to the Detroit Public Library in 1965. Ernie Harwell was a sports broadcaster and the voice of the Detroit Tigers for many years. His collection, which he has continued to add to through the years, now includes thousands of items, and is considered second only to the collection at Cooperstown in size and scope. While the collection itself is on display at the Detroit Public Library by appointment only, portions of the collection can be accessed online. A biography of Ernie Harwell is included in the online display. The navigation bars at the bottom of the page will guide you through the collection. On the left-hand side of each section is a brief description of what is available on line in that section. There is also a link to a website in each section, which will provide more information about that item. For instance, on the page that starts the online collection of baseball cards, there is a link to The Baseball Page.

If that isn't enough to keep you involved until Spring Training, there is an online database called SABR which is maintained by the Society for American Baseball Research . Although the site does offer paid memberships, a wealth of information exists which is free to the general public. There are SABR links to research done by members of the Society. Here you will find everything baseball! One link even gives the burial locations of past Hall of Famers and connects you to a picture of the gravesite! There are discussions of international baseball, fantasy baseball, baseball-related books and baseball statistics. One member maintains a Sports Wiki which goes beyond baseball and features other sports as well. None of the sites which I found required that someone be a SABR member to view them, but to add information or participate in a blog, you would probably have to be a member.

This should keep you busy until spring training, but if all else fails, you could always watch the Patriots.

Today we honor the life, work, and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The civil rights leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and Time magazine's 1963 "Man of the Year" worked for justice and equality throughout his short life. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, while standing on a motel balcony in Memphis. Four days after King's death, Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) proposed the establishment of a holiday in honor of King. The King Center, which was founded in 1968 by the late Coretta Scott King, organized a commemoration on January 15 1969, and for several years, various groups and individuals petitioned Congress to declare a holiday in memory of King. In 1973, Illinois became the first state to pass a King Holiday bill. The federal holiday was not signed into law until 1983, and was first observed in 1986. At that time, 17 states had been celebrating the King Holiday, and by 1989, 44 states had declared the holiday. In 1994, the mission of the day was expanded to include community service, interracial cooperation, and youth anti-violence initiatives. In 1999, New Hampshire became the last state to adopt the holiday.*

Ordained as a minister at 19 and educated at Morehouse College, Crozer Theological Seminary, and Boston University, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was influenced by the Social Gospel, which applies biblical teachings to social problems, and Gandhi, who advocated and practiced nonviolence.** While working as Pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, AL, he was elected President of the Montgomery Improvement Association, which organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott. In 1956 he and others were indicted "on the charge of being party to a conspiracy to hinder and prevent the operation of business without 'just or legal cause.'" That was only one of thirty arrests for his efforts on behalf of civil rights.***

King is probably most famous for the often cited "I Have a Dream" speech, which he delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial; however, his work extends far beyond the August 28, 1963, March on Washington. To learn more about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., take a look at The King Center website. You will find a biography and chronology of King's life, as well as links, information about the holiday, and information about the work of the center. Another good site is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. This site is especially helpful to educators, as it includes lesson plans and classroom resources, as well as quotations, a King encyclopedia, information about lectures and programs, a bibliography, and the opportunity to purchase publications. A few of King's speeches are available free on this site.

Here at the library, we have numerous books about Dr. King. The most recent, At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1965-1968, by Taylor Branch, was named one of Amazon.com's Top 50 Editor's Picks of 2006; a top 10 history book by editors and customers at Amazon.com; and one of New York Times’ 100 Notable Books for 2006. The book is the third in a trilogy. The first, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63, received the Pulitzer Prize. We also have Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65. These books combine for over two thousand pages of information about Martin Luther King, Jr. You can find other (and shorter) books, by doing a subject browse for King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968. To read about the Civil Rights Movement in general, you can do a subject browse for Civil Rights Movements -- United States -- History -- 20th Century.

If you are particularly interested in King's speeches, visit the Music, Arts, and Media Department, where you will find The Speeches of Martin Luther King. We also have a documentary titled In Remembrance of Martin, which includes comments from family, friends, classmates, advisors, and public figures, as well as archival footage of King. You can also visit the American Rhetoric website, on which the "I Have a Dream" speech is one of the most requested speeches.

*"The King Holiday: A Chronology," The King Center, http://www.thekingcenter.org/holiday/chronology.pdf.
**Hendrick, George and Willene Hendrick, Why Not Every Man?: African Americans and CIivil Disobedience in the Quest for the Dream (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005), 187-204.
***"Chronology of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.," The King Center, http://www.thekingcenter.org/mlk/chronology.html; "Biographical Outline of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.," The King Center, http://www.thekingcenter.org/mlk/bio.html.

In light of recent events, icestorm '07, I thought it might be a good idea to talk about where to go for information in case of an emergency. I use the term "emergency" broadly. It could be you want to find out about street parking during a snow storm or if school is cancelled. Perhaps you need to report a power outage and/or find temporary shelter from the elements. Maybe you heard there was an outbreak of Meningitis in NH and you aren't sure what to do.

Hopefully some of the agencies and websites below will help you feel more prepared for the next local emergency. If you know of any that would help complete this list, please feel free to leave a comment.

WMUR New Hampshire News 9
Local newstation where you can find school/agency closings, road closures, weather updates, temporary shelters.

Public Serivce of New Hampshire (PSNH)
Report a power outage or read updates on current power related emergencies.

City of Nashua
Find important news announcements from the city, instructions for parking bans and snow removal, public health announcements.

Red Cross of Nashua
Locate temporary housing shelters and other diseaster relief services.

Nashua School District
View Nashua school district closings.

NH Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS)
Find health related issues such as disease outbreaks or food warnings.

Nashua Emergency Assistance Program
Temporary assistance for families needing help with housing, heat, and utilities.

Saint Joseph Hospital
603-882-3000 (main operator)

Southern New Hampshire Medical Center
603-577-2000 (main operator)

Ever wanted to create a catalog of all the books in your home? Well, believe it or not, there is a free online service named LibraryThing that makes it easy to do. Not only can you easily catalog your books, but you can also access your catalog from anywhere—even on your mobile phone. And because everyone catalogs together, LibraryThing also connects people with the same books, comes up with suggestions for what to read next, and so forth. Best of all, LibraryThing is a free service for libraries of up to 200 books, and for $10 a year of $25 for a lifetime, your catalog can have literally thousands of titles.

If you want it, LibraryThing is also an amazing social space, often described as "MySpace for books" or "Facebook for books." You can check out other people's libraries, see who has the most similar library to yours, swap reading suggestions and so forth. LibraryThing also makes book recommendations based on the collective intelligence of the other libraries.

For anyone who is a bibliophile, you've got to try LibraryThing.

Thursday, January 25, is the 46th anniversary of a very interesting event. It changed the way in which information was communicated from the office of the President of the United States to the average citizen. On that date in 1961, newly- inaugurated president, John F. Kennedy held the first presidential news conference to be televised. Tuesday night, President George W. Bush continued in that 46 year tradition with his televised State of the Union address.

In 46 years time, a lot of presidential speeches have been aired on television. Are all of these speeches gone and forgotten? No, of course not! Many of these speeches are now available in a variety of ways. If you don't remember what President Clinton said on a particular subject, or even what the first President Bush had to say, you can find many of their speeches available online. State of the Union messages from Presidents Bush and Clinton, and one address from the first President Bush, can be found in full text on the GPO access government website.

If you are interested in more than just State of the Union messages, presidential public papers are available in print at the Nashua Public Library for Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt through George W. Bush. Many of these volumes are kept in storage and can be obtained by asking at the reference desk. The papers of the current president, George W. Bush, are kept in the upstairs collection. Presidential papers for George Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush can be browsed online. This material comes with a table of contents, various indexes and a collection of photos which make for fun browsing.

To some people, all of this seems dry, dull and boring. A televised presidential speech just messes up television for the night. For others this is a chance to observe what will become history. People who are interested in politics, history or both, will be interested to know that the National Archives are available on line. Be sure to visit the section Things to do on our website which will give you an overview of what is available there. If you missed out on any of President Bush's radio talks, the text of all of them since 2001 is available on line.

Candidates running for the presidency in 2008 need to keep this anniversary in mind. With constant improvements in technology, the words that a politician says now live on in much more than the minds of the people who hear them.

Today is Monday, January 29, 2007. It might seem like any other day--nothing special, no reason to celebrate. But, did you know that today is Freethinker's Day, the annual celebration of Thomas Paine's birth? It is also Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day, the anniversary of Kansas' statehood, and Oprah's birthday. You can find this information and much more in Chase's Calendar of Events, which the library receives each year. According to its cover, the book includes "4,000 notable birthdays, 1,400 historical anniversaries, 650 national and international holidays, 160 religious holidays, and thousands of additional days of note from around the globe." If you like fun facts, trivia, or history, you will enjoy this book.

Because Chase's Calendar of Events is a reference book, it must stay in the library (see Jenn's last entry). You can, however, find date-specific information online and in one of our databases. The Library of Congress website is a fantastic resource which features a “Today in History" link on its homepage. You will find information about an event that occurred the day of your search, possibly a map or photograph, and additional historical information that contextualizes or is related to the event. The site also includes a "yesterday" link and a search the Today in History archive option, just in case you missed a day. The information comes from the library's American Memory project, which features collections about advertising, immigration and American expansion, literature, sports and recreation, and many other topics. It is a great place to find photographs and other primary sources.

The History Channel's website, History.com, has a "This Day in History" link. The left side of the page lists significant events that you can sort by either year or category. The site also features a video clip that pertains to one of the historical events. Clicking on an event will give you additional information. If you are not interested in learning about what happened today, enter the day of your choice in the search field near the top of the page. The dropdown menu next to the date allows you to specify a category.

If you want to find out what happened on a specific date, check out Facts.com, one of NPL's databases. Click on iBrowse Databases on the NPL Homepage, then select either the adult or teen databases. Choose Genealogy & History from the adult menu or History & Geography from the teen menu. Scroll down to Facts.com, which draws its information from the Facts on File World News Digest. The database includes U.S. and world news from 1940 to today. Facts.com allows you to search for a particular topic or search for the news on a particular date (scroll down to the date search). Aside from educational or research purposes, Facts.com is the way to learn what happened on significant dates, such as your birthday.

Wednesday, January 31, 2007 is also known as Inspire your heart with the arts day. I got this information from Chase's Calendar of Events. For more information on Chase's, see Alison's blog from 1/29/07. Apparently, January 31 has been Inspire your heart with the arts day for the last six years! It sounded like a great idea to me especially since February 1st starts American Heart Month and, of course, February 14th is Valentine's Day! Then I started wondering how all of these special days came to be. According to Chase's, most of these special days come from "national organizations who use their observences for public outreach and to plan specific events." Also, "the editoral staff of Chase's includes a special day, week or month based on the authority of the organization observing it, how many years it has been observed, its uniqueness and a variety of other factors."

That was interesting, but it still didn't completely answer my question. How did Chase's find out about these special days? Then, as I was looking through Chase's, I discovered a form on the back page that anyone could copy and fill out. It was a form to be used to submit a new entry to Chase's for the upcoming edition. My search for more information took me to the website for Chase's. There I found a link to submit an entry and much more detailed information for doing this. What I didn't find was a form; that is coming soon. The additional information did reassure me that not just anyone could make up a day and submit it to be commemorated as a special day.

So, who or what organization sponsored Inspire your heart with the arts day? At the end of each entry, Chase's provides information for contacting the person or organization sponsoring each special day. In this case, the sponsor was Reverend Jane Howard Feldman. Contact information for her was provided, as well as her website address. Between Frolic with fairies and the angel art gallery , I found Inspire your heart with the arts.

Check it out. I have to say, "Chase's, this was not quite what I expected!"

Are you a trendsetter? Or do you like to keep up on the latest consumer trends? Well if so, Trendwatching.com is the website for you. Trendwatching.com is "an independent and opinionated consumer trends firm" headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The site draws on the firm's global network of 8,000 spotters in more than 70 countries, to identify and report the newest marketing trends. Each month a free Trend Briefing is made available online, and once a year, an annual trend report in PowerPoint format is made available for sale.

February's free Trend Briefing is about a group of consumers known as TRYSUMERS. According to Trendwatching.com, "TRYSUMERS are transient, experienced consumers who are becoming more daring in how and what they consume, thanks to a myriad of societal and technological changes." January's Trend Briefing on the top 5 consumer trends for 2007 is available with other past briefings in the free Trend database section. This database also contains keyword search capability.

Related Library Books:
* Questions that sell : the powerful process for discovering what your customer really wants / Paul Cherry.
* Getting wiser to teens : more insights into marketing to teenagers / by Peter Zollo.
* Satisfaction : how every great company listens to the voice of the customer / Chris Denove and James D. Power IV.

Many people are interested in family history and genealogy. We receive calls, e-mails, and visits not only from Nashua Public Library cardholders, but also from people across the country whose ancestors were born, lived, or died in Nashua. They use numerous resources, including old issues of The Nashua Telegraph, the directories and histories in the Hunt Room, and genealogy databases such as Ancestry.com to trace their lineage. In some cases, people find ancestors who lived during the colonial period, and they know from which country or countries their family originates. But, what would happen if their ancestors were slaves? Because slaves were considered property, they were often listed in their owners' records by age and gender only. Many did not even have last names. Can the descendants of slaves discover their families' country of origin?

According to the PBS series African American Lives, it is, in fact, possible. This series follows host Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Chair of Harvard’s African and African American Studies Department at Harvard, as he searches for his ancestors and those of 8 other prominent African Americans. Many of the guests had known that they are descended from slaves, but did not know much about their ancestors who lived under the peculiar institution. It was not often discussed in their families, nor was the desire to discover their African roots. Whoopi Goldberg, one of the participants, states, “I don’t think they ever thought that there was any reason to figure out where we had come from.”* Others reported that slavery was an embarrassment to their families or too painful to discuss. This group, which includes Oprah Winfrey, Chris Tucker, and Quincy Jones, among others, was eager, delighted, and moved to learn about their roots, despite knowing that their relatives were subjected to the horrors of slavery.

In some cases, Gates, with the assistance of genealogists and historians, was successful in tracing his guests’ roots; in others, he reached dead ends. Filling in the branches of the family tree prior to the Civil War was especially challenging. The detectives had to be more creative and make some assumptions, often looking for slave owners who shared the last names of the guests’ ancestors. Watching the process unfold was very interesting, as the expertise of historians, genealogists, and geneticists provided information that was seemingly lost. The guests (and this viewer) were amazed to learn that DNA testing could tell them the percentage of African, European, Native American, and Asian blood they had. Gates was surprised that his lineage is actually 50% African and 50% European. Yet another DNA test determined that Chris Tucker descended from Angola, and Oprah's ancestors hailed from the country that is now Liberia.

This fascinating program grabbed my interest as I flipped through the channel listings last week, and you can watch it too. The DVD is available in the Music, Arts, and Media Department. For more information about the series, guests, or science used, you can visit the series' website.

If you are inspired to trace your own African American ancestry, we have some books that pertain specifically to African American genealogy, such as African American Genealogical Sourcebook, Afro-American Genealogy Sourcebook, Slave Genealogy: A Research Guide with Case Studies, and Black Family Research: Records of Post-Civil War Federal Agencies at the National Archives.

*Goldberg, Whoopi, quoted in African American Lives http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aalives/index.html (accessed February 10, 2007).

Valentine's Day is a day dedicated to romance. A day when relationships can be made or broken just by the choice, or lack, of a card or a gift. What's the history behind this day? I turned to two books for some answers. One is a book called Celebrations, an older book which discusses a variety of celebrations. Celebrations gives three possible stories behind Valentine's Day. It could be "a Christianized version of the Feast of Lupercalia which was celebrated during the third century in honor of the god Lupercus who protected Roman shepherds from wolves". It could also be in honor of "Valentine, the young Christian priest who was imprisoned for secretly marrying lovers after marriage was outlawed during the reign of emperor Claudius". Another story tells of Valentine being beheaded on February 14 for curing his jailer's daughter of blindness or perhaps beheaded for sending the jailer's daughter love notes signed "from your Valentine". None of these stories would seem to inspire a day dedicated to lovers.

The second book is a reference book titled The folklore of world holidays. This book supports the story of a "martyred priest named Valentine (or possibly two priests, both named Valentine) who died between A.D.270 and A.D. 273". It also discusses some interesting past Valentine traditions. Did you know that : "birds chose their mates on February 14; in Great Britain, girls ate a hard-boiled egg with the yolk replaced with salt to dream of their future husband; in Europe, American servicemen spread the custom of sending valentines on February 14 ; and, in Italy it was popular to announce engagements on Valentine's Day.

Flowers, cards and candy are recognized as Valentine's Day traditions. About.com has some statistics showing what we spend our money on for Valentine's Day. One of those statistics concerns candy. Thirty-six million heart shaped boxes of candy were sold last Valentine's Day. That must have spread a lot of happiness! Heart-shaped boxes of candy may soon be past history! If you like M&Ms, you can now special order them with your choice of color, message and in 8 different flavors. If you are a fan of conversation hearts, those small candy hearts with the sayings on them, Necco candy has a website which shows the new sayings for 2007 as well as being loaded with candy heart trivia!

So, whether you like candy, flowers, hearts or Red Sox tickets, hope someone says "I love you" to you today!

As you may have seen advertised, today is the day to buy a new car. Hearing a commercial with a modernized rendition of "Hail to the Chief" for the twentieth time (in one day, nonetheless), my husband and I began to wonder how, exactly, Presidents' Day became the unofficial “Buy a New Car Day.” I found an interesting article on the National Archives website. Titled "By George, IT IS Washington's Birthday!", it originally appeared in Prologue Magazine in 2004. In the article, author C.L. Arblebide, a historian and storyteller specializing in federal holiday history, discusses the transformation of the holiday from an unofficial celebration of George Washington's birthday on February 22 to Presidents' Day on the third Monday of February.

