Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Closures

All branches of the Santa Fe Public Library will be closed on Monday, January 16 in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

The libraries will be open regular hours over the weekend:

Main Library:
Saturday: 10 am - 6 pm
Sunday: 1 pm - 5 pm

La Farge Library:
Saturday: 10 am - 6 pm

Southside Library:
Saturday: 10 am - 6 pm

A Bright Sunshiny Day!

No, this isn't referring to long glorious summer weather. As budgets, personal and municipal, around the country get tighter, it helps to see where every dollar goes. Both the State of New Mexico and Santa Fe County have come up with Sunshine Portals, to encourage transparency and accountability in governance. Such portals supply information about public employee salaries, contracts with outside businesses, and how much money various programs are allotted. It's great to be able to access all this information in one place for each government agency.

However, as an information user, having these portals as separate sites can sometimes be a disadvantage. Several months ago I spent some time looking for salary information on the state site, before finding the separate link to the Sunshine Portal. The County has improved the design by including this data within the site itself, but the link to it is a sun icon. I'm used to that icon telling me that it's going to be good hiking or gardening weather. It's also possible that many citizens won't know to check a separate site for essential budget information.

But, it's still a good step forward that this information is readily available to anyone with computer and internet access. It's an improvement on the time and expense of public records requests. In addition to the links on their respective homepages, the State's Sunshine Portal can be found here, and the County's Sunshine Portal can be found here. Bookmark these links, and remember to check them the next time you have questions about how your tax dollars are spent.

Sun in Celestia with Addon by Runar Thorvaldsen, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

More on OneClickDigital

Many of you have already signed up for an account with OneClickDigital and have had varying success with downloading audiobooks. OneClickDigital is still in beta, and they are aware of the issues you're having. Fortunately, we expect a fix for many of these issues to be working by next week!

In the meantime, you can use our catalog to search for downloadable audiobooks. If you go to Advanced Search and type the word oneclick in the first field, you can then search by author, subject, title, or keyword in the other fields. You can also find a full list of our downloadable audiobooks under the Media & Large Print link in the catalog menu.

Thank you for your patience during this transition!

Independence Day Closings

All branches of the Santa Fe Public Library will be closed on Monday, July 4, in observance of Independence Day.

All branches will be open regular hours, 10:00 am - 6:00 pm, on Saturday, July 2. The Main Library will be open regular hours, 1:00 - 5:00 pm on Sunday, July 3.

Regular hours will resume at 10:00 am on Tuesday, July 5.

Have a Blast!

Full Plate

The USDA recently replaced the ubiquitous yet confusing food pyramid with a plate graphic. The new picture should make it easier for all of us to figure out if we're balancing our meals nutritiously. However, to paraphrase a comment, it will definitely depend on how big the plates at your house are.

One of Discover Magazine's blogs, 80beats, compiled older nutritional charts from the US and compared them to similar charts from other countries, such as the Japanese Food Guide Spinning Top. It's interesting that the basics of nutrition have remained fairly constant across decades and borders, but there are so many ways to present that information.

If the USDA's new picture still has you wondering if your meals are good for you and your family, be sure to check out our books on nutrition and healthy eating.

Bon appetit!

National Academy Freebies

A popular saying among librarians is "information wants to be free". Whether we mean it as free as in unfettered, or free as in no-cost, can depend on the situation. But either way, no-cost, easily-accessible, not-charging-a-dime, click-of-a-mouse information is a wonderful thing.

So it's incredibly exciting that the National Academies are making a lot of their information, you guessed it, FREE! Over 4,000 reports and books from the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council will now be available as free PDFs. Topics are numerous and include Biology, Education, Social Sciences, and Environmental Studies. Just head to the National Academies Press website, and see what sort of free information tickles your intellect.

A Resource for Tenants and Landlords

Law Access New Mexico provides landlord and tenant dispute services to all New Mexicans. These services include:

• Landlord and tenants rights and remedies
• Evictions
• Security deposit disputes
• What to do if your utilities are shut off
• Public housing rights and responsibilities
• How to request repairs from your landlord
• Mobile home issues
• Advice for “pro se” cases
• Referrals to other legal services
• Help regardless of citizen status (se habla Español)
• Prerecorded answers to FAQs – 24 hours

These services are provided by law professionals free of charge to residents of New Mexico who earn less than 200% of Federal poverty guidelines and for a small fee for those who earn above these guidelines. Law Access New Mexico is paid in part through fees collected from civil court cases and their service is available to persons statewide. Law Access New Mexico can be reached at (800) 340-9771 or at lawaccess.org.