In 1968, Congress proposed a bill that would institute uniform Monday holidays in order to foster family togetherness and, probably more important to government and business leaders, "improve commercial and industrial production by minimizing midweek holiday interruptions of production schedules and reducing employee absenteeism before and after midweek holidays." This bill stirred up controversy; many did not want to move the holidays. One of its proponents was Rep. Robert McClory, a Republican from Illinois. He wanted to change the name of the holiday to Presidents' Day to honor Abraham Lincoln, whose birthday was earlier in the month. The choice of the third Monday in February meant that the holiday could fall close to Lincoln's birthday and never on Washington’s, and when the law was implemented in 1971, the holiday fell three days after Lincoln's birthday. Although the Monday holiday law passed, the name change did not. The federal holiday remained George Washington's Birthday, although some states observed Lincoln's birthday as well.

How do the car sales fit in? According to the article:
For advertisers, the Monday holiday change was the goose that laid the golden "promotional" egg. Using Labor Day marketing as a guide, three-day weekend sales were expanded to include the new Monday holidays. Once the "Uniform Monday Holiday Law" was implemented, it took just under a decade to build a head of national promotional sales steam.
Local advertisers morphed both "Abraham Lincoln's Birthday" and "George Washington's Birthday" into the sales sound bite "President's Day," expanding the traditional three-day sales to begin before Lincoln's birth date and end after Washington's February 22 birth. In some instances, advertisers promoted the sales campaign through the entire month of February. To the unsuspecting public, the term linking both presidential birthdays seemed to explain the repositioning of the holiday between two high-profile presidential birthdays.
After a decade of local sporadic use, the catchall phrase took a national turn. By the mid-1980s, the term was appearing in a few Washington Post holiday advertisements and an occasional newspaper editorial....
Advertising had its effects on various calendar manufacturers who, determining their own spelling, began substituting Presidents' Day for the real thing.

So, the sales have nothing to do with Presidents' Day per se. They are a marketing strategy based on the three-day weekend. It is evident from the article, which you can read by clicking here, that Arblebide laments the fact that most of us associate the holiday with sales rather than with George Washington.

Source
Arbelbide, C.L. "By George, IT IS Washington's Birthday!" Prologue Magazine vol. 36, no. 4 (Winter 2004) printed on The National Archives http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2004/winter/gw-birthday-2.html (accessed February 16, 2006).

Did you know that a gastrointestinal illness believed to be norovirus broke out at Portsmouth Regional Hospital in late January affecting at least nine patients and 22 staff members? Well, it turns out you can find out about all sorts of disease outbreaks around the planet on a very cool website named HEALTHmap.

HEALTHmap, which is produced by the Children's Hospital Informatics Program (Boston) and the Harvard- MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology, shows you where more than 50 diseases have been reported around the world. This freely available Web site integrates outbreak data ranging from news sources (such as Google News) to curated personal accounts (such as ProMED) to validated official alerts (such as World Health Organization). Through an automated text processing system, the data is aggregated by disease and displayed by location for user-friendly access to the original alert. In addition, HEALTHmap provides a jumping-off point for real-time information on emerging infectious diseases and has particular interest for public health officials and international travelers.

Here are the websites where HEALTHmap gets its news:

• ProMED Mail: Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases.
• World Health Organization: The United Nations specialized agency for health.
• EuroSurveillance: Peer-reviewed European information on communicable disease surveillance and control.
• Google News: A commercial news aggregation service provided by Google.

And don't forget to explore the library's Health and Medicine databases and recommended websites page in iBrowse!

The inspiration for today's blog entry came as I was reading Erik Larson's 2003 bestseller, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America. This National Book Award finalist chronicles the stories of two very different men--Daniel Burnham, an architect of the White City at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and Dr. H.H. Holmes, a serial killer who used the fair to find his victims. I’m only 100 pages in, but so far, it is a good read. I chose this book because one of my graduate school classes covered the fair, and I found it, as well as the era in which it occurred, fascinating. If you would like to learn more about the Columbian Exposition, take a look at these websites:
World's Columbian Exposition: Idea, Experience, Aftermath
Interactive Guide to the World's Columbian Exposition
World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 (Paul V. Gavin Library Digital History Collection, Illinois Institute of Technology)

The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition was a showcase for the United States and the city of Chicago. The planners wanted to outshine the 1889 fair in Paris and prove to the rest of the country, and New York in particular, that Chicago was not “a secondary city that that preferred butchered hogs to Beethoven” (Larson 16). The fair included not only the White City, which exhibited advancements in technology and the liberal arts, but also the Midway Plaisance, hosting entertainment and “anthropologic” reproductions of villages from around the world. With participants from abroad, an American Indian village in the Midway and a women's building in the White City, the fair seemed to have something for everyone. Missing, however, were African Americans.

The planners of the fair did not invite African Americans to participate in the festivities. Although they petitioned for inclusion, black Americans did not have a building or a special day set aside. This angered many prominent African Americans, including Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells. Wells was a teacher, writer, and activist who crusaded against lynching. In 1893, she, along with Douglass and others, wrote an 81-page pamphlet titled The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition--The Afro-American’s Contribution to Columbian Literature. In the preface, the authors write, “The exhibit of the progress made by a race in 25 years of freedom as against 250 years of slavery would have been the greatest tribute to the greatness and progressiveness of American institutions which could have been shown to the world” (Wells, xx). Apparently, the directors did not share that sentiment.

Despite the official exclusion of African-Americans, Frederick Douglass did have a role at the fair. The country of Haiti asked Douglass, who had been the United States’ minister to the country, to represent the Haitian government. This gave Douglass a forum, and he and Wells took advantage of it. They circulated ten thousand copies of their booklet and spoke with many people. Due to the popularity of Haiti’s building among not only black Americans, but also white Americans and foreign visitors, Douglas was asked to organize a Negro Day for the fair’s program. Although Wells and other “hotheads” believed that Douglass should not have accepted the belated invitation, she admits, “Mr. Douglass’s oration was a masterpiece of wit, humor, and actual statement of conditions under which the Negro race of this country labored” (Wells, 115-119). Ultimately, she was pleased with his efforts.

Many students across the country think that history is irrelevant and boring. They may not realize that while names, dates, battles, and laws are important, there is much more to history. A fair-- the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition --probably will not appear on a test, but it is significant. In the context of black history, it demonstrates that African Americans actively combated racism long before Martin Luther King, Jr., and their history is more than slavery and the Civil Rights Movement.

Sources:

Larson, Erik. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America. New York: Vintage Books, 2003.

Wells, Ida B. Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells. Edited by Alfreda M. Duster. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1970.

Questions about legal matters account for many of the reference questions which are asked on a day to day basis. Legal information is often difficult to find, and when found, it can be difficult to understand. Reference librarians are not lawyers, and unfortunately, most times we cannot give a definitive answer to any legal question.

The library has a collection of books acquired in response to some commonly asked questions. Neighbor law is a resource for questions involving boundary disputes, fences, noise and second-hand smoke. It provides practical advice and information about researching the law online. Personal injury law advice is contained in How to win your personal injury claim which will explain which cases can be handled without legal representation and which cases can't. It also provides examples of documentation and an accident claim worksheet. Nolo's encyclopedia of everyday law is a catch-all book covering legal issues as diverse as adoption, estate planning and criminal law. Other legal books which might prove helpful include: Represent yourself in court, Stand up to the IRS, Every tenant's legal guide and Divorce and money : everything you need to know.

Websites can also be an invaluable source of accurate and useful legal information. The state of New Hampshire website is divided into a number of sections, one of these is the judicial branch. Here on this page are links to the Self help center which contains forms, fees, alternatives to court and links to other frequently requested areas of legal information. The Frequently Asked Questions include answers to questions like "Do I need a lawyer to go to court?" and "Why can't the people who work at the courthouse give me legal advice?". The state also provides a link to New Hampshire legal assistance which provides free and low cost legal help for senior citizens and low-income families. The information concerning eligibility for this help can be found here.

Several other websites might be of assistance when you are seeking legal information:

New Hampshire Revised Statues Annotated
New Hampshire law library
New Hampshire Motor vehicle laws

If all of this help is not enough, and you find that you need to hire a lawyer, try Martindale-Hubbell. This website will help you to locate a lawyer by name, by firm, by area of expertise or by location. It will also provide you with peer review ratings for those lawyers who have them, and will explain what the ratings mean.

Hopefully, you will never need most of this information. Happy reading!

The internet is a vast source of information. We can find phone numbers, driving directions, local businesses, and much more. Beyond the basics, we can use the internet for educational and cultural purposes. Many libraries (including NPL), archives, museums, and historical societies are undertaking digitization projects, which allow people from all over the world to view some of their holdings. Some organizations, such as ours, might post historical photos or books to their websites; others may create online exhibits. We can look at interesting and historic materials from the comfort of our homes. This is especially beneficial to the intellectually curious and to students who cannot physically make the trip to places such as the Library of Congress or the Countway Library of Medicine, which is currently featuring The Stethoscope Sorority: Stories from the Archives for Women in Medicine. As March is Women's History Month, this exhibit is especially timely.

The Countway Library, which is the library for the Harvard University School of Medicine, created the Archives for Women in Medicine in 2000 "to capture and preserve the untold history of the many women who have helped change the face of medicine in the United States. This exhibition highlights materials from the AWM that illustrate women’s experiences as mentors, pioneering researchers, healers, and strong voices speaking out for their beliefs. Using their own words, the exhibition presents stories from some of the women of the AWM and the people who have helped contribute to their successes." The collection is a great resource for anyone interested in women’s history or the history of medicine.

The Stethoscope Sorority: Stories from the Archives of Women in Medicine is the online version of a display that was exhibited at Countway from March to September 2006. The website offers introductory information and explanatory captions that place the items in context. When you visit this site, you will see digitized images of photographs, telegrams, letters, and other objects. Clicking on the images will enlarge them. Not only will you be able to read letters and telegrams--some written close to 90 years ago--you will also notice details such as the creases and tears in the paper. The documents and other tangible items help us understand the expereinces and struggles of women in medicine and thier contributions to the field. This and other online exhibits* are fantastic resources becuase they make history more relatable.

*This search is an example of the women's history exhibits available on the web; however, I cannot vouch for the quality of all of the millions of results returned in this Google search. Remember, you should always evaluate websites when you are looking for information.

Today we celebrate the birthday of Abigail Powers Fillmore, the first wife of President Millard Fillmore. Born March 13, 1798, Abigail Fillmore is not nearly as well known as some of her fellow first ladies, such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Abigail Adams, or Jackie Kennedy. So why should we care about her? Well, one of her accomplishments was the establishment of a library at the White House. She noticed that the White House was lacking in books, and so, at her urging, Congress appropriated $250 for a White House library. The first lady was also an early proponent of public libraries. It was Abigail, a teacher, who inspired Millard to join the town library early in his career. You can read more about Abigail (and other first ladies) in the Biography Resource Center database, at http://www.nashua.lib.nh.us/IbrowseAdultAlpha.htm.

More famously, Laura Welch Bush is a former school librarian. For those interested in the life of the current first lady, the Nashua Public Library offers:

Laura Bush : an intimate portrait of the first lady, by Ronald Kessler.
George and Laura : portrait of an American marriage, by Christopher Andersen.
Laura Welch Bush, First Lady, by Tanya Lee Stone (for children).

Her mother-in-law, Barbara Bush, was heavily involved in literacy efforts, as the title of one of our children's books makes clear:

Barbara Bush : first lady of literacy, by June Behrens.

More on Barbara Bush can be found in:

Reflections: Life After the White House by Barbara Bush.
Barbara Bush : a memoir, by Barbara Bush.
Barbara Bush : a biography, by Pamela Kilian.
Barbara Bush, first lady, by Rose Blue and Corinne J. Naden. (for children)

There are many other books on the first ladies in the library's collection. You might also be interested in the White House's own web site about the first ladies, found at http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/firstladies/.

Although the next Presidential election is still over a year and a half away, some campaigns are already in full swing. One of the most active candidates is Hillary Clinton, who has a legitimate chance of winning the Democratic Party's nomination for President. A Clinton victory would give the United States its first female president; however, she is not the first woman to have run for this office. Believe it or not, Victoria C. Woodhull ran for President as the Equal Rights Party's nominee in 1872, long before women had the right to vote. For more information about Woodhull, you can take a look at the Biography Resource Center database, or check out Other powers : the age of suffrage, spiritualism, and the scandalous Victoria Woodhull by Barbara Goldsmith, which is part of our Women's History Month display.

In the 135 years since Woodhull ran, many women have appeared on the ballot. Some, such as Sen. Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME), have even hailed from New England. When a colleague nominated her in 1964, Smith became the first woman to have her name placed in nomination at a major party convention. Other female candidates include Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-NY), who won 151.25 delegates in 1972, Elizabeth Dole, who ran in 2000, and Carol Moseley Braun, who ran in the 2004 election. The Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University lists interesting facts about women who have run for President and other offices on their website. You can also find information about women who have run for President of countries around the world on the Worldwide Guide to Women in Leadership website. If you prefer to read more on this topic, browse our catalog using the subject "women in politics."

Yesterday I received a challenging reference question that pertained to property values of homes in New Hampshire. Without going into all the details, I did come across a few information resources that I would like to share with you. The first is a reference book titled State Rankings 2006, a statistical view of the 50 United States, (call number is REF 973.0728 S). Amongst the numerous statistics included for households and housing was a chart including percent change in house prices from 2001 to 2005. As it turns out, the figure for the entire state of New Hampshire was 68.8% increase (as opposed to the national figure of 55.3% increase.)

The source of the chart's data was the "House Price Index" which is published by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. OFHEO's mission is to promote housing and a strong national housing finance system by ensuring the safety and soundness of Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association) and Freddie Mac (Federal ree accHome Loan Mortgage Corporation).

As you may know, Fannie Mae has been in the news recently for having its charitable work and related tax deductions scrutinized by the Internal Revenue Service. You can read about this in the article "Philanthropy Fannie Mae Style" found in the April 2nd edition of Business Week. Provided you are a Nashua Public Library cardholder, you have free access to this article through the Library's EBSCO database subscription.

Just click on this link, enter the last 5 digits of your library card number, and then click on the "General Magazines Resources" link. Once you are at the search screen, type in Philanthropy Fannie Mae Style just like it is in this picture and click on 'Search'. (You can click on the picture below to see an enlarged version.)

So, if you would ever like to know how New Hampshire measures up statistically to the other 50 states in topics including agriculture, crime, economics, education, employment and much more, drop by the reference desk and ask to see State Rankings 2006. And for free access to any Business Week article since January 1997, use the llibrary's EBSCO database.

Student: Hi, I need to find information about illegal immigrants.

Librarian: We have a couple of great databases that should have some articles. One is EBSCO, and the other is Opposing Viewpoints. Let me show you how they work.

Student: My teacher said I can't use anything from the internet.

Librarian: The articles in the databases come from published sources, such as magazines and journals.

Student: I have to have a copy from an actual magazine.

This exchange happens occasionally, and it is very frustrating. We have great resources that some students are afraid to use becuase they are left with the impression that electronic articles--even if they come from Time or Newsweek--are unacceptable. If students can use photocopies of magazine or newspaper articles, why can't they use a .pdf file, which looks exactly like the page of a print source?

I understand why teachers may communicate to students that they cannot use information from the internet. I would be leery of sources that students found on the web, especially if they have not yet learned how to evaluate websites. There is a plethora of information available, and it is not always reliable. However, searching databases is different than surfing the web. The World Wide Web is only part of the internet, and it contains both good and bad information that can be found by doing a search in Google, Yahoo, or other search engines. Depending on the topic, the number of results might be immense, although they will not include articles that appear in the databases. Those articles are part of the invisible web, which contains pages that search engines cannot find.

Whereas on the web, pretty much anyone can publish a website with information that may or may not be reliable, the information in the databases is controlled. Databases are indexes of articles that appear in print sources. Thus, the articles you find in the databases are the same ones you would find in Time, Newsweek, Consumer Reports, newspapers, scholarly journals, and even reference books. Many of the databases include full text, which is a word-for-word reproduction of an article in either .pdf or html format. In EBSCO's MasterFile Premier and Academic Search Premier (two of my “go to” databases), you can even limit the results to peer reviewed articles, which are written and reviewed by scholars in their respective fields. In addition to helping us find where and when articles about a particular topic were published (think Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature), the full text databases give us access to thousands of publications that the library does not have in print. It is a shame that informative articles sometimes go unused because of the idea that anything electronic is unacceptable.

People often ask at the reference desk, "Where do you keep the newspapers?" Sounds like a simple question, right? If you ask, expect to hear the librarian say, "That depends!"

Many people who ask this question are looking for the latest copy of the Nashua Telegraph or Manchester Union Leader. The latest paper copy of the newspapers can be found in the Stearns Room. To get there from the library entrance, bear right past the circulation desk, pass the New Fiction display, and you'll see an open doorway on your right. In the Stearns Room, you'll also find new and recent copies of our general magazine collection, including business and consumer titles such as Consumer Reports. We keep the latest month's newspapers in the Stearns Room. The newest copy will be out on display, and older papers will be hanging in folders underneath the display.

Sometimes our newspaper-seekers are actually looking for older editions of the newspaper. For this, we have a variety of options available. We have the Telegraph on microfilm going back to the 1800s, and two new microfilm-scanner machines available for viewing, printing, and e-mailing articles from these papers. These are located near the hardcover fiction at the back of the top floor. Just ask at the reference desk if you need assistance using the microfilm machines.

We also have a subscription to two electronic newspaper databases. For modern newspapers (going back about 15 years or so), there's "Newsbank." You can search Newsbank for specific words to find articles that contain those words. There are dozens of newspapers in the Newsbank collection, from local newspapers such as the Telegraph and 1590 Broadcaster to nationwide newspapers (the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, and Boston Globe, among others).

For those doing historical research beyond New Hampshire's borders, we also offer the "Newspaper Archives" database. This is a searchable collection of digitized newspapers dating as far back as the 1700s. It is available in the library only, and does not include New Hampshire newspapers.

You can get to both Newsbank and Newspaper Archives through the library's web site, www.nashualibrary.org. From there, click on the button that says "iBrowse Databases" and choose "Newspapers and Magazines" from the dropdown menu. Or go to the news listing directly at http://www.nashua.lib.nh.us/IbrowseAdultNews.htm.

If you're still not sure where to find what you need, do stop by the reference desk and let us know what you're looking for!

When one member of my family reads something in one of his magazines that interests him, he tears the pages out and saves them to study later. I then find them lying all over the house - little folded up pages that he doesn't even remember reading. This blog is inspired by one of those little folded up pages. U S News & World Report published this article on February 12, 2007. It involves a discussion of personal finances and retirement planning, especially for the young. It also gives a list of blogs where interested people can ask questions and participate in discussions on personal finances.
AllFinancialMatters.com
ConsumerismCommentary.com
FreeMoneyFinance.com
2MillionBlog.com
MoneyBlogNetwork.com
TiredButHappy.blogspot.com
seniorcare-dc.blogspot.com

Mellody Hobson is a financial consultant for the morning television program Good Morning America. She has a discussion regarding retirement saving which may force her listeners to face hard facts. Many people who are close to retirement age have no savings and no idea how much money they will need to save in order to just get by. A question and answer session with Mellody Hobson also addresses this issue.

In my opinion, no one should ever retire. What does anyone do when there is no job to go to anymore? Instant boredom! But, if you listen to Dennis Hopper, retirement is something the baby boomer generation should look forward to and be excited about. Retirement seems to be a popular topic with younger people as well.. Generation -Xers, who will not be retiring for years, are being urged to plan ahead and begin saving now.

There are books at the Nashua Public Library to help make retirement and retirement saving more managable. They can provide that optomistic outlook which is lacking in so much of the information about retirement.
The Number by Lee Eisenberg
Retire worry-free by Kiplinger's
Get a life : you don't need a million to retire well by Ralph Warner
The retirement catch-up guide by Ellen Hoffman
The Grangaard Strategy : invest right during retirement by Paul Grangaard

So, if you are excited about retirement, good luck. The rest of us will just keep on working!

…hold me closer, Tony Danza…
…there's a bathroom on the right…
…pour some shook up ramen…
…I blow bubbles when you are not here…

Has this happened to you? You are singing along with a song and blurt out what you thought were the lyrics. Suddenly, your friends stop what they were doing and stare at you. Misunderstood song lyrics are fairly common. I remember seeing a page-a-day calendar dedicated to misheard lyrics, and The Archive of Misheard Lyrics, which dates back to the mid-nineties, has thousands of misheard lyrics. In fact, the web address, www.kissthisguy.com, was chosen in honor of a possible misunderstood lyric. The submissions come from the general public, and in the Frequently Asked Questions, the site owner points out that even some of the "correct lyrics" are incorrect; you should not use the site as a source. That being said, it is fun to browse.

If you want to confirm or learn song lyrics, check out LyricWiki.org. It was last week's ResourceShelf (a website that compiles online resources) Resource of the Week. You can read why by clicking here. While browsing this site, I found that it is more productive to search by artist than by title. For example, when I searched for "In Your Eyes," the site did not find the popular Peter Gabriel song. However, when I searched for Peter Gabriel, I saw the song listed under his 1986 album So. When browsing by song, you will have to know the name of the artist. Song titles that begin with the letter "I" are alphabetized by the artist (first name first) rather than by the song title. Despite these difficulties, LyricWiki.org is useful. Other sites offer song lyrics, but this one has a cleaner design and will not harass you with popup ads.

In case you were wondering, the misunderstood lyrics listed above are actually:
…hold me closer, tiny dancer… "Tiny Dancer” --Elton John
…there's a bad moon on the rise… “Bad Moon Rising” --Creedence Clearwater Revival
…pour some sugar on me… “Pour Some Sugar on Me” --Def Leppard
…my world crumbles when you are not near… “I Try” --Macy Gray

Feel free to add your own to the comments section.

It's the 160th birthday of Joseph Pulitzer, founder of the Pulitzer Prizes and publisher of the New York World and St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The 2007 Pulitzer Prizes will be announced this coming Monday, April 16. Part of a bequest to Columbia University for their journalism school, the Pulitzer Prizes were intended to promote excellence in journalism. They are awarded to Americans in the areas of news, literature, music composition, and photography.

Among the recent prizewinners for fiction are Marilynne Robinson's Gilead , Geraldine Brooks's March, and The Known World by Edward P. Jones.

Three people have each won four Pulitzers, the most awarded to one person: Robert Frost (for "New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes", "Collected Poems", "A Further Range", and "A Witness Tree"), Eugene O'Neill (for "Beyond the Horizon", "Anna Christie", "Strange Interlude", and "Long Day's Journey Into Night"), and Robert Sherwood (for "Idiots Delight", "Abe Lincoln in Illinois", "There Shall Be No Night", and "Roosevelt and Hopkins").

For more about the Pulitzer Prizes, take a look at the official web site, http://pulitzer.org. Here you can view the winners for each year since the first prizes were awarded in 1917, ninety years ago. Then stop by and pick up a copy!

April 11 is National D.A.R.E Day. D.A.R.E or the Drug Abuse Resistance Education Program was founded in 1983 by the Los Angeles police department. The goal of the program was to help school age children develop strength of character which would enable them to resist getting involved with drugs and gangs and violence.

According to the D.A.R.E website, the program continues to be very successful. A D.A.R.E trained officer or teacher can be found in about 75% of the schools in the United States. The website claims that the program is involving youth in 43 countries around the world. The D.A.R.E program is designed to function as a partnership between local schools and local police departments. A school's D.A.R.E officer has undergone special training which will allow him or her to present an ongoing curriculum from kindergarten to grade 12. The D.A.R.E officer is someone selected to present the positive side of policing to young children and teens. That officer becomes the "face" of the police department to many children.

There are two websites that will provide information to anyone interested in doing further research about D.A.R.E. One of these is the national website for the D.A.R.E program. This site includes information on the program's mission, the executive officers, activities throughout the country, and awards and scholarships available to student participates in the program. Selecting Hometown D.A.R.E USA on the left-hand toolbar, will provide access to listings for D.A.R.E programs in New Hampshire.

The second website is for the New Hampshire D.A.R.E program. The New Hampshire website provides information specifically about the state-wide program including scholarships available to students in the program, affiliations with the Manchester semi-professional sports teams, and news and events involving D.A.R.E in New Hampshire. At this point in time, Nashua does not appear to be one of the New Hampshire towns participating in the D.A.R.E program, although several local communities do participate.

D.A.R.E was a very popular, successful program for dealing with youth and drug abuse in the 1980's and 1990's. There has been some suggestion that the program has lost the ability to connect with young people which it once had and that it may have outlived its usefulness. In answer to this, the D.A.R.E program has developed a new curriculum which it is putting into place. These new plans for D.A.R.E can be reviewed on the website. Hopefully this program will be able to successfully reinvent itself.

During the tax season, the reference desk gets a lot of tax-related questions. In addition to questions about which tax forms to use, we occasionally get asked to look up historic stock price information. As some of you may know, there are a number of websites that make some historical stock price information available for free. Two that are particularly popular are Yahoo Finance and BigCharts.com.

But sometimes when a company has been acquired by another company or merged with another computer, it can be particularly difficult to find out historical price information for the company prior to those events. Fortunately, the library can help in some of these cases. One print resource that we turn to is the Directory of Obsolete Securities. Its call number is REF 332.67 D, and we would be glad to point it out to you if you would like to look through it.

When the Directory of Obsolete Securities isn't sufficient, we sometimes are able to locate other sources of information online. For example, tonight, I helped a customer look up historical price information about the company Unocal prior to its merger with Chevron. By searching for "historic stock prices for unocal" on Google, I found a page in the Chevron Corporation investor relations website that included a downloadable Excel file with historical price information from 1980-2005. I must say it was a satisfying experience to hunt down this information and provide it to the customer right at the reference desk!

So if you are ever in need of historical stock price information, be sure to keep us in mind!!

Wednesday, April 18th marks the 150th anniversary of the birthday of Clarence Seward Darrow. Clarence Darrow is perhaps best known for his involvement in the Scopes trial arguing in behalf of John Scopes. Scopes, a biology teacher, was being tried for teaching evolution in the state of Tennessee in the year 1925, in direct defiance of Tennessee's anti-evolution act. Although there is a tendency to view Darrow as the "evolution" lawyer, he was also involved in many other well-known trials.

Clarence Darrow was born April 18, 1857. After starting a career as a school teacher at a very young age, he decided to become a lawyer. At the age of twenty, he studied law for one year at a school of law in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After that, his legal education took the form of on-the-job training. He was employed by the city of Chicago as an attorney and then by the Chicago and Northwestern Railway as their general attorney. It was in this position that he met Eugene V. Debs, later a Socialist Party candidate for president, and became the defender of the railroad Pullman car workers in the railroad strike between the American Railway Union and the railroad owners. From this point on, Darrow was seen as a defender of the working class and an advocate of civil liberties.

Information about Clarence Darrow is available online as well as in the library. The Clarence Darrow Homepage is a portion of a website done by the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. It provides background information about Clarence Darrow as well as information about some of his most famous cases. The PBS series American Experience has information on its webpage concerning a special called Monkey Trial and biographical information on Clarence Darrow. For those interested in unusual information, the FBI has made available 11 pages of its file on Clarence Darrow under the Freedom of Information Act. Most unusual of all is Findagrave, a website where you can look at the gravesite of a famous person, or in this case, see the site where the ashes of Clarence Darrow were scattered.

The library has some biographies of Clarence Darrow, as well as some books discussing his most notable trials: The people v. Clarence Darrow: the bribery trial of America's greatest lawyer; Arc of justice: a saga of race, civil rights and murder in the Jazz age; The crime of the century : the Leopold and Loeb case; Big Bill Haywood and the radical union movement; Summer for the gods : the Scopes trial and America's continuing debate over science and religion and The great Tennessee monkey trial, a downloadable audiobook available through the state library. The database Biography Resource Center, which is available on the library's website, is an excellent source of information on Clarence Darrow. It can be accessed from home using your library card barcode.

Earlier today, I received a phone call from a customer wanting to know the ideal ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 in our diet. Not being terribly well versed in nutrition, I certainly didn't know the answer. But where to turn to for this information?

The library has two outstanding encyclopedias on nutrition, (The Encyclopedia of Nutrition and Good Health by Robert Ronzio and Nutrition and Well-Being A to Z, Delores C.S. James, editor in chief,) and both offered valuable information on the role omega 6 and omega 3 play in our diet, but unfortunately, they didn't list a recommended ratio.

I next turned to the library's Consumer Health Complete database, (available both at the library and from offsite!) The first result from a search for "omega 6 omega 3 ratio" brought me to an article in the August 2006 issue of American Chiropractor titled "Omega-6 Mobile -- only diesel vehicles should eat n-6's." Mentioned within the article was the following, "The biochemistry of human body needs to consume at least 4:1 ratio of n-6 to n-3 fatty acids. When the consumption exceeds the 4:1 ratio, the human vehicle begins to show pro-inflammatory conditions." So, it appeared I had found an authoritative source. But is one authoritative source sufficient when it comes to health or medical information? I decided to continue my research.

I next turned to PubMed, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine that provides free access to MEDLINE, its database of indexed citations and abstracts to medical, nursing, dental, veterinary, health care, and preclinical sciences journal articles. There I learned in the October 2002 issue or Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy that ratios ranging from 2:1 up to 5:1 had beneficial impacts depending on the disease in question. For example, "in the secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease, a ratio of 4/1 was associated with a 70% decrease in total mortality." And, "a ratio of 2.5/1 reduced rectal cell proliferation in patients with colorectal cancer."

At this point, I shared the results of my research with the library customer, and she was pleased! Nevertheless, I decided to see what the Wikipedia had to say. As many of you hopefully know, Wikipedia is an enticing option for online researchers, but the information found there isn't always trustworthy. In an entry on omega-3 fatty acids, I learned that "the ideal ratio of omega-6:omega-3 [ranged] from 3:1 to 5:1." But what was the source of this information? Fortunately, in this case, the information was backed up by a citation to an article in World Review of Nutrition and Dietetics, specifically "Omega-6/omega-3 Essential Fatty Acid Ratio: The Scientific Evidence" by AP Simopoulos.

At last, this reference question was complete.

Sources:
Seaman, David (2006). "Omega-6 Mobile -- only diesel vehicles should eat n-6's." American Chiropractor, 28(9), 66-68.

Simopoulos AP (2002). "The importance of the ratio of omega-6/omega-3 essential fatty acids."
Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy, 56(8), 365-79.

Simopoulos AP, Cleland LG (eds) (2003). "Omega-6/omega-3 Essential Fatty Acid Ratio: The Scientific Evidence." World Review of Nutrition and Dietetics, 92, 1-22.

In the process of helping people find the information they need, I often come across interesting sources. This occurred on Friday night when someone asked a question about the number of words in the English language. I struggled a bit to find the answer, but eventually found a great site: AskOxford.com. Brought to you from Oxford Dictionaries, this site has a word of the day and quote of the week on its home page. If that is not entertaining enough, you can take a look at the Ask the Experts Frequently Asked Questions. Here you can learn if any English words contain the same letter three times in a row, the longest one-syllable word in the English language, the origin of the dollar sign, and other fun facts. The site also offers writing tips, the most common English words, information about names, and five events that shaped the history of English. So, if you are interested in learning more about English or you have a question about the language, be sure to check out AskOxford.com.

PS Today's word of the day is
dogger
noun; historical a two-masted bluff-bowed Dutch sailing boat, used for fishing. — origin Middle English: from Middle Dutch.
Source: Oxford Dictionary of English

When I was in graduate school, one of my professors used the "How Do You Manage" series of articles in Library Journal as a teaching tool. The author presents a scenario that may occur in a library, and two librarians offer their solutions to the problem. The case study presented in last September's issue of Library Journal was titled "Cell Hell." (You can find this article and the responses in the Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts under Academic Journal Resources in the EBSCO database. See below for the article citations.) In the vignette, a patron answers two calls while being helped at the desk. Later, the librarian receives a call from someone who is actually in the library. My favorite line from this story is, "Can you believe he called information first to get the library number rather than walk the 100 feet over here."* While the second scenario is over the top, I have encountered the first on more than one occasion.

Websites that cover cell phone etiquette, such as InfoWorld and the Microsoft Small Business Center, note that you should not prioritize your cell phone call over the people in your company. They advise you to be careful about your ring tone choice and volume. Imagine sitting in a library and hearing someone's favorite song/ring tone over and over again. This has happened at NPL, much to the dismay of the people at the business computers. You should also be aware of the volume your voice and avoid using your phone at funerals, weddings, churches, theaters, museums, libraries, and anywhere you would not want to hear a screaming child.

Is chatting on your phone in the library really a big deal? Although the library isn't the silent place it once was, many people still come to the library to study, concentrate, and escape external distractions. Ringing cell phones and lengthy conversations are bothersome, especially when numerous people use their phones at the same time. To solve this problem, some libraries ban cell phones, and the Huntington Beach Public Library fines its patrons $100 for using cell phones inside the building. While the Nashua Public Library does not prohibit cell phone use, we do have signs posted by the non-fiction stacks that read, "Quiet Study Area: As a courtesy to others, please turn off your cell phone & other electronic devices." We realize that some people need to keep their phones on for business or family reasons, but we ask that you respect both fellow library users and staff by switching your phones to vibrate and conducting your conversations in the lobby. This will help create a comfortable atmosphere for all.

*Rogers, Michael. "Cell Hell." Library Journal 131, no. 14 (September 1, 2006): 48. Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts, EBSCOhost (accessed April 27, 2007).

See also:
Cowart, Eve M."Take It Outside." Library Journal 131, no. 14 (September 1, 2006): 50. Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts, EBSCOhost (accessed April 27, 2007).

Duncan, Melanie C. "Courtesy is Key." Library Journal 131, no. 14 (September 1, 2006): 50. Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts, EBSCOhost (accessed April 27, 2007).

The weather outside, today at least, would encourage you to believe in spring. One of the enjoyable things about spring is the flea market. I enjoy flea markets much more than yard sales. Although they both involve picking over someone else's stuff, at a flea market, the owner of the stuff you are dissing is not standing there watching and listening. At a flea market, there is a chance that you might find a hidden antique or valuable piece of jewelry that everyone else missed. Not a big chance, but you never know.

Many flea markets are located here in New Hampshire, a number of them are a short drive from Nashua. There is a flea market directory online which lets you search for flea markets by state. It gives the location, the hours, a brief description of each one, and in most cases, a contact number to call for information. About.com also has a web page listing flea markets in New Hampshire ; some of them different from the ones on the previous website.

I've discovered that I don't have a knack for bargaining with vendors, so I arrange to bring someone with me who is more assertive than I am, or I pay the price being asked without discussion. I also look for the things that I like, and not those things that are currently "hot". I like old stuff regardless of its current or potential monetary worth. If you have something you like to collect, like flamingos, the flea market is the place to go!

Once you find something that appeals to you and bring it home, there are a couple of things to think about. What will you do with it? How will you take care of it? The second question is easily answered. The library has a great book written by the Senior Conservator of the Smithsonian Institute. The book is called Saving stuff and it isn't just Smithsonian quality stuff. The book also contains information on caring for and preserving things like sports trading cards, macaroni necklaces, holiday decorations, and dolls. The library also has a number of books to answer the what will you do with it question. A flea market find can get a make-over or a fix-up and these books will show you how to do that:

Flea market jewelry ; new style from old treasures
Flea market make-overs
Fabulous painted furniture
Flea market makeovers for the outdoors
Easy flea market style

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.