Library Bills

The Santa Fe Public Library will begin sending out bills for long overdue material via the U.S. Postal Service this month. It is our hope that timely billing will help retrieve or replace items that have not been available to our patrons because they have been kept out past their due date and are long overdue.

The bill will include an estimated replacement cost for each long overdue item. Your library account can be cleared by returning all of the long overdue items or paying the item's actual replacement cost which you can obtain from the library, or by replacing the item with an exact copy in new or very good condition. The replacement book cannot have any ownership markings from other libraries.

Please call any of Santa Fe Public Library's branches for information pertaining to the items listed on the bill. Call 955-6803 if you need help interpreting the bill itself. We appreciate your working with the Library to get all library materials back in a timely manner so that everyone has a chance to use them.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Closures

All branches of the Santa Fe Public Library will be closed on Monday, January 17 in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.


The libraries will be open regular hours over the weekend, January 15 and 16:

Main Library:
Saturday: 10 am - 6 pm
Sunday: 1 pm - 5 pm

La Farge Library:
Saturday: 10 am - 6 pm

Southside Library:
Saturday: 10 am - 6 pm

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Pyramid of Mind Nutrition

Information is Beautiful has posted a "rough" outline of the heirarchy of learning. Starting with Data at the bottom, and ascending ever upwards through Information, then Knowledge, with Wisdom at the pinnacle, these concepts are all too familiar to most library school graduates. It's what we were taught in order to help you, the patron, make sense of the deluge of facts and factoids out there and make it something meaningful and useful for you.

Fortunately for you, the world is not full of soporific nerdy librarians. For an easy analogy, think of the pyramid as baking. Data are the raw ingredients. Information is the recipe utilizing these ingredients. Knowledge is the process of baking, and the result, Wisdom, is you voraciously consuming and digesting the warm, tasty treats.

Bon appetit!



Thanks to a nerdy librarian at Santa Fe Community College for geeking out with me on this!

Holds for the Holidays

With the holidays here and many of us traveling or just incredibly busy, the last thing we want to think about are our holds piling up at our local library. Thankfully, the Santa Fe Public Library has easy-to-use tools to help us manage our holds so when "normal" life resumes, we can get that book, DVD, or CD that we have our eye on.

If you're going to be out-of-town or just too busy for a while, your best bet is to freeze your holds. This means that you won't lose your hold or your place in line, just that the hold won't activate while it's frozen. When you're back from traveling or ready to resume your reading, you can just unfreeze your holds and life proceeds as usual.

If there are items that you want to check out "some day", but not soon enough to place a hold on, use the My Lists feature. This allows you to create different wish lists of books, DVDs, and CDs. When you're ready to place a hold on them, the catalog makes it very easy with just a few clicks.

Any reference librarian will be thrilled to help you set up the My Lists feature, freeze your holds, or thaw them out when you're ready. You can also find help on the Holds page or the My Lists page.

New Catalog Features

We’re very excited to announce the addition of two new features to our catalog:

My Lists and My Reading History.

My Lists is a way to keep track of items that you may want to check out in the future, but don’t want to check out or place a hold on right now. You can have several My Lists and give them your own titles and descriptions, such as “Movies to Watch” or “Interesting Nonfiction”. You can also place holds on the items right from the lists when you’re ready for them.

A description and instructions can be found here.


My Reading History is a way to keep track of items that you have checked out already. For your privacy and security, this is a feature that can only be opted in to. Neither the Library staff nor our software is able to access your past checkouts without this feature.

A description and instructions can be found here.

Please try these out and let us know what you think! You can always call your local reference librarian for assistance, or email us at library@santafenm.gov.

Health Hut

If you read yesterday's blog and watched the video, you'll recall that data and information is often absorbed and understood more efficiently when it's presented visually. With new studies being published daily, one field that's difficult to keep up with is health and medicine. A good health blog is Health Hut, which periodically posts health and fitness information for those of us who don't work in the healthcare field. A recent post features 40 health infographics, so you can visually access quality information about health topics such as the causes of obesity or alcoholism rates by state and country.

For example, the following graphic charts rates of diagnosed depression worldwide. Without peeking, can you guess which country is highest?

Information is Beautiful

A side effect of information overload is being unable to put the avalanche of data and statistics into some sort of meaningful context. David McCandless, author of Information is Beautiful, gives an 18-minute talk showing how rearranging data into visual patterns helps us understand it and put it in perspective.