"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave." I remembered that from somewhere in the cobwebs of my brain when I saw that Wednesday, May 9 would be the 207th anniversary of the birth of John Brown. That is the first line of what was a famous marching song sung by the Union Army during the Civil War. There are apparently claims that the John Brown of the song is the abolitionist John Brown best remembered for his raid on Harper's Ferry. There are also claims that the John Brown of the song was a Union soldier from Boston, a member of a military glee club. When the song was sung, the John Brown who came to mind was apparently the more famous one, and the song took off from there. The lyrics of the entire song are available at Wikipedia.

John Brown was born on May 9, 1800 in Connecticut and died by hanging December 2,1859 in Charles Town, West Virginia. Son of an abolitionist and an abolitionist himself, he was, at one point in his life, a conductor on the underground railroad in Ohio. Brown had very strong religious beliefs and very strong opinions on the evils of slavery. He also came from a family where insanity was fairly common. His religious beliefs fueled his antislavery opinions and he became convinced that he was representing the hand of God in his dealings with pro-slavery individuals. He became a well-known representative of the antislavery cause in Kansas when, under his command, five pro-slavery individuals were hacked to death with machetes.

His attempt to arm slaves and help them to rise up against slave owners was the defining moment of his life. He was aided and abetted by six prominent Northern abolitionists referred to as the "Secret Six". With a small band of men both black and white, he attacked a federal arsenal in Harper's Ferry VA. He was not joined by vast numbers of slaves wanting to be free. Instead, he ended up surrounded and refused to surrender. When he was finally captured, he was tried for murder and treason among other things, found guilty, and hung. At that time, and in that place, he became a legend to some, a hero to others, and a nutjob to the rest.

The library has a number of resources which will help you to form your own opinion regarding John Brown. Biography Resource Center and World Book Online have informative articles about John Brown. The library also has a number of books in different categories which offer views of John Brown. If you are a fiction reader, you may be interested in Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks or Mine eyes have seen by Ann Rinaldi, or if you like poetry, Stephen Vincent Benet's John Brown's body, although an oldie, could still prove interesting.

The library also has some new biographies of John Brown. Patriotic treason : John Brown and the soul of America by Evan Carton was published in 2006. John Brown, abolitionist : the man who killed slavery, sparked the Civil War, and seeded civil rights by David Reynolds was published in 2005.

Although Plymouth, with Thanksgiving, the rock, and the plantation, gets a lot of attention here in New England, the Pilgrims did not establish the first permanent English colony in North America. Thirteen years before the Mayflower landed in Massachusetts, a group of 108 entrepreneurs sailed from London. The group, known as the Virginia Company, had been granted a charter by King James I to establish a colony, find gold, and search for a water route to Asia. On May 14, 1607--four hundred years ago today--they landed at the mouth of the James River, approximately 60 miles from Chesapeake Bay. Survival was a struggle; disease, starvation, and conflict with Native Americans almost destroyed the settlement. Only 60 of 214 settlers survived the winter of 1609-1610. The arrival of reinforcements, a new governor, and supplies later that year revived the colony. Among the newcomers was John Rolfe. He planted tobacco, which became a successful crop in Virginia and contributed to Jamestown's viability.

Two noteworthy stories come from Jamestown. The name of the colony might ring a bell if you have seen the Disney movie Pocahontas, which is set in Jamestown. The movie (I have not seen it) has been criticized for its historical inaccuracies and depiction of Native Americans. It depicts a love story between Pocahontas and John Smith. Although she is rumored to have saved his life, it was John Rolfe, another Englishman, whom the chief's daughter married. Also, Jamestown was home to the first African Americans. In 1619, a group of Africans pirated from a Spanish ship were traded to the colony for food. The Africans became indentured servants, not slaves, and contributed greatly to the colony.

In anticipation of the anniversary of the colony's founding, new books have been written. Take a look at Savage kingdom : the true story of Jamestown, 1607, and the settlement of America; The birth of black America : the first African Americans and the pursuit of freedom at Jamestown; or Jamestown, the buried truth. You can find other books about Jamestown for both adults and children, fiction and nonfiction, by doing a subject keyword search for Jamestown.

I also found a couple of interesting websites. Historic Jamestowne, has pages about the history of the colony and the archaeological dig site. I recommend taking a look at Jamestown1607.org. Here you will see pictures of individuals, each wearing a t-shirt with the name of someone who lived in the colony. Clicking on the picture will give you information about the person named. You can even add your own comments to the site. I really enjoyed this site because of both the information and the design.

Global warming has suddenly become a serious matter. It seemed sudden, at least, to those of us who were going along not paying too much attention to the environment. It was interesting that winters were getting warmer, and it was something of a puzzle that glaciers were melting. Greenhouse gasses and the ozone layer were familiar terms, but they didn't really spur me to any action. I guess I thought that those "big companies" were the only ones at fault for all this, and they really should be doing something about it. And maybe those people who drive eighteen wheelers and Hummers?

Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth served as a wake-up call. Global warming is not some vague event that may happen sometime, but there's still plenty of time to do something about it. Apparently global warming has already happened to such a degree that, even if we all start now, we may not be able to "fix" it. This was frightening news to someone who hadn't been paying attention. So what can the average person do about global warming?

Newscasters began talking about everyone's carbon footprint. This carbon footprint stands for each person's impact on the environment. Using energy creates carbon dioxide and the more energy a person uses, the more carbon dioxide a person creates. This can contribute to a big carbon footprint. So how do you measure your carbon footprint? ABC News has the directions for calculating the size of your footprint on their webpage. There are also suggestions for reducing the size of your footprint. Everyone's goal should be to reduce their impact on the environment as much as possible.

A good understanding of global warming and the immediacy of its effects on the climate can be found on the website for the Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change or IPCC. This is the large international group of scientists sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme who recently established, beyond a doubt, that climate change has happened and will continue to happen. Working papers produced by this group are available in pdf format on their website, as well as audios and videos of press conferences and presentations . Two other websites to visit for more information on global warming and climate change are the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Global Warming International Center.

The library has some new books about global warming and climate change which might shed more light on the issues.

Climate change: human effects on the nitrogen cycle by Jeri Freedman
Field notes from a catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert and, just in case you choose to consider both sides of the story,
Global warming : opposing viewpoints edited by Cynthia A. Bily

Check out this information and keep working on making your carbon footprint smaller!

This Saturday is the 22nd New York AIDS Walk. This year is also the 20th anniversary of AZT, the first drug approved to fight HIV. (In 1987, the cost of a year's supply of AZT was $10,000, making it one of the most expensive drugs ever sold.) But what is the current state of HIV/AIDS in New Hampshire? What resources are available for those with the disease? And, what books and online resources does the library have and recommend? Here is summary of my findings. You might be surprised by what you learn.

According to the March 2007 HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report issued by the NH Department of Health and Human Services' Division of Public Health Services, there are 434 persons living in the state with HIV, and 574 persons living with AIDS. More specifically, 46% of those living with HIV and 41% of those living with AIDS reside in Hillsborough County. Of those with HIV or AIDS, about 75% are White, 14% are Black and 11% are Hispanic. Approximately 44% are men who were exposed to the disease through sex with other men (MSM) while 18% of those living with the disease were exposed through heterosexual contact, and about 17% were exposed via injecting drug use (IJU).

Source: NH STD-HIV-AIDS Surveillance Report – 2002-2006

HIV/AIDS agencies and support organizations in New Hampshire
Southern New Hampshire HIV/AIDS Task Force, 12 Amherst Street Nashua, NH 03064
NH Department of Health and Human Services, HIV/AIDS information
HIV/AIDS Resources in New Hampshire (Project Inform)

Other Online Resources
HIV/AIDS among youth [electronic resource]. (Center for Disease Control)
HIV/AIDS in New Hampshire (AIDS Action) [PDF]

Recommended Library Books
AIDS in the twenty-first century : disease and globalization / Tony Barnett and Alan Whiteside. (2006)

The guide to living with HIV infection : developed at the Johns Hopkins AIDS Clinic / John G. Bartlett, Ann K. Finkbeiner. (2006)

Not in my family : AIDS in the African-American community / [edited by] Gil L. Robertson IV. (2006)

People often call or come to the library for directions. We have quite a few road atlases, both in reference and in circulation. Keep in mind, though, that the atlases in circulation tend to be older editions. Roads, especially in Boston or other areas that have undergone major construction projects, may have changed over the past few years. If you need point-to-point directions and do not have GPS, you can take a look at some online resources.

*Do you remember AAA TripTiks? Now, you can make your own. (You may need a AAA membership to use this service.) AAA allows you to choose multiple destinations on your journey and modify the route if you want to avoid certain roads. You can set the map to show construction, restaurants, gas stations, and other points of interest. In the settings section, you can change from English to French, miles to kilometers, and avoid tolls and ferries.

*MapQuest is another option. (I have even used MapQuest as a verb, a la Google.) MapQuest can provide an aerial view of your route. You can choose either the shortest time or shortest distance and avoid highways, tolls, and seasonally closed roads. You can also reverse your route.

*Like AAA, Yahoo Maps allows you to input multiple locations. It will provide a hybrid map, which gives you an aerial view of your trip, as well as a reverse route or round trip. Yahoo also offers live traffic information, which can be helpful if you are traveling during rush hour.

*Google Maps offers traffic information, a hybrid view, reverse directions, and multiple destinations. A new feature allows you to create and save your own maps with points of interest,
captions, photos, lines, and shapes, that you can publish on the web and share with friends and family.

How accurate are these maps? I have had success and failure with all of them. Personally, I have had the most trouble with MapQuest, so I tend to use the others more often. You can get to Google and Yahoo maps more quickly than AAA TripTiks; I generally use these two for shorter drives. I have used the TripTiks for longer road trips. It is not a bad idea to look at a couple of sites if you have the time. They sometimes take you different routes to the same place, so you can compare and make sure that small yet important details are not omitted. Despite some bad moments, these online driving directions are a great resource.

Much as I love to discuss books, today's a film day. It's the 100th anniversary of acting legend Laurence Olivier's birth. Let's celebrate with a look at some of his works.

According to the Academy Awards Database, Olivier was nominated for ten Oscars for acting (he won Best Actor for Hamlet), was nominated for directing Hamlet, and was awarded two special Oscars (one in 1946 for Henry V, and one in 1978 for his lifetime's work).

Hamlet won Best Picture for 1948, and Olivier is credited with producing, as well as directing and acting in the film. You can pick up a copy of Hamlet in the Music, Art, and Media Department.

Also available in the library's film collection are several more of his films, including:

An adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's Wuthering Heights;
Shakespeare's Henry V and Richard III;
Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca;
and Spartacus.

For more information about the man and his work, we do have books by and about the legendary actor:

"Olivier: In Celebration" published two years before his 1989 death, is a collection of essays about the actor.
"On Acting" by Olivier, may deliver some insights into his work and achievements;
"Confessions of an Actor" is his autobiography. Laurence Olivier was famously married to two actresses, Vivien Leigh, immortalized as Scarlet O'Hara in Gone With the Wind, and Joan Plowright.

On Wednesday, May 23, the Library of Congress will be awarding a new annual prize; the Gershwin Prize for popular song. The first recipient will honored at a gala concert held at the Warner Theater in downtown Washington DC. The Library of Congress describes the Gershwin Prize as follows: "named in honor of the legendary George and Ira Gershwin, this newly created award recognizes the profound and positive effect of popular music on the world’s culture. The prize will be given annually to a composer or performer whose lifetime contributions exemplify the standard of excellence associated with the Gershwins".

The performer/composer who will be receiving this award is Paul Simon. Once half of the very successful performing duo of Simon and Garfunkel, Paul Simon is also an extremely talented solo performer/composer. He has won numerous awards both as part of Simon and Garfunkel and as a solo performer. A press release from the Library of Congress gives details of Paul Simon's career and the many awards which he has received. A second press release gives the details of the concert. Those of us who are not able to attend the concert in Washington DC tonight will be able to share in the event when it is broadcast on PBS television June 27.

Paul Simon's song Graceland has been added to the National Recording Registry which was created by the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000. The goal of this law, Public Law 106-474, was to create "a comprehensive national program to ensure the survival, conservation, and increased public availability of America's sound recording heritage". Sound recordings preserved include music, monologues, and speeches. The Library of Congress provides a description of the National Recording Preservation Board, its members and its functions. Recordings can be nominated for preservation by anyone. The Library of Congress has published the criteria and procedure for nomination on their website.

If you are interested in listening to Graceland, the library has the CD in MAM. There are also many more Paul Simon CDs to choose from, among others : One-trick pony and Negotiations and love songs 1971-1986. If you are a Simon and Garfunkel fan, here are two good listening choices : Simon and Garfunkel's greatest hits and Simon and Garfunkel : the concert in Central Park. If you are a Gershwin fan or you are wondering exactly who the Gershwins are, the library has a biography of George Gershwin, a book about George and Ira titled Fascinating rhythm and a CD of Gershwin music, By George: Gershwin"s greatest hits.

It's a vast and ever-changing internet out there, and it can be tough to keep up with the changes. One of my favorite ways of finding out what's new on the internet is a great blog called Sites and Soundbytes. Published by Wisconsin library director Tasha Saecker, each entry of the blog reviews a new web site.

Don't have time to read a long entry? This blog's for you. Entries usually run about one paragraph, with a nice quick overview of the reviewed site and a link so that you can try it for yourself. The sites they have reviewed are widely varied, but usually useful, fun, or interesting. For example, recent sites they've reviewed include the Google Maps Street View tool; Lumosity, which they describe as "an online brain fitness exercise program"; and customizable music-broadcasting sites Pandora and Musicovery. The entries range from sites about gardening and produce to the latest in social software innovations. It's quite eclectic.

Have another blog that you like to read to stay up-to-date on new web sites? Let us know!

June 13, 1884 marked the debut of an invention which people still view today with either wild enthusiasm or utter terror. Chase's Calendar of Events recognizes June 13, 1884 as the anniversary of the opening of the first roller coaster. A lot was involved in the creation of the roller coaster; it didn't just spring into being that June day at Coney Island. Eighty years before that day, a roller coaster with wheels called "the Russian Mountains"was being ridden by people in Paris. Early roller coasters were a one way ride, sort of like going downhill on a sled, and they were very dangerous.

Americans discovered the roller coaster in the late 1800s. According to The American amusement park industry by Judith Adams, "the form of early American roller coasters seems to have been inspired by the switchback railway developed to transport coal from a quarry in Mauch Chunk, PA. When the railroad was abandoned, the townspeople converted it to a tourist attraction. In 1873 they were giving rides to about 35,000 tourists a year at a charge of 5 cents a person. LaMarcus Adna Thompson used this idea, with improvements suggested by others, and built a roller coaster. His roller coaster is the one celebrated as the first American roller coaster put into operation at Coney Island in 1884." Judith Adams gives some idea of what a success this was in her book. " At a nickel a ride, Thompson's receipts exceeded $600 a day. In three weeks, he had earned back his original investment."

Roller coasters have gone on to become extremely popular. Many amusement parks like Six Flags and Cedar Point Amusement Park in Ohio (roller coaster capitol of the world) have established their reputations through their roller coasters. Some people, myself included, would rather watch than ride, but we seem to be in the minority. I find myself amazed and intimidated by small children, just barely able to meet the height requirement, who are laughing and screaming and waving their arms in the air. I rode a roller coaster once, jammed down in the seat as far as I could go, hanging on for my life, with my eyes closed from the time the ride started until it stopped. Laugh and scream, HA! I was too terrified to make a sound!

If you are an aficionado, the library has some interesting books on roller coasters and amusement parks:
Roller coasters of America
A century of fun : a pictorial history of New England Amusement Parks
Remembering Benson's Wild Animal Farm, Hudson, New Hampshire
There are also a couple of children's books: The World's Wildest Roller Coasters and Amusement park science
and for those people (and I know you're out there) who feel best with their feet on the ground, the library has a Play Station 2 video game called Theme Park Roller Coaster.

So, this summer while you are up there waving your arms and screaming, look for me. I'll be the one standing down on the ground waving, with a big smile on my face. I'm not crazy, just scared!

Ever wanted to email a big file to a friend but decided not to because it would take forever for your friend to actually download the attached file? Or perhaps you wanted to attach a file that is a database or a program and decided not to because it might get filtered by your friend's email program? Well, I just learned of a cool solution to these problems. The service is called SendThisFile.com, and you can find it at http://www.sendthisfile.com.

To use this free service, you first have to register with them. Then, it's as easy as entering the recipient's email address, selecting the desired file to send, and clicking the SendThisFile button! The recipient receives an email containing a link to the selected file. All they have to do is click on the link to get to a webpage where they click on the Download This File link. That's all there is to it!

But are there limitations about file size, or even the number of files you can send at once? The answer is no! So enjoy using this terrific service!

Do you know of other nifty web services like this one? Tell us about it by clicking on the "Comments" link below this entry, and writing up a summary. If your recommendation is particularly excellent, we'll write an entire entry about it in our blog and mention you as the source.

When the space shuttle Atlantis lands this week, it will return to Earth with a record holder. At 12:47 CDT today, Sunita Williams broke the record for the longest duration spaceflight by a woman. At that time, Williams surpassed the previous mark of 188 days, 4 hours set in 1996. She is also the woman who has spent the most hours outside a spacecraft, having completed four spacewalks during Expedition 15 with a total time of 29 hours, 17 minutes. It is particularly interesting that the Massachusetts native made history today, as it is the anniversary of another groundbreaking space mission. Twenty-four years ago on this date, the space shuttle Challenger, equipped with a new robotic arm to deploy and retrieve satellites, launched flight STS-7. One of the operators of that device was Sally Ride, the first American woman in space.

Ride is a women of many talents. She received a partial tennis scholarship to a prep school in Los Angeles and was ranked eighteenth on the junior circuit. Tennis legend Billie Jean King even told Ride that she could play professionally. Ride decided instead to focus on her studies, earning both a BS and a BA from Stanford University. She remained at Stanford for her graduate work in physics. In 1978, Ride learned that she was one of 35 people chosen from a field of 8,000 for spaceflight training. She had applied "almost on a whim" when NASA fielded applications for the first time in quite a few years and decided not to exclude women. Ride was assigned to the ground support crew for shuttle flights in 1981 and 1982. She made history in 1983 as the youngest person sent into orbit, as well as the first American woman in space, and ventured into the final frontier again in October 1984. Training for her third mission was cut short in the wake of the Challenger disaster. Ride was named to President Reagan's Rogers Commission, which investigated the explosion. She was the only astronaut on the panel.

Ride's work has extended beyond NASA. She was a member of President Bill Clinton's transition team in 1992 and has dedicated her life to educating others. Ride is a professor of physics at University of California, San Diego and also headed their California Space Institute. She has also worked for Space.com, which maintains a website about the space industry, and founded NASA's EarthKam project, which allows children to take and download photos of the Earth from space.

Ride is particularly passionate about encouraging girls and women to pursue careers in math and science. Ride's mother Joyce had also harbored an interest in science, but noted that in college, she encountered a "wall of silence." She and other women in the class were "nonpersons." Even today, girls face resistance when they show interest in math and science. Former Harvard President Lawrence Summer's comment about girls' lack of ability in those areas is case in point. In an article about Ride that I found through the Biography Resource Center database, author KC Cole notes that it is "quite an achievement" that many of the country's top mathematicians and scientists are women because well into the twentieth century, many were not allowed to receive advanced degrees in those fields. On the lecture circuit, Ride meets many children, both boys and girls, who want to be astronauts, but the college physics classes are predominantly male. According to Cole, Ride "gets the answers when she talks with women who wanted to be astronomers or archaeologists, but were told that they were dumb in math--in the third grade! Or were excluded from the engineering club in high school." Ride also says, "you see all these boys who get C's in math and say, 'I'm going to be an engineer!' And all these girls who get A's in math and say, 'I'm not good enough.'" To remedy this problem, Ride founded Imaginary Lines, which provides support for girls interested in science, math, and technology, and the Sally Ride Club, which is geared toward upper elementary and middle school girls.

Now, the next time you hear Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire," you'll know a little more about the woman in the last verse sandwiched between "Wheel of Fortune" and "heavy metal."

Sources:
"Astronaut Suni Williams Sets the Record Straight, and Long." NASA http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition15/s_williams_record.html (accessed 6/16/07).

Cole, KC. "Sally Ride: a generation later, the first female astronaut is still on a mission." Smithsonian 36 no. 8 (Nov 2005): 64-5. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC.

"Sally Ride." Notable Women Scientists. Gale Group, 2000.
Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC.

Last weekend, with a mixture of trepidation and anticipation, I returned to college for a class reunion. A little more wrinkled (or "well-seasoned" as I like to think of it), we cautiously peered at each other, checked out the name tags, and tried to figure out what we had in common. Once we'd nailed down how we'd known each other (or given up trying), the conversation moved on to "what are you up to these days?"

It was fascinating to hear what changes a few years had brought: new careers, children, home buying, weddings. I should probably disclose here that I went to a women's college, and was fortunate to graduate at a time when women were mostly free to choose their own paths. So it is not surprising that classmates have gone on to become doctors, lawyers, hedge fund partners, stay-at-home moms, librarians, voice teachers, college professors, social workers, and more. Even now, though, the issue of working mothers is still debated in some circles. In fact, we have a number of articles on both sides of the argument in an excellent database called "Opposing Viewpoints." There's even an article or two on stay-at-home dads. You can reach the database by going to our home page, www.nashualibrary.org, then looking in the banner under "Databases"-->"Most Popular"-->"Opposing Viewpoints."

You can also read more about the work-family balance in magazine articles such as "Why Moms Should Work" (Ladies Home Journal, April 2007) in the EBSCO database, again available through our web site. (For direct access to the alphabetical list of databases, go to http://www.nashua.lib.nh.us/IbrowseAdultAlpha.htm.)

If you'd rather have a book on the career/family balance, there's a collection of essays from a variety of perspectives, "Mommy wars: stay-at-home and career moms face off on their choices, their lives, their families", edited by Leslie Morgan Steiner. You'll find this on the parenting shelf in the children's department.

Some of my classmates always knew what they wanted to do; others had changed paths along the way. For those considering a change of career, a good place to start is the classic career guide, "What color is your parachute?: a practical manual for job-hunters & career changers", by Richard Nelson Bolles.

Another career book that caught my eye looks more at changing trends in how people approach their careers: "The opt-out revolt : why people are leaving companies to create kaleidoscope careers," by Lisa A. Mainiero & Sherry E. Sullivan. Library Journal describes this one as "the results of a five-year-long quantitative and qualitative research study examining how and why the career patterns of both men and women have changed from the traditional ever upward model to a path with multiple forks and rest stops."

If you're more interested in stories about others who have made life changes, there's "U-turn: what if you woke up one morning and realized you were living the wrong life?," by Bruce Grierson.

Those seeking a new career might also want to check out the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, online at http://www.bls.gov/oco/ or in paper at the library. This handbook gives information about what various jobs entail, what working conditions to expect, what the outlook for growth in the field is, what salaries are typical, and what training or education is required.

A lot of times finding a topic for my blog is a real struggle and I have to count on someone doing something wonderful or, sad to say, someone dying. Other times I'm forced to rely on Chase's calendar of events for something to write about. Once in a while, a blog topic comes up and hits me in the head, like now. I've been very busy focused on helping to plan my daughter's wedding. Now I suddenly find myself being pulled like a tug-of-war rope, only in several directions. My widowed mother, who is soon to be eighty-two, and my two closest aunts, eighty-five and eighty-six, would like more of my attention and, how did this happen, my father-in-law is soon to be ninety. He lives six hours away.

I'm very fortunate because they are all in good health physically, but I begin to see a time when that might not be so. My father-in-law just realized that he is now more than ten years older than his father was when he could no longer be trusted to drive. My mother lives in an area where she must drive to everything. All of these worries, which were always too far removed to think about, are now very immediate. My father-in-law is in better shape, because although my husband is the only son, he does have three sisters, all in the immediate area. My only sibling is male, and at least three hours away.

I decided to do some research so that, although I certainly wouldn't be prepared, at least I wouldn't be completely lost. I felt that I needed to do some reading, so I started with the collection at NPL. One of the first books that I found was the best. How to say it to seniors helped me to understand why sometimes the most innocuous sounding statement can be the wrong thing to say. More than that, it gave me some insight into that silly-sounding but so hard to answer question, "what are they thinking?". The rest of these books are on my reading list for the summer.

Is your parent in good hands? : protecting your aging parent from financial abuse and neglect
Taking care of Mom & Dad : The money, politics and emotions that come with supporting your parents
Caring for yourself while caring for your aging parents : How to help, how to survive
Are your parents driving you crazy? : how to resolve the most common dilemmas with aging parents
Changing places: a journey with my parents into their old age
Elder care made easier : Dr. Marion's 10 steps to help you care for an aging loved one

If you need more immediate help, the U S Department of Health and Human Services has a webpage called eldercare locator which will help with connections to services for the elderly within your community. Through two of the tabs at the top of the webpage labeled The Aging Network and Resources, you can connect to a wealth of helpful information including the website for the American Administration on Aging. The Resources tab will enable you to access links to websites providing information on aging organizations, elder rights, and general health resources among other things.

Earlier this week I was flipping through the channels on cable and stumbled upon a very interesting documentary on PBS named "The Case for War: In Defense of Freedom". The show is part of a larger series of documentaries titled America at a Crossroads. In "The Case for War", Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle "travels the globe articulating, defending and debating the neoconservative case for an assertive American foreign policy."

I found the show particularly interesting because it didn't try to glorify the case for war along political lines or belittle opponents of the war. Rather, it treated the issues and the people involved with a great deal of respect. And it includes numerous conversations Perle had with those who strongly disagree with his point of view, including family members of veterans who died in the war.

Some of the more prominent individuals he speaks with include

• Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of Arabic newspaper Al Quds, one of the few journalists who has interviewed Osama Bin Laden
• Simon Jenkins, a British journalist and author who writes a column twice weekly for the Guardian and disagrees strongly with Perle's opinions
• Patrick Buchanan, a former Republican politician and current news pundit. Buchanan also disagrees with Perle's necon views.
• Natan Sharansky, one of the founders and the spokesman of Jewish and the Refusenik movement in Moscow who was arrested and in July 1978 convicted on charges of treason and spying for the United States and sentenced to 13 years of forced labor. Sharansky shares many of Perle's neoconservative views, including the belief that countries in which liberty and democracy have been seriously hampered should be "forcedly democratized".
• Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, who helped broker a peace agreement among the warring factions in Bosnia that led to the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords, in 1995. Holbrook strongly disagrees with Perle's neoconservative ideals.

The library has books written by or about many of the men listed above. Here are a few:

• An end to evil : how to win the war on terror / David Frum, Richard Perle.
• Where the right went wrong : how neoconservatives subverted the Reagan revolution and hijacked the Bush presidency / Patrick J. Buchanan.
• To end a war / Richard Holbrooke.

Sources
Sharansky quote: "Natan Sharansky, the ideologist of forced democratization", http://www.voltairenet.org/article30245.html, viewed on June 22, 2007.

This is a blog about dogs. I confess right now, I am a dog person and often a rabbit person. Like every other dog lover, I am concerned for the health of my dog. There's a lot to be concerned about, especially in the summer. I worry about the heat, should the shades be up or down? Should the windows be open or closed? Do I leave the fan on or the air conditioner? Do I put ice cubes in his water dish, knowing that as soon as I leave, he will take them out, flip them in the air and push them around the kitchen floor. All those worries don't even include ticks, lyme disease, kennel cough, heartworm - the list is long!

When someone I know has a medical problem, I go to the online medical sites like medlineplus and I read about the problem. When I took my dog to the vet and heard words like hip dysplasia and arthritis, I needed somewhere to go for answers that I could study and understand. I found three websites that had a good supply of detailed information that was from sources that I felt could be trusted. Although there was some product pushing going on, it didn't overwhelm me. One of these websites is the dog health center, part of the larger Animal Planet website. Here, among other things, I learned about canine acupuncture - an alternative treatment for dogs with hip dysplasia and arthritis. Another good website is the Internet Animal Hospital. Good information here comes with the type of pictures that are seen in health books. Poor dental hygiene, a hip joint misshapen by arthritis, cataracts, all in living color photos. A little too much information sometimes. They also do not discriminate, even cat people can find information here. The third website is the ASPCA where information is available in the Pet Care section on many important topics. Take note of the orange column down the right hand side of the page. Health advice for dog owners, cat owners, even small pet owners. The ASPCA even links you to information about their pet health insurance plans!

If you are a person who prefers to have the printed word on a page in front of you, the library has a large section of books dealing with dog training and health. One of these books is the Angell Memorial Animal Hospital book of wellness and preventive care for dogs by Darlene Arden. It can be found in the 600s - 636.7 A to be exact. Another good book is Vet on call : the best home remedies for keeping your dog healthy. This book is also found in the 600s at 636.7 V.

Another source of information can be found in the library databases by using EBSCO. EBSCO is one of the things being affected by the library's computer system upgrade. It can currently be accessed only from library computers. As soon as the upgrade is complete, it will again be accessible from your home computer. On EBSCO, you can search for published articles written about dog health or you can browse editions of a particular magazine such as Dog World.

As I mentioned before, cat health information can also be located on these websites. But would anyone care about that? Maybe rabbits......?

Baltimore is an interesting city, and, for a variety of reasons, I have visited there a number of times. On one of my trips I visited the Babe Ruth Museum which is housed in the home in which the Babe was born. The exhibits were very interesting, and just visiting the house itself was a fun experience. Baltimore has a second sports museum, Sports Legends at Camden Yards, which has an exhibit featuring Babe Ruth including items from a trip which Babe made to Japan. I bring this subject up because, ninety-three years ago, Babe Ruth made his major league baseball debut. According to his official biography, Babe Ruth was first signed by the Baltimore Orioles where he played for five months. The Orioles were at that time a minor league team and a part of the Boston Red Sox system. It only took those five months for him to be noticed by the Red Sox, and on July 11, 1914, the rest became history.

Babe Ruth's official biography is found on his official website. The website is sponsored by the family of Babe Ruth and the Babe Ruth Baseball League and is packed with all types of information about The Babe. The About Babe Ruth section contains not only his official biography, but also his baseball statistics, his achievements and awards, photos and quotes by him and about him. The Community section lists Tribute websites, like the ones put up by the Yankees and Red Sox, and provides a link to each one. It is also possible for anyone who has a tribute website to Babe Ruth to have it listed here on the Babe's official site. In the Downloads section, you can download free screen savers and computer wallpaper featuring Babe Ruth. The Shopping section will sell you everything from books and videos about Babe Ruth to life-sized cardboard figures of him!

Babe Ruth's career had amazing successes at the same time that his personal life had amazing ups and downs. He became a legend for his good qualities and a legend for his bad. In 1919, after a record-breaking pitching performance which helped the Red Sox win the 1918 World Series, Babe Ruth was traded to the New York Yankees, apparently to assist the new Red Sox owner in establishing his career as a Broadway producer. This was the beginning of the well-known Curse of the Bambino. The Babe's career as a Yankee can be found in detail on the NY Yankees official website This was a time period when Babe Ruth developed another of his talents, acting. The internet movie database lists a number of movies that included Babe Ruth, some sports shorts in which he was the only person involved, some movies where he made a cameo appearance as himself, and one movie, Babe Comes Home, in which he played the title role of Babe Dugan.

Babe Ruth's life is too eventful to be discussed at length in this blog. The only other career highlight that I will mention is his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936 as one of the first five players to be inducted. If baseball statistics are of interest to you, baseball-reference.com has a large collection of Babe Ruth's statistics as does Baseball Almanac which even includes his salary for each year that he played in the major leagues.

The library has some new materials for those interested in the career and life of Babe Ruth:
two new DVD : Everyone's hero and Reverse of the curse of the Bambino which traces the history of the curse, and highlights the Red Sox in the 2004 World Series.
several new books : Ty and the Babe : baseball's fiercest rivals, The big bam : the life and times of Babe Ruth , Babe Ruth : launching the legend, and Sultans of swat : four great sluggers of the New York Yankees.

So, as Babe Ruth said "The only real game, I think, in the world is baseball."

Did any of you watch some of the Live Earth "The Concerts for Climate Crisis" last weekend? The few hours that I watched were incredible. If you don't know what I'm talking about, Live Earth was a 24-hour, 7-continent concert series taking place on 7/7/07 brought together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people to trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis. Even though the event is over, you can still watch performances of individual artists on the web. Just go to http://liveearth.msn.com/artists.

At the main Live Earth website, http://www.liveearth.org, you can also find a lot of information about how you can participate in confronting the planet's climate crisis. Try visiting the Live Earth Climate Crisis Tools & News page. One of the issues I read about on the site was that old laptop computers are very energy inefficient. By upgrading to a more efficient laptop computer, and bringing your old laptop to an electronic products recycling program, you can make a real difference. In fact, many of the big computer manufacturers have their own recycling programs and also offer refurbished computers. In case you are thinking about getting rid of your computer(s), here are links to a few such manufacturers and their recycling programs:

• Dell Computers
• Apple
• HP
• Sony

And be sure to take the Live Earth pledge and commit to taking action against the climate crisis. Find out more here, http://liveearthpledge.org/answer_the_call.php

Big old abandoned buildings intrigue me. And they don't get much bigger and older than the abandoned ancient city of Machu Picchu. That's probably part of the reason that Machu Picchu was recently voted one of the new seven wonders of the world in a contest run by the New7Wonders Foundation. The other six winners were Chichen Itza, the Taj Mahal, Rome's Colosseum, Jordan's Petra, Brazil's Christ Redeemer statue, and the Great Wall of China.

Machu Picchu, believed to have been built in the fifteenth century and abandoned in the 1500s, was rediscovered on July 24, 1911. Yale professor Hiram Bingham located the ruins of this ancient Incan city, complete with palaces and temples, in the Andes Mountains in Peru. A quick overview about Machu Picchu is available in the World Book Encyclopedia online, available through our web site at http://www.nashua.lib.nh.us/IbrowseAdultAlpha.htm. If you'd like to read historical newspaper articles about the expedition, try our Newspaper Archives database (available in the library only). Or, for more detailed reading, we also have some books on the topic:

The Machu Picchu guidebook : a self-guided tour, by Ruth M. Wright, Alfredo Valencia Zegarra. (call number 918.537 W)
Machu Picchu, by Sheryl Peterson. (call number JUV 985.3 P)
Machu Picchu, by Elizabeth Mann ; with illustrations by Amy Crehore. (call number JUV 985.3 M)

If you'd like to read more about the recent "New Seven Wonders of the World," try our Newsbank database (also available at http://www.nashua.lib.nh.us/IbrowseAdultAlpha.htm) for current news articles. The contest winners were announced on July 7, 2007. You might also like to stop by the Stearns Room, where we keep the most recent month's newspapers in paper copy.

The new seven wonders contest was decided by call-in and internet votes from all over the world. A more extensive and "serious" project is the UNESCO world heritage program. According to their web site, the UNESCO project "seeks to encourage the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity." There are several hundred sites designated as World Heritage sites, and you can find the list at http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/. Machu Picchu, Petra, the Great Wall, the Taj Mahal, and Chichen-Itza are all World Heritage sites, as is the Parthenon, the Great Barrier Reef, and hundreds of other sites of historical, cultural, and natural significance.