Don't have 18 minutes? Definitely check out the Billion Dollar-O-Gram from 2009.




Click here if you're having trouble viewing the video.

Library Card Sign-Up Month is now!

This September, sign yourself and your family up for library cards, and use the one you have!

We have a whole section about getting a library card on our website, along with printable applications in English y Español. It's free, it's easy, and it will quickly become the most important card in your wallet.

If you're still not persuaded, check out the American Library Association's 52 Ways to Use Your Library Card (for each week of the year). Here are some of their suggestions:

• Get to know your librarian, the ultimate search engine.
• Research and apply for jobs
• Register to vote
• Pick up a DVD.
• Use our free wireless and Internet computers.
• Learn how to navigate the Internet.
• Prepare your resume.
• Attend a lecture or workshop.
• Attend Preschool Story Time with your child.
• Look up all kinds of health information.
• Research the purchase of a new or used car.
• Check your Facebook page.
• Call the reference desk if you have a question.
• Research your term paper.
• Learn about the history of Santa Fe.
• Check your stock portfolio.
• Borrow or download an audiobook for your next road trip or commute.
• See a new art exhibit.
• Make photocopies.
• Get a book from interlibrary loan.
• Enroll your child in a summer reading program.
• Pick up tax forms.
• Connect with other people in the community.
• Find a quiet spot, curl up with a book and enjoy.
  

Libraries - and the Internet - Feeding You

Check out this short film about how 7 years of library-provided Internet access has transformed this agricultural community in the Ukraine:



Trouble viewing the video? Click Here.

Common Craft Security

We've already blogged about Common Craft, that fantastic source of short and informative videos. For anyone and everyone who uses a computer, public or private, please check out this video about Secure Passwords. It gives you tips to make your password hack-resistant, and also gives valuable advice about using publicly-shared computers.

While you're on the site, check out some of their other videos. For example, if you've always wondered about that Wikipedia, they provide a fantastic introduction. You'll be an expert in no time.

Celebrating the Bicentennial of Margaret Fuller:

A Presentation By Michael Barnett

Thursday, August 5, 2010 at 7:00 p.m.
Main Library Community Room
145 Washington Ave.

Margaret Fuller (May 23, 1810 – July 19, 1850) was an American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate associated with Emerson, Thoreau, and the American transcendentalism movement. Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century is considered the first major feminist work in the United States, and today she’s considered one of the guiding lights of the first-wave of feminism.

The Bicentennial hopes to raise awareness of Margaret Fuller, so that her story may inspire people of all ages to think independently, express their thoughts clearly, defend their convictions with courage, learn through dialogue and the free exchange of opinions, believe in the equality of all people, and be open to change.

Michael Barnett works as a theologian, educator, and teaching artist/poet. For nine years, Michael has spoken and taught on the Transcendentalists in Unitarian Universalist and liberal churches in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and New Mexico. His article, "The Awesome Pen of Sarah Margaret Fuller", was published in the Winter 2010 issue of the Universalist Herald.

This event is free and open to the public.

Daguerreotype of Margaret Fuller by John Plumbe, 1846

Independence Day Closings

All branches of the Santa Fe Public Library will be closed on Sunday, July 4, and Monday, July 5, in observance of Independence Day.

All branches will be open regular hours, 10:00 am - 6:00 pm, on Saturday, July 3rd.

Regular hours will resume at 10:00 am on Tuesday, July 6.

Have a Blast!

22frames

Online information is being delivered by video more than ever. YouTube and other sites are incredibly popular for everything from music videos to Nursing exam test prep. The City of Santa Fe has a number of instructional videos posted for its residents. However, the unmentioned piece of video is audio. You need a sound card for your computer, and usually either speakers or headphones to fully enjoy a video. But what if you're just learning English and want to watch a newscast? What if you're hearing impaired or deaf?

22frames is a new project that scours the web for videos that are either closed-captioned or English as a Second Language (ESL) -enriched. You can search videos by keyword, browse by subject category, translate the page into dozens of different languages, and limit the videos by Closed Captioned or English Learning Activities. I was impressed by the text captions that pop up as you rollover all the featured videos. They're succinct and detailed, and give you enough information about the video before clicking through. They also have separate links to learn idioms and common mispronunciations.

As multimedia gets more complex on the web, and as we seek to make both the physical and virtual worlds more inclusive, 22frames is a fantastic step in that direction. For a town that hosts New Mexico School for the Deaf and a sizable population of English-language learners, I'm certain that Santa Fe will have a lot to gain from it, and hopefully a lot to contribute.