Last week I wrote with general suggestions for kids heading off to college. This week I'm writing with suggestions for the parents left behind. Being left behind is a scary thing. At least it feels that way sometimes. I only have two children and the college process was a different experience both times.

My daughter was the first to go off to college. Everything was very organized; we spent the whole summer buying items on her list and packing. She went to a college where she didn't know anyone and moving in was very efficient and very stressed. We barely met her roommate. When it was done, she wanted us gone . When my son left for college, it was very laid back - just like him. I pushed him to go shopping for what he needed and I pushed him to help pack. He was headed to a college where he didn't know anyone either, but by the time we had moved him in, with the help of his roommate and other assorted people, he seemed perfectly at home. We suggested that we should leave.

There are a lot of questions to be considered. How long should you wait before you call to check in and how often should you call? What do you do if he/she is homesick? How long should your student stay on campus before coming home? How soon should you visit? How much advice do you give about classes and class choices? How much advice about roommate problems? Most colleges devote a portion of their website to parents and parent questions. Many area students will be attending UNH so I am using the UNH website as an example. On the toolbar across the top of the website is a tab that says Parents. The tab connects you to the Parents section where you can find out just about everything; including when the important dates are, how to become involved in your child's college as a parent, how to contact another parent to ask a question about college life and of course information about paying the bills. Most colleges offer a Parent's Handbook, either downloadable from online, mailed to you or handed out on moving-in day. A good source for answers to questions that you don't want to bug your student about. UNH also has an online publication called The Inside Scoop which has a Parents section filled with useful recommendations. Your student's college probably has a similar website with important information for you - the parent. Just spent a little time poking around there.

The library has a couple of books which are very good at helping parents adjust to the whole thing. One of them is recommended reading for parents by UNH. Don't tell me what to do, just send money is a guide to dealing with your child's college issues in a different environment in a different way. Another helpful book is Letting go : a parent's guide to understanding the college years. It isn't as humorous and entertaining to read, but it provides thoughtful information on the changing college landscape and the changing world.

This is also a time when parents need to begin giving thought to the empty nest and the changes which the family will go through in the future. The library has some insightful books written on that topic. The eight seasons of parenthood, Family re-union : reconnecting parents and children in adulthood and Letting go and finding yourself : separating from your children , an older book with a lot to say about the emotions that arise with this letting go process.

On the lighter side, get ready to enjoy yourself. College visits are fun, so are the visits when your student comes home. Just wait for that readjustment period when he/she comes back to spend the whole summer! Good luck and enjoy.

When I was young, I spent a lot of time at my grandparents' house. I have many fond memories of building hideouts, playing with my siblings and cousins, and watching TV in the den. Many a Saturday afternoon we watched the lineup of shows on PBS: The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross's happy little trees, Victory Garden, Julia Child, and The Frugal Gourmet. However, I wasn't quite as interested in This Old House. Times sure have changed! Now that I'm a homeowner, I appreciate it much more. My husband and I have been known to watch it on Saturday mornings, and it airs on avariety of stations. I enjoy following the projects, and I marvel at how the crew makes everything look so easy on Ask This Old House. My husband subscribes to the magazine, which you can get here at the library. I even had the pleasure of meeting host Kevin O'Connor at a luncheon. (We went to the same college.)

I have grand ideas, but my husband and I are not Norm Abram. Our home improvement projects are fairly minimal--think spackling, caulking, painting, and little bit of patchwork. We leave the big jobs, like plastering our ceilings, to the experts. But, if you are handy or just want some ideas, the library has numerous resources. Aside from the afore mentioned magazine, we have books on home improvement, painting, and remodeling, among other topics that might be helpful if you are doing work on your house. You can also look at the HGTV and DIY websites.

Home improvements will make you happy in the end, but they can be stressful. What seems like a simple task often becomes more involved and complex than you had anticipated. I am writing from experience!

If you have a favorite home improvement show or any tips, please leave a comment below.

Summer is winding down. At least that seems to be the way it feels when August comes. Days get shorter, crickets begin their nightly songs, and back-to-school sales are competing for attention. Before that last bit of summer slips through your fingers, give some thought to getting to know New Hampshire better, and having some fun at the same time!

New Hampshire has many interesting and exciting places to go and attractions to see. Some are free and some do charge. All can enjoyed as day trips. The state of New Hampshire maintains a website for visitors. Information found on this website can help you plan some fun family day trips. The family attractions page has a list of great places to visit which can be sorted by region, by attraction type or even alphabetically.

New Hampshire State Parks have their own website as well. Here you can find a list of closing dates for the parks as well as a chart which displays all of the parks and indicates what is available at each park - for example, swimming, biking, fishing, pet policy. Natural areas and wayside parks are also listed and described.

New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts are all noted for their agricultural fairs. These are great entertainment, and, at least one takes place every weekend in August and September. There is a webpage for these fairs which gives the dates for each fair and provides a link to it's webpage. Here you will find fair hours, directions, events, admission fees and a contact number for any other questions which you might have.

The library also has guidebooks to New Hampshire which will help you to plan family day trips.

Fun with the family - Vermont and New Hampshire
New Hampshire - Off the beaten path
New Hampshire Curiosities
Natural wonders of New Hampshire
and if your dog loves family travels : Best hikes with dogs: New Hampshire and Vermont

So go ahead, ignore those crickets and plan a family day trip or two. What do they know anyway? It's still summer - just ask your kids!

I have become quite familiar with this rhyme over the past week. Last Saturday, I was overly aggressive when doing yard work at my sister's house. I pulled vines and ivy from a stone wall and around a tree. Unfortunately, I did not pay close enough attention. Some of that ivy was of the poisonous variety. I discovered this later that night when a red blotch appeared on my arm. The next day, more red blotches and blisters appeared. By Tuesday, my forearms and right hand were covered, and I had blisters on my fingers, legs, and feet. (I did wear gloves, so go figure!) I've been itchy and uncomfortable and wrapped in gauze, so I'm writing a public service announcement to warn you about this plant.

I am not alone. Poison ivy is one of three plants that causes an allergic reaction in 60-85% (statistics vary) of the population. The Boston Globe featured an article about this pesky plant in the Northwest section of yesterday's paper. It appears that poison ivy plants are more potent and larger now than they were 50 years ago. You can read an article in today's Globe on Boston.com about Jon Sachs, the creator of poison-ivy.org. On this website, you can look at pictures of plants, order identification posters, read stories from the afflicted, and even see some nasty poison ivy rashes.

The first key to avoidance is recognizing poison ivy, oak, and sumac. Poison ivy may grow as a bush, plant or vine, and will often wrap itself around trees. Poison oak, which is especially common in the west, can grow as a low plant or bush, and its leaves resemble oak leaves. Both poison ivy and poison oak typically grow three leaflets to a stem. Poison sumac grows as a bush or a tree looks different than the other two. It has two rows of 7-13 smooth leaflets on each stem and a leaflet at the tip. All three plants contain urushiol, which causes the reaction. If you are exposed to poison ivy or its kin, wash immediately. If you are quick enough, you may prevent the oil from penetrating your skin. However, it may only take minutes to do its damage. The rash may appear 12 to 48 hours after exposure and last from one to three weeks.

It is important to remember a few things:
-You must have direct contact with the urushiol to contract the rash. This includes touching the plant itself or any objects and clothing that touched the plant. These objects likely have the oil on them. For example, if you walk through poison ivy, you can spread the rash by touching your shoes. The oil can stay active on objects for years, so it is important to wash them, as well as your skin.

-The rash is not contagious. As mentioned above, it can only be spread through contact with the oil. Of course, if someone touches an exposed item before it is washed, that person may be affected.

-Contrary to popular belief, the rash does not spread when the blisters break becuase the blisters do not contain urushiol. It may appear that the poison ivy is spreading because the rash and blisters may not appear all at once.

-Scratching is not advised because dirty fingernails can cause infection; however, doing so will not spread the rash for the same reasons as above.

-If the rash is serious, see a doctor.

For more information about poison ivy, its causes, symptoms, and treatment, take a look at the FDA website or MedlinePlus.gov. Type poison ivy in the search box at the top of the page, and click on "Poison ivy, oak, and sumac." The site will will list information from various reliable sources such as the National Library of Medicine, The American Academy of Family Physicians, and the Mayo Clinic.

Have you been afflicted? Do you have a particularly helpful relief method? Leave a comment below.

I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge Garrison Keillor's birthday today. He has been a source of inspiration for me for many blog entries. He is also an ardent supporter of public libraries, as evidenced in a wonderful speech he made at the American Library Association annual conference this year. (It was broadcast on C-SPAN a couple of weeks ago and is still available online for viewing.) Snippets of his speech were repeated in his June 27 article on Salon.com, "The Library Fix," in which he referred to the public library as "one of the nobler expressions of democracy."

Keillor is best known for his radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, which is broadcast on National Public Radio. The show features live music, plus skits such as Guy Noir, Private Eye (and, of course, the adventures of Ruth Harrison, Reference Librarian). One of the mainstays of the show is the news from Lake Wobegon, a fictional Minnesota town. Keillor has written a number of books based on his Lake Wobegon radio characters. Among these are:

Lake Wobegon Summer 1956
Wobegon Boy
Mother, father, uncle, aunt: stories from Lake Wobegon (audiocassette)

A new Lake Wobegon title, Pontoon, is due out in September.

Keillor is also behind a little project called the Writer's Almanac. The Writer's Almanac is a short daily broadcast on National Public Radio. It usually follows the format of discussing the major literary landmarks of the day--authors' birthdays, anniversaries of publications, and so on--followed by a reading of a poem. Many's the commute that was made more pleasant by a few minutes of the Writer's Almanac. Archives of the program are available online at http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org. Along those lines, Keillor has published a couple of poetry anthologies, consisting of poems that he selected: Good Poems for Hard Times (large print) and Good Poems.

You can read more about Garrison Keillor in the Literature Resource Center database, found on our web site at http://www.nashua.lib.nh.us/IbrowseAdultAlpha.htm.

In a previous blog I discussed Baseball reference.com as an excellent source of baseball statistics. It is an excellent source, but a coworker pointed out to me that it can be much more. There are numerous links down the left-hand side of the webpage. You can view MVP and Cy Young award winners from 1911 to today; you can see a play-by-play writeup of any All-star game and all the Home Run Derby contestants and their scores. Baseball-reference.com can help you to use up a lot of your spare time in many interesting ways.

The most fun can be had with a section called Frivolities. Oracle of Baseball will allow you to take two random baseball players and create a chain of connection between them. This is sort of a baseball version of the idea behind Six degrees of separation. I put in Barry Bonds and Ted Williams. The link between them needed four players. The real fun starts when you exclude a player from the chain. I excluded every player in the chain and Oracle established a new four player chain with completely different players.

Another interesting section was Non-pitchers who pitched. I was curious to find out what a non-pitcher was doing pitching in the first place, but I never did find this answer. Why would you ask the left fielder to pitch?! But anyway, in the lists, I noticed the name Terry Francona. I selected him and was taken to a page about him which included all of his statistics, but also, similar batters, similar players by age, and a breakdown of all the teams that he played for and how much he earned. There was also a connection to the Dressed to the nines online exhibit from the Baseball Hall of Fame. Here you could see what the uniforms looked like, both home and away, that were worn by each team during the time that he played there.

You can find players who were born on your birthday, players who died on your birthday and players who were born in any state or country. Did you know that 4 baseball players were born in Nashua NH? This is a fascinating way to spend a rainy day or one of those really hot days. If you love baseball and everything about it, this is the place for you!

Most of us are familiar with the term Wiki, and some of us have even used Wikipedia and other Wikis, but what does Wiki mean? Well, wikiwiki is a Hawaiian work for “quick”. A wiki is an online site that anyone can access and edit, allowing users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal pages on the fly. Wiki is unusual among group communication mechanisms in that it allows the organization of the content to be edited in addition to the content itself.

Thus, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. You may have noticed glaring mistakes in Wikipedia. Don’t be afraid to sign on and correct the mistakes! That’s the whole nature of Wikipedia. It’s an encyclopedia for all of us. By the same token, Wikipedia is not considered authoritative since anyone at all can edit it and is therefore not a good source for important research nor for citations.

There are many other wiki’s online. You can see a list of some of the largest wikis out there . You may wish to take a look at:

Wikitravel - a “project to create a free, complete, up-to-date, and reliable world-wide travel guide.”,

LyricWiki - where you can find song lyrics by artist, album, song, genre, hometown, label or language,

Wiktionary - a multilingual dictionary including definitions, etymologies, pronunciations, sample quotations, synonyms, antonyms and translations. As I write this blog, the site contains 491,731 entries in 389 languages,

TV IV - a “compendium of television knowledge where you can search by all programs or by your favorite type(s ) of program such as drama, comedyand reality. It also contains a glossary, ratings and DVD releases,

ArmchairGM - you can read, write and discuss sports and rate players, teams, and sporting events,

PortalNews - a sports news site.

Wikimovies - a totally free movie database that welcomes all users. Its aim is to collect as much information and as mamy facts about all movies as possible. The information may be actors with biographies and filmographies, soundtracks with information about the authors, lyrics and release dates and many more. In additional to all textual information, Wikimovies contains multimedia data like photos, galleries, trailers etc.

You can create your own Wiki too. You will need to use a Wiki engine. There are several places where you can do that including PeanutButterWiki (according to Google "as easy as a peanut butter sandwich", Socialtext, Wetpaint, and Wikia. See the Top Ten Wiki Engines. Try one out!

And take a look at our library's Wikinomics: how mass collaboration changes everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams.

On Friday, August 17, hundreds of 10, 11 and 12-year-olds from around the world descended upon Williamsport, PA for the Little League World Series. As baseball fans, my husband and I make a point to watch this event every year. Even though the players are little kids, the excitement of this tournament captivates us, especially when we make a personal connection to a team. In 2001 and 2004, a team from my home state of Rhode Island played, and my college town of Worcester was represented in 2002. The following year we were on the edge of our seats when Saugus, MA won in dramatic fashion to advance to the United States Championship game. We lived in the adjacent town at the time, and quite a few of my friends are from Saugus. The final game of 2005 did not disappoint, as West Oahu Little League won on a walk-off home run. We had honeymooned in Hawaii a year before, so my husband and I rooted for them throughout the tournament. I'm sure many in New Hampshire felt pride last year when Portsmouth represented New England. Over the weekend, Walpole, MA played two close games. They are 1-1, and play tonight (Mon.) at 6 p.m.

This nationally televised, international tournament has a humble beginning. Although adult baseball clubs tried to organize teams for pre-teen boys as early as the 1880s, an extensive organized league did not exist for quite some time. American Legion ball, which began in the 1920s, was geared towards teen-agers, excluding the younger boys. In 1938, Carl Stotz, of Williamsport, PA, decided that he wanted to find a way to provide organized baseball for his nephews, with whom he often played. Carl aimed to "provide a wholesome program of baseball for the boys of Williamsport, as a way to teach them the ideals of sportsmanship, fair play, and teamwork." The following year, Stotz, George Bebble, and Bert Bebble formed and managed the first three Little Leage Teams, which were funded by $30 sponsorships. The first Little League game was played on June 6, 1939, with George's Lundy Lumber team defeating Carl's Lycoming Dairy team 23-8. (Jumbo Pretzel sponsored the third team.) The Little League Board of Directors included the men and their wives Grayce, Annabelle, and Eloise, respectively, with John and Peggy Lindemuth joining shortly thereafter.

Eight years later, the Board of Directors organized a tournament for the 17 known Little League programs. Eleven teams from Pennsylvania and New Jersey participated in what was then called the National Little League Tournament. More than 2,500 people watched the Maynard Midget League of Williamsport defeat the Lock Haven (PA) All Stars 16-7. With the results printed in newspapers around the country, interest in the Little League concept spread. The next year, the organization grew to 94 leagues, and in 1950 went international, with teams at each end of the Panama Canal. By 1955, Little League baseball was played in all 48 states. Monterrey, Mexico became the first team outside of the United States to win the Little League World Series in 1957. Through the years, Little League continued to grow exponentially. The organization now sponsors leagues for both boys and girls in various age groups. In 2001, the Little League World Series was expanded from 8 to 16 teams, and a second field, Little League Volunteer Stadium, was built just north of the existing Howard J. Lamade Stadium to accommodate the additional games.*

Baseball has been called the national pastime, and for many, Little League and other youth baseball programs are a big part of life. The whole family is often involved, whether as players, coaches, or fans. I remember watching my friends play softball when I was a kid, and now, I cheer for my nephews. My husband was a youth baseball coach and works and volunteers at the Reading (MA) Baseball School. If you want to learn more about Little League Baseball, take a look at the organization's website, or check out some of the books we have at the library about Little League itself, as well as coaching, instruction, and one about that thrilling 2005 Little League World Series. If you want to get involved with a Nashua team, you can visit the Nashua Little League website.

*Sources:
"History of Little League." Little League Online Baseball & Softball http://www.littleleague.org/about/history.asp (accessed August 20, 2007).

"Little League Chronology." Little League Online Baseball & Softball http://www.littleleague.org/about/chronology.asp (accessed August 20, 2007).

"Little League World Series History." Little League Online Baseball & Softball http://www.littleleague.org/about/worldserieshistory.asp (accessed August 20, 2007).

I love gadgets and computers. But given how fast things change in the tech world these days, it's hard to keep up sometimes. The amount and speed of the changes can be overwhelming. To stay on top of it all, I like to look at short reviews of the latest software and gadgets. For this, there are a couple of web sites and blogs I frequent because they break things down into manageable chunks.

Sites and Soundbytes, as I wrote earlier, is one of my favorite blogs for short, sweet tech info. Just this weekend, I stumbled upon Webware.com, a site that gives me the same sort of technology Cliff's Notes. Webware focuses on web-based applications and services. Among their recent articles you can find an overview of changes to Facebook's instant messaging system, an article about tools to help you manage your user names and passwords, and even a blurb about the iPhone's golf score tool (seriously!). The content is varied, it's updated regularly, and the site is affiliated with CNET. In fact, I found Webware by following a link on CNET's web site. (CNET is my go-to site for reasonably unbiased technology news and reviews. However, it's a rather vast web site, so not for the easily overwhelmed.)

So, what's your quick and painless method for staying current?

If you have watched TV, looked at a newspaper or even just listened to people talking, chances are that you have heard of Hurricane Dean. You would also find it next to impossible to avoid knowing about Hurricane Katrina and the damage that she caused. I used to think that hurricanes were interesting and very exciting and I was always disappointed when one came up the East Coast and missed New Hampshire and Maine. Over the years, there have been very few hurricanes of note to strike the New England area. The National Weather Service Forecast Office in Boston MA has historical statistics on New England hurricanes up to the year 1997. The site was last updated in 2005, so it is not useful for current information, but it does contain a section on disasterous New England hurricanes which describes the worst ones in detail.

I have a couple of vivid memories of hurricanes that occurred when I was younger. During one of them, we had no electricity for at least 3 days. It was so long that even for a kid, being without electricity had lost its charm long before the power came back on. Another time, my mother took my brother and I for a walk to the beach to look at the waves, unfortunately during the eye of the storm. She was quite surprised when the whole thing started up again. My hurricane memories are certainly nothing like the memories of survivors of Hurricane Katrina, who will definitely never find the thought of a hurricane interesting and exciting.

If you are one of those people fortunate enough never to have experienced the devastation that a hurricane can bring, you may find severe weather, like hurricanes, interesting enough to want to know more. There are websites which can provide you with up to date information on all hurricanes including information on how hurricanes are formed. Weather.com has Hurricane Central ; the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration or NOAA has a site called the National Hurricane Center. Channel nine in Manchester has a Hurricane Page where you can track storms, view current maps of areas where hurricanes form and download and print out a map of your own which will allow you to plot the path of every storm that forms.

People who would rather have a book in hand or watch a movie will be able to find many interesting books and DVDs on hurricanes here at the library. A portion of that collection is listed here.

Hurricane season : a coach, his team, and their triumph in the time of Katrina
Inside Hurricane Katrina
The great deluge : Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast
When the levees broke a requiem in four acts
Divine wind : the history and science of hurricanes
Inside the hurricane : face to face with nature's deadliest storms
Isaac's storm : a man, a time, and the deadliest hurricane in history

Do you read numerous blogs or websites on a given day? Are you tired of checking each one to see if it has been updated? If this describes you, it might be time for an RSS aggregator. An aggregator, or feed reader, allows you to read your favorite blogs in one convenient location. As a reader of this blog, you may have noticed the word "Subscribe" on the right hand side of your screen, followed by a few icons. (see below)

Bloglines and My Yahoo are only a couple of the options available to you. Others include Google Reader, my AOL, and Technorati. Whenever you see icons for these services, a box with the letters "XML" or "RSS, "or this icon,
you can add the site to your aggregator. Many people use this technology not only for blogs, but also for news alerts. The Telegraph, Union Leader, Boston Globe, and CNN.com have feeds that will deliver the news right to your aggregator. So, you can catch up on local and national news as well as your favorite political and sports blogs all in one place.

What does RSS mean and how do the readers work? RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a group of web feeds that publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. You subscribe to a feed by entering the feed's link into your reader or by clicking an RSS icon, as noted above. The reader checks your feeds regularly for new content and downloads what it finds to your aggregator. Some, such as my Yahoo, list new posts on your my Yahoo page. Clicking on the link will bring you directly to the blog or article. Google Reader downloads the text of the blog or article, which you can view in the reader. If you do not receive an entire blog entry or article, click on the link. (I have to do this for the New York Times book reviews, but not for the NPL Blog.) You will also have to link to the actual blog to read comments.

I started using Google Reader in May after attending a session about RSS feeds at the New Hampshire Library Association conference. I had heard about RSS while I was in library school, but I wasn't sure if I really wanted or needed one. My curiosity about this Web 2.0 technology was piqued, however. The session convinced me that I should take the plunge. It's a lot easier than visiting each site daily, especially since some sites and blogs I read are not updated every day.

If you're interested in learning more, take a look at Secrets of RSS by Steven Holzner. Feel free to leave a comment.

Roger Tory Peterson, famous for his field guides to birds, would have been 99 today. He is credited with making bird identification accessible to all levels of birders. There's a nice biographical article about him in the Environmental Encyclopedia, available through our Biography Resource Center database. According to the article, Peterson was born August 28, 1908, and died July 28, 1996. His passion for birds began when he was a boy. An artist by training, he studied at the National Academy of Design and the New York City Art Students' League. His two interests came together in his publication of A Field Guide to the Birds, which was published in 1934. Several newer editions were subsequently produced.

In addition to his Field Guide to the Birds, he also produced guides to wildflowers (A field guide to wildflowers of Northeastern and North-Central North America; a visual approach arranged by color, form, and detail) and plants (A field guide to edible wild plants of Eastern and Central North America). Houghton Mifflin now publishes a series of field guides in his name.

He received many awards for his work, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. There is even a natural history institute named for him: The Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History.

A book about Peterson's life in birding, All Things Reconsidered: My Birding Adventures was released posthumously in 2006, and you can find it here at the library.

Welcome back to a new school year! Students and parents will find that most things have changed - new grade, new room, new teachers, new subjects, new friends. There is also, in today's world, a new emphasis on healthy nutrition. So - will the lunches served in the school cafeteria and the lunches packed at home be the same old thing? Hopefully not. School lunches take many forms, those provided by the school district, those packed by an adult family member, and those packed by the student or another child in the family. Nutrition education needs to be available for a very diverse group.

There is help out there for people who are concerned with good nutrition. The United States Department of Agriculture has a Food and Nutrition information center online. A section of this is devoted to Child Nutrition and Health. Here you will find a link to a kid friendly page with games which teach about nutrition, also links to information for parents about the nutritional needs of children in different age groups. Another helpful website is KidsHealth from the Nemours Center for Children's Health Media. It provides helpful guides for things like browsing the school lunch menu for the week with your child and discussing healthful choices. There is also a guide for doing healthy makeovers of the typical bag lunch. If you are interested in browsing the school lunch menu with your child, the Nashua Telegraph publishes the weekly lunch menu for all of the area schools on each Thursday for the following week.

The library also has materials which could be helpful in lunch planning. Eat, Play and be Healthy is the Harvard Medical School guide to healthy eating for kids. In addition to chapters on nutrition for infants and toddlers and how to choose better food sources for good nutrition for all ages, there is a chapter called How to recognize a healthy (and unhealthy) school lunch. It provides parents with information on how the school lunch program works, and also gives a hierarchy of individuals and agencies to contact to, hopefully, become involved in improving their child's school lunch program if needed.

The Parenting Shelf in the Children's Room is home to a number of books dealing with healthy nutrition ideas for children. Many of these ideas would be very handy for healthy school lunches.

The sneaky chef : simple strategies for hiding healthy foods in kids favorite meals
Miracle foods for kids : 25 super-nutritious foods to keep your kids in great health
Gimme five! : kid-friendly recipes and tips for helping your child enjoy eating fruits and vegetables
Healthy food for kids : quick recipes for busy parents
Kid favorites made healthy

Healthy eating made simple! Just remember that, in addition to healthy eating, kids need lots of active playing at recess!

Labor Day is the unofficial end of the summer--a day for cookouts or one last trip to the beach. It is a reminder that the leaves will soon change to bright, fiery colors and the kids are going back to school. But, why, you might ask, do we celebrate Labor Day? According to the US Department of Labor, the holiday "is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country."

Planned by the Central Labor Union, the first Labor Day celebration occurred on Tuesday, September 5, in New York City. Although most sources credit Peter Maguire, General Secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, with the founding of the holiday, some believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist and later a union secretary, actually proposed the holiday. September was chosen because it provided a break for the workers between Independence Day and Thanksgiving. Approximately 10,000 workers marched from City Hall to Union Square. Following the parade, a picnic, along with a concert and speeches, was held at Riverside Park for the workers and their families.

In 1884, the Central Labor Union celebrated the holiday on the first Monday in September, and urged other cities to follow suit. Within the next couple of years, labor organizations grew and the celebration of Labor Day spread to many industrial cities. On February 21, 1887, Oregon passed a Labor Day bill, and later that year, Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey did the same. After 26 additional states enacted legislation to create a Labor Day holiday, Congress passed an act in 1894 making the first Monday of September a national holiday.

As you are taking that last dip in the pool or adding mustard to your hot dog, remember that Labor Day, which has become more about leisure than labor, was once a day for the working class to celebrate their work, air their grievances, and strategize for ways to gain better wages and working conditions. If you want to learn more, take advantage of the Library of Congress's Today in History Archive (search for "labor") or the American Memory page (search for labor unions). The sites have photographs, documents and information, about labor and labor unions.

Sources:
"The History of Labor Day." U.S. Department of Labor in the 21st Century http://www.dol.gov/opa/aboutdol/laborday.htm (accessed August 31, 2007).

"Today in History: September 5: The First Labor Day." The Library of Congress American Memory http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/today/sep05.html (accessed August 31, 2007).

Labor Day has come and gone marking the unofficial end of summer fun. We can't really declare that summer is over until it's official end on September 23. The signs, however, are there. On my way to work this morning, I noticed a number of these signs. My lawn has yellow leaves on the grass. The blueberry picking farm down the street is closed for the season and the apple picking farm is open. One of the local farm stands has a line of chrysanthemums and pumpkins edging the parking lot.

There are a few redeeming events in the fall. The best of these is the turning of the leaves. I am what is referred to apparently as a "leaf peeper", or at least a would-be "leaf peeper". Every year my husband promises me that we will go up north and look at the autumn leaves. Every year by the time we get there, the leaves have all turned brown and dropped off. Turning leaves are a tricky thing. It seems to take them a long time to reach their prime, but once they do - blink and they're gone!

The state of New Hampshire fills up with "leaf peepers" every fall, and information is in place to be sure that each and every one has a peak experience. One of the websites that the state of New Hampshire has provided is called the New Hampshire Foliage Report If you have ever wondered why the leaves change color, the answer is here. This website will also help you to decide when and where to go to see the best quality fall foliage. Just drag the cute little fall leaf across the color bar, and you will see where in the state the foliage is at its peak and when. White Mountain Foliage.com will answer almost any question that you might think of in regard to fall foliage including what effect weather has, and where else in the country you can go to see fall colors.

If you like fall foliage and you like trains, this is the website for you. Foliage trains.com describes a number of different train trips in the Lakes Region and the Lincoln area which provide excellent fall foliage viewing. If you would rather do your viewing on foot, the Appalachian Mountain Club has some family-friendly foliage hikes in the White Mountains and the Lakes Region. There is even fall foliage for those who can't bear to leave their computers. Weirs online.com has a beautiful collection of fall foliage photos which can be emailed as a postcard to a friend. Or as a coworker pointed out, could even be used as a desktop background!

Happy "leaf peeping"!

In this digital age, reference librarians sometimes use the internet to answer questions. As with print sources, it is important to know where to look for quality information. With millions of web pages out there, we have to be selective. So, how do we know which sites to choose? I think we all have our favorites for certain types of information. I always go to MedlinePlus.gov first when I get a health question, and often use FoodNetwork.com or Epicurious.com for recipes. What other sources are good? PC Magazine recently published two lists: the Top 100 Classic Websites and the Top 100 Undiscovered Websites. Both offer suggestions for a variety of topics, such as: Info, Reference, and Search; Health and Food; Lifestyle and Entertainment; Money and Career; Music; News, Politics, and Government; Reading; Shopping, Classifieds, and Travel; Tech: Download and DIY; Tech: Gaming; Tech: Hardware News and Blogs; Tech: Software and Internet Blogs; Video; Web Apps.

A couple of interesting sites on the Undiscovered list include:
The World's Healthiest Foods--information about the way food affects health
Menupages--information and menus for numerous restaurants in Boston and other large cities
Librivox--FREE public-domain audiobooks
PrezVid--a blog that tracks the Presidential campaign via YouTube
Hard to Find 800 Numbers--an alphabetical listing of companies' 800 numbers
Roadside America--quirky landmarks throughout the US

And, from the Classic list:
How Stuff Works--explains how everything really works
Nolo--legal documents and advice; we have some of their publications in the library
Bloomberg.com--for financial news
Internet Movie Database--information on movies and televisions shows, and another one of my favorites
The Onion--a news spoof; you can find some Onion books in the library as well
USA.gov--a portal for government information

The fun does not stop here. Take a look at the lists, and you will find many more informational and entertaining sites. If you find any of them particularly helpful or have a favorite "go to" website, let me know by leaving a comment below.

If you should be in any public place such as a market, a bus stop, a cafe or a library and discover a book that appears to have been forgotten by his or her owner, take a look inside the book cover for a Book Crossing label. If you find one, it means that this book was left there for you to pick up, read, and “release” at another public spot for others to read. This book can then travel from hand to hand, from person to person, between cities and even between countries. The purpose of Book Crossing is to transform the world into a large library.

As of today, there are 588,122 people in over 130 countries participating in this project. To become involved, you can visit the Book Crossing web site, sign up and then participate by “releasing” some of your favorite books or by “catching” the books left by others. The Book Crossing web site is a fundamental tool of this project. You will find information about places where certain books were "released" or you might find information about somebody who "caught" one of your books, but more importantly this web site provides forums where people can share ideas about this project and the books they have read through it. In a way, Book Crossing is like a large book club.

Some spots in Nashua where releases currently can be found are Panera's on Split Brook Road, Holman Stadium and, if course, the Nashua Public Library. Do you want to know which books have been released here in Nashua? Let’s go see!

A couple of weeks ago, I received an invitation from my brother to become a friend on Quechup, "the social networking platform sweeping the globe." Despite the claim that it is "the social networking site to be on," I had never heard of it. I kept the e-mail in my inbox and decided to look into the site. Not long thereafter, I received an e-mail from my husband, who had accepted my brother's invitation. I was surprised that my husband would so quickly invite me to join, and I became suspicious. A Google search for "Quechup" resulted in a plethora of blogs warning people about this site. Text on the invitation e-mail states, "You received this because [name (e-mail)] knows and agreed to invite you. You will only receive one invite from [e-mail]. Quechup will not spam or sell your email address"; however, my brother did not realize that he agreed to invite me to join this social networking site.

When you accept the invitation, Quechup offers to check your contacts for friends on the site. Upon this action, Quechup sends an invitation to everyone in your address book. Both my brother and husband learned this the hard way. My husband received e-mails from friends asking him about the e-mail he had sent. My husband didn't realize what they meant right away, but figured it out eventually. Fortunately, the invitation went to an e-mail address that he uses infrequently, and most of the contacts in his address book were family and friends. My brother had many professional contacts who should not have received such an invitation. I am glad I did not accept my brother's invitation. As a g-mail user, anyone who receives an e-mail from me is entered in my address book. I have contacts ranging from close friends and family, to professional contacts, to people who I don't know well but were part of a reply all list. Apparently, a member of a library listserv joined Quechup, because an invitation was sent to the listserv.

If you receive an invitation to join Quechup, please be aware of this tactic. I did not accept the invitation, so I can only relate what I have read. One commenter writes that the site does indicate that Quechup will send invitations to your contacts. Another explains that you can prevent this, but the option is not in an obvious spot.

"Arrrr matey, today be not just another day!" Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day according to Chases 2007 Calendar of Events and an email received by a coworker from an excited friend. If you have ever wanted to be like Johnny Depp or longed to be Captain Jack Sparrow, today is your day!

Pirates, always an easy choice for a Halloween costume and for carrying off the heroine of a romance novel, have achieved a new level of popularity thanks in part to the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Surprisingly, International Talk Like a Pirate Day got its start in the 1990s. They have an official website which will give you an idea of how into this people can get! There is a dictionary associated with this website which will help you to impress people with your pirate lingo and help you figure out what other people are saying to you.

Talk Like a Pirate Day gained even more popularity in 2002 when humorist Dave Barry wrote a column about it in the Miami Herald. He discussed the very beginning of the observation of the day. He also profiled its two creators , "Ol Chumbucket" and "Capn Slappy"; two otherwise normal people who decided to dress and talk like pirates one day a year. Thanks in part to this column and the dedication of John Baur and Mark Summers, people in more and more countries around the globe are beginning to be very excited about eyepatches and words like "avast" and "me hearties", at least one day a year.

If you have ever wanted to know more about pirates, the real pirates I mean, the library has some books which you might want to take a look at.

The republic of pirates by Colin Woodard : a new book all about the pirates of the Caribbean
The sack of Panama by Peter Earle : Capn Morgan did more than advertise rum
A history of pirates : blood and thunder on the high seas by Nigel Cawthorne
The book of pirate songs compiled by Stuart M Frank : If you'd rather sing like a pirate than talk like one
Under the black flag: the romance and reality of life among the pirates by David Cordingly : Just in case you are curious about what life was really like.

Of course if you'd rather just look at Johnny Depp (aka Capn Jack Sparrow), we do have Pirates of the Caribbean : the curse of the Black Pearl and Dead Man's Chest

So if you missed it today, enjoy your grog, round up your parrot and your eyepatch and just wait for next year! Arrrrr!

Today we celebrate a man who brought much joy, entertainment, and education to millions of children, and even adults--the late Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets. In the 1970s, before most viewers subscribed to hundreds of television channels, Sesame Street was many preschoolers' program of choice. I watched it religiously and dressed up as Big Bird one Halloween. I was also a devotee of The Muppet Show, and would probably stop to watch even today if I came across it. In fact, a friend of mine owns one of the Muppet movies.

Born on September 24, 1936, Jim Henson was fascinated by television. He realized his dream of working in the industry when his puppetry hobby earned him five-minute spots on a Maryland NBC affiliate. Henson's first network program, Sam and Friends, debuted in 1955. His Muppets also appeared in commercials and performed on The Ed Sullivan Show. Rowlf the Dog, the pianist you may remember from The Muppet Show, was a regular on The Jimmy Dean Show, and popularized Henson's creations.

In 1969, Jon Stone, the first head writer for Sesame Street, suggested incorporating the Muppets into the new children's show on PBS. According to Henson's biography on the Museum of Broadcast Communications website, "it has been suggested that if there were no Muppets, there would be no Sesame Street. The Muppets are largely responsible for the colossal success of this program. In skits, songs, and other performances they epitomized the social skills fundamental to Sesame Street's mission--cooperation, understanding, tolerance and respect." Despite the success of Sesame Street, Henson wanted to bring the Muppets to a wider audience. He knew their appeal was not limited to the preschool crowd. In 1976, he created The Muppet Show, a variety show that featured the charming and zany Muppets alongside the day's biggest stars--John Denver, Florence Henderson, Don Knotts, Steve Martin, Elton John, John Cleese, Brooke Shields, Sylvester Stallone, Alice Cooper, Mark Hamill, Christopher Reeve, Diana Ross, Kenny Rogers, Lynda Carter, Paul Simon, Johnny Cash, Gladys Knight, and many others. Who can forget the Great Gonzo, the Swedish Chef, Miss Piggy and her crush on Kermit the Frog, and all of the other characters and skits? Muppet movies followed, as did the Fraggle Rock series, The Muppet Babies cartoon, and a few additional projects. Henson received 18 Emmys, seven Grammys, four Peabody Awards, and five ACE Awards.

For more information about Jim Henson, take a look at his bio on The Museum of Broadcast Communcations Website or The Jim Henson Legacy site. You can learn more about his movies and television series at the Internet Movie Database. Or, if you want to revisit your past, check out some of the videos we have here.

Do you have any favorite Sesame Street of Muppet Show memories? Please share them by leaving a comment below.

Source: "Henson, Jim." The Museum of Broadcast Communications http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/H/htmlH/hensonjim/hensonjim.htm (accessed September 24, 2007).

America's Best Colleges 2008 edition has arrived on the library shelves. For the uninitiated, US News gathers information about colleges from multiple sources. This information is then entered into their formula which reduces each college to a ranking number. The higher the number, the better the college. Each year high school seniors and their parents anxiously wait for this book. It is regarded in some circles as the definitive resource for college selection. In other circles, not so much.

On it's website, US News provides an explanation of the ranking process, breaking it down into three steps. The first step defines the different ranking categories. These ranking categories are based on Carnegie Classifications which have been updated this year, resulting in some schools changing from one classification to another. The second step involves accumulating information on 15 areas of academic quality from each school. Lastly, this information is converted to a weighted score, and the schools are ranked.

This year, a number of colleges have come out in opposition of this process. An Associated Press story published in USA Today sums the whole situation up very well. "It irks educators everywhere to see colleges ranked like basketball teams. But it irks educators at the top-ranked colleges a lot less." There is a campaign being conducted against this ranking process by Lloyd Thacker, a former college admissions counselor. He has enlisted over sixty colleges in this effort. Although most colleges may agree with his views, and would like to see an alternative to the rankings system, that will not happen any time soon.

The most important message in all of this? Find out more about a college than just its rank. Choosing a school because it has a high rank may not guarantee a good "fit" for you. The library has any number of college selection guides, The College Handbook published by CollegeBoard, Barron's Profiles of American colleges and Fiske guide to colleges to name a few. Read these from cover to cover and find out all you can about the colleges that you are interested in. Then turn to two new books that the library has purchased, College unranked : ending the college admissions frenzy and Harvard schmarvard : getting beyond the ivy league to the college that is best for you and use them to help you discover what you really should be looking for in a school for you.

NPL realizes that students thinking about applying to college, and their parents, need as much help as they can possibly get. Help will arrive on Wednesday, October 10, at 6:30 in the NPL Theater. A College Planning Workshop will be presented that night by the New Hampshire Higher Education Assistance Foundation. This workshop will help you to understand what colleges are looking for from you, what you should be looking for on a college tour, how to write that all important application essay, and where to turn for help in paying for it all.

Merriam-Webster has added about 100 new words and senses to the 2007 version of the Merriam-Weber's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition (which won't be available in print until this fall.) You can get a list of 20 of the neologisms at http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/newwords07.htm. My favorite of the new words is ginormous, meaning extremely large or humongous, but others that I recognized and was charmed to see on the list include sudoku, speed dating, perfect storm, smackdown and DVR (digital video recorder.) Some of those that I hadn't heard before are listed below, along with their definitions.

• Crunk: a style of Southern rap music featuring repetitive chants and rapid dance rhythms
• Microgreen: a shoot of a standard salad plant (as celery or arugula)
• Telenovela: a soap opera produced in and televised in or from many Latin-American countries

This is another of those topics which should be written about. I was talking to my hairdresser about my need to find a blog topic. She told me that I really should write about bullies because bullying is such a big problem now. I started to think about it, and I realized that many of the stories in the news recently have their roots in someone's use of bullying behavior, usually taken to extremes. Merriam-Webster's online dictionary defines a bully as a blustering browbeating person; especially : one habitually cruel to others who are weaker.

Bullies start young. Almost everyone knows a little kid who takes toys away from others and won't give them back, or who hits or bites. When bullies get older, they don't always use the physical to pick on others. The image of a bully beating up other kids for their lunch money is common and probably does happen frequently. Bullies also spread lies and rumors about others on sites like My Space , or they use school social situations and the help of their friends to make life miserable for the students they target.

There are bullies in three-piece suits with responsible positions who bully others that they may perceive as weaker. They use off-color jokes, suggestive remarks and unwanted advances. In legal terms this is known as sexual harassment; it's just a grown-up bully at work. Maybe you've heard about some of them lately.

There are a number of good websites for both kids and their parents discussing the topic of bullying. They give thoughtful suggestions for dealing with bullies. They also explain what a bully is and offer some ideas about what makes a bully behave in a bullying way. KidsHealth has a good article about bullies and emotions and companion articles about peer-pressure, cliques and gossip, all written for kids. The website articles can also be translated into Spanish by simply clicking on a button. There is also a corresponding site for adults called KidsHealth for parents which discusses the why and how of bullying and offers suggestions for teaching kids not to bully. PBSkids is another kid-friendly site where bullying is discussed in ways that kids understand. A relatively new site is FamilyEducationNetwork which has information for parents, but also lots of advertising to dodge.

The library has some helpful materials as well:
Totally wired : what teens and tweens are really doing online
Stop bullying : las mejores estrategias para prevenir y frenar el acoso escolar
Bullying : how to deal with taunting, teasing, and tormenting
Bullies are a pain in the brain
The no asshole rule : building a civilized workplace and surviving one that isn't

Bullies aren't all named Biff and they are not all intellectually challenged; they are also not all male. The more you and your kids understand about bullies, the less likely you are to become a victim of a bully or a bully yourself.

We use language in many ways each day. Any time we talk, listen to the radio, read a book, or write a note, we depend on a language to receive or convey information. I recently learned about two interesting websites about the languages spoken around the world.

If you're curious about the history of languages, how they're related, and where they're spoken, take a look at the National Virtual Translation Center's Languages of the World site. The About Language link provides information about language origins, the range of world languages, language families, endangered languages, writing systems, international languages (official languages of the United Nations), top languages used on the internet, and languages spoken in the United States. This last category provides a link to the MLA Language Map, which uses data from the 2000 US census to display the locations and numbers of speakers of numerous languages in the United States. You can even find out how many people in your zip code speak a particular language. Keep in mind that this information is from 2000, and some of the percentages may have changed since then. Nonetheless, it is a valuable demographic tool and can be a lot of fun. The World Languages link provides information about languages around the world, from Navajo to Norwegian. You can also sort the list by language family to see how different languages are connected. If you consider yourself an expert on a language, click the Test Yourself link to take a quiz.

Unfortunately, not all languages last forever. According to the National Geographic Enduring Voices Project, every two weeks a language--an integral part of a society's culture--dies. Each year, then, the world loses 26 languages. The site notes, "by 2100, more than half of the more than 7,000 languages spoken on Earth—many of them never yet recorded—will likely disappear, taking with them a wealth of knowledge about history, culture, the natural environment, and how the human brain works." The project aims to preserve endangered languages by identifying the places where languages are threatened and documenting the languages and cultures. The interactive map on this site shows you where the endangered languages are spoken. The United States has two endangered language hotspots--Oklahoma/Southwest and the Pacific Northwest Plateau, which includes part of Canada. Clicking on the hotspots will give you further information.

Here's an example of the MLA map. This shows the number of French speakers per county in New Hampshire:

OK, so baseball season is over! It was great; it was exciting, but it's over. What do you do next? I decided to go to a hockey game. As popular as the Patriots are, I am not a football fan! Also, hockey is much more available for watching than football. Who wants to drive to Foxborough when you can go to Manchester, Lowell, Worcester or Boston to see a hockey game. Besides, there is just something about skating!

My love affair with ice skates started with double runners and icy fields when I was very little. When I got older, I practiced figure eights and spins while dodging hockey pucks on our local pond. Every winter the assistant principal had to go out on the ice first. If he didn't fall through, we knew it was safe for everybody! In college, we had to share ice time with the hockey team. I practiced my leaps and spins while trying to ignore the blood frozen into the ice and dodging the deep ruts made by hockey skates. My personal love affair with ice skates ended in college when my head hit the ice instead of my skates. The resulting concussion left me with a profound fear of figure skating!

My interest in hockey continued. I've written about websites for baseball fans, so I went looking for websites for hockey fans. The United States has a Hockey Hall of Fame which has been in existence since 1973. It has pictures of Hall of Fame inductees and information about US Olympic hockey teams. With its location in Eveleth, Minnesota, it's kind of a long drive to visit. Judging from the website, it's not all that exciting either. The Official Hockey Hall of Fame is located in Toronto, Ontario - another long drive. This Hall of Fame looks like it would be worth the trip! If you can't get there, get to the website!

This is another sports website filled with fun facts, trivia, and statistics. The time capsule will take you back in time to the 60s and 70s. Not only do you get interesting facts, but comparisons as well with present day hockey. Did you know the NHL consisted of 6 teams in 1960 and 30 teams in 2006? Did you know that the average NHL player made $18,000 a year in 1970 and $1.4 million in 2006? The Photo Galleries are not to be missed. In the photo Archives gallery is a section called When I was young. You see a picture of a young hockey player and get a clue to help you identify him. Make a guess, click on the arrow and you get his name and a picture of the way he looks now or at least the way he looked when he last played hockey.

This is a great website for occupying some of these long dark hours now that the time has changed. Spring training is a LONG way away. Plenty of time for hockey!

At least if you are a procrastinator, it's always the season. It's usually almost past the season before you get the motivation to do something about it. You may not be a procrastinator, but I'm sure you know one. That would be the person who is always late getting something done, always has an excuse, is always sorry, but never changes. In my family there are two of us. I will admit that I am one of them, but I always have a good reason! My son makes no excuses for himself. He doesn't own a watch or a calendar and usually doesn't care what day of the week it is. The other two members of my family thrive on clocks, calendars and schedules and always have things done early. I can't imagine what that says about them.

I decided to look for information on what makes me procrastinate and what I could do to stop. I thought that self-help books on procrastination would be the best way to begin. I didn't find too many, but one I did find covered the topic very well. The Tomorrow Trap by Karen Peterson identified two types of procrastination, one related to tasks and one related to people. Many people apparently can display both types at the same time. This book is for people with serious issues and covers compulsive behavior and psychological and health related issues which all derive from procrastination. Maybe a little too in depth for someone like me. My issues include things like conveniently forgetting to call the dentist for 3 days in a row.

If procrastination has left you living in a disorganized disaster zone or maybe it's the other way around, there are two good books at NPL to help you organize that disaster. Simplify your life by Marcia Ramsland, a professional organizer, will give you advice for organizing and uncluttering every aspect of your daily life. Getting organized by Stephanie Winston includes organizing your work life as well as your personal life. In one section of her book, procrastination is listed as an efficiency saboteur, and steps are given for making a huge task more managable and less likely to inspire the urge to procrastinate.

After the self-help books, I decided to look on the web to see if there was more help to be found. I discovered an article from Psychology Today discussing ten things you should know about procrastination. The Writing Center from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has a handout on line which deals with procrastination when writing . Many of their suggestions could be applied to procrastination in life in general.

Sadly enough, I started out with the idea of making fun of procrastination and myself for being one of those people whose motto is "never do today what you can put off until tomorrow". Well, I've learned that procrastination is not a joke, and not an easy fix!

People interested in the development of words and their meanings and the history of language will be delighted, amazed or alarmed to discover that the Merriam-Webster online dictionary word of the year for 2007 is a combination of letters and numbers. The word, w00t, which looks like it should rhyme with root, received the most votes in a competition against words such as facebook, sardoodledom, and Pecksniffian. All of these words were in a list of the twenty most frequently looked up words in Merriam-Webster's Online dictionary. Just because w00t was #1 word of the year does not mean that it will be found in newly published Merriam-Webster print dictionaries, however. That apparently is a reward given only after time has proven the word worthy of inclusion. If you are curious about how a word gets into the print dictionary, Merriam-Webster has a good explanation in the FAQ section of their website.

W00t is popular with online gamers. Its meaning is more or less YAY, or YIPEE, or HORRAY! Merriam-Webster's online dictionary calls this type of language - letters and numbers combined, "leet" or in the language of computer gamers, "l33t" or "elite" speak. Language and technology are increasingly becoming interrelated. Will letters and numbers someday be interchangable in words? Merriam-Webster online dictionary has been choosing a word of the year since 2003. During that time, honors have gone to truthiness the 2006 winner over words like google and terrorism, in 2005 integrity was #1, winning out over refugee and levee. In 2004, the word, blog, was a winner. Hard to believe it's only been popular for such a few years!

If you have a love of language, or just a passing interest in words, their origins and meanings, the library has a number of good books to educate and entertain you.

Predicting new words : the secrets of their success
The Oxford dictionary of word histories
[Spanglish] : the making of a new American language
There's a word for it!: a grandiloquent guide to life
Verbatim

So, I will leave you with this thought, couched in some of the most popular words of recent years: If you find yourself in a quagmire of words while engaged in a filibuster with a group of insipid individuals, impress them with a tsunami of words of your own.

I decided to write about the NH Primary in my blog this time. I spent time researching and planning and got ready to write. What a surprise! When I went to the library's blog site, I discovered that someone else had written about the Primary already! I complained to one of my coworkers that I had certainly wasted my time. She said "go ahead and write about it anyway. It's not going to happen again for another four years, and it's here now." So I thought about it, and here goes!

Some things I will not miss when the primary is over are the constant ringing of the phone, the machine full of important messages left by representatives of one candidate or another, and all of the surveys which "will only take a minute of your time and have you considered voting for_ and why haven't you made up your mind yet" or "can we take a minute to try and change your mind".

I've spent time trying to educate myself about the various candidates and their platforms. I don't know who I want to vote for yet, but there is a lot of information out there to help me decide. Since I spend so much time in front of a computer, I turned to the internet for information. Local newspapers were well represented. The Manchester Union Leader - New Hampshire Sunday News maintains a web presence as well as publishing in print. The UnionLeader.com has a primary primer. All types of information about each candidate in both parties can be found here. The fun part is at the bottom of the webpage where two columns, pink and blue, contain links to many of the candidates online sites. There are links to the candidates' MYSPACE and YOUTUBE sites as well as official sites, political sites and personal websites.

The Nashua Telegraph is active on line as well. NH Primary.com has links to candidate pictures and information, candidate appearance schedules, and some NH Primary history. I did notice that some candidates who are no longer in the primary race are still listed on this site, and that candidate profiles seem to come from Wikipedia. Still, parts of this site are current and the primary history does make interesting reading.

The third site, The New Hampshire Primary 2008 is posted by SeaCoast Online, which features the Portsmouth, Exeter and Hampton NH newspapers. Here you can find links to political columns and blogs, updated candidate profiles, campaign appearances, photo galleries and videos.

As I read this over, I'm surprised again. This wasn't what I started out to say, but it's where I ended up. My feeling is that a lot of reading and watching and listening will help you make a much better, more informed decision than letting yourself be pressured into decisions by anonymous voices on the phone.

As 2007 comes to a close you will see and hear many media outlets (television, radio, newspapers) create "best of 2007" lists. So whether your a pop culture junkie glued to VH1's Celebrity Eye Candy Best of 2007 or a news fanatic reading Time Magazine's Person of the Year. I thought I'd compile a web guide for you to broaden your horizon.

Best of 2007 Resource List

Best Books of 2007 by Library Journal

Consumer Reports Car Top Picks 2007

The 100 Best Products of 2007 by PCWorld

The 100 Best Songs of 2007 by Rolling Stone

National Geographic's Top Ten News Stories of 2007

Time's Top 10 Oddball News Stories

100 Best Companies to Work For 2007 by Fortune

Top Movies for 2007 by Rotten Tomatoes

PC Magazine's Top Websites of 2007

This is just a sample of the "best of lists" that exist. Do you have a good list that you refer back to year after year that I didn't mention? Leave a comment below to share it.

Have you ever browsed the State of New Hampshire's website? If not, you should. The answers to a lot of day-to-day questions can be found here. The website is divided into three categories, executive, legislative and judicial. This blog is about the Judicial Branch. The New Hampshire Judicial System has developed a new book which should make the New Hampshire Court system more user friendly. This book, Your guide to the New Hampshire Courts , is currently available to be read on the Judicial System website. It was produced with the assistance of the New Hampshire Bar Association, and will soon be available for use by state residents i