Writers' Room

The Southwest Literary Center of Recursos de Santa Fe will be having an Open House and Grand Opening in their new Writers' Room on Saturday from 1 PM to 5 PM. The Writers' Room is located upstairs at 826 Camino de Monte Rey (between St. Francis and Pacheco). Their web page says, "Join us for nibbles and visit the new Writers Room. A library, a classroom, a room for readings or just a quiet place to work on your novel. Wireless access available. Caffeine coming soon."

There's a nice story in the Albuquerque Journal about the project, but it is unfortunately not available online except from inside the library. Those who are familiar with the famous 24x7 Writers' Room in New York City need to know that at present the Recursos space is only available by appointment. Or go visit on Saturday and talk to them about it...

Santa Fe Librarians, Santa Fe Book

Librarians are normal people. Being published makes them happy :-)

At the end of the month, two Santa Fe librarians will have a new book out: Breakfast Santa Fe Style: A Dining Guide to Fancy, Funky, and Family Friendly Restaurants.

Kathy Barco is the Youth Services Coordinator at the New Mexico State Library; Valerie Nye is an assistant professor and Serials Librarian at the College of Santa Fe. One grew up in Los Alamos, the other is a native New Mexican. Both came back to New Mexico after years away because they pined for, well, everything about the place—definitely including the food. Just think of the fun they had doing the research for this book.

It's not in our catalog yet, but will be soon.

Internet Access on Saturday the 18th (Not)

Please be sure to call and check before coming into the library for internet access on Saturday, March 18th.

There will be major electrical work going on at City Hall on Saturday. Our internet connection goes out through the City's computer room, so there will probably be no internet service for the whole day. If there is a change in the timetable we will let you know.

3.141592653589793238462643...

Π
The date being 3.14, it's National Pi Day. Math departments and math clubs around the country are having recitation contests, pie-eating contests, curious musical performances... And this year you could celebrate it as the "300th Anniversary of Pi. The sixteenth letter of the Greek alphabet, p, was first used for the familiar value 3.1415… in the publication, Synopsis Palmariorium Mathesios, authored by William Jones in 1706."

The first thousand digits (thank you, Wikipedia):
3.
1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510
5820974944 5923078164 0628620899 8628034825 3421170679
8214808651 3282306647 0938446095 5058223172 5359408128
4811174502 8410270193 8521105559 6446229489 5493038196
4428810975 6659334461 2847564823 3786783165 7245870066
0631558817 4881520920 9628292540 9171536436 7892590360
0113305305 4882046652 1384146951 9415116094 3305727036
5759591953 0921861173 8193261179 3105118548 0744623799
6274956735 1885752724 8912279381 8301194912 9833673362
4406566430 8602139494 6395224737 1907021798 6094370277
0539217176 2931767523 8467481846 7669405132 0005681271
4526356082 7785771342 7577896091 7363717872 1468440901
2249534301 4654958537 1050792279 6892589235 4201995611
2129021960 8640344181 5981362977 4771309960 5187072113
4999999837 2978049951 0597317328 1609631859 5024459455
3469083026 4252230825 3344685035 2619311881 7101000313
7838752886 5875332083 8142061717 7669147303 5982534904
2875546873 1159562863 8823537875 9375195778 1857780532
1712268066 1300192787 6611195909 2164201989

Didn't It Snow? (Yes, It Did.)

Snow/water equavalent readout on top of the mountain (1)(2) moved up to (only) 9% of average this morning, and our longterm prospect for water supply this year is not much changed. But the trees in our neighborhoods are a lot happier at the moment.

Yesterday morning we got 3-to-5 inches here in town, says the newspaper. Melting fast.

Kiddie Lit

La Farge reports: "Story Time is going great. The group is still growing and the parents and children are very enthusiastic... Here is the list of books we read on March 7, 2006: Way up high in a tall green tree, by Jan Peck. The wild little horse, by Rita Gray. Bonny's big day, by James Herriot. Runaway pony, by Krista Ruepp. For our craft we did a put-together horse with a multi-colored yarn mane and tail. The children colored them beautifully."

Story Time meets on Tuesdays. There are two parallel sessions: Story Time for 2 & 3-year olds from 10:30 to 11 AM; Story Time for 4-5-6-year-olds from 10:30 to 11:15 AM. To register or for more information, call the La Farge Children's Room at 955-4863.

Speaking of Reviews

Often, especially for newer titles, the catalog has LOTS more information available about a title: summaries, tables of contents, information about characters and settings for fiction ('title profile'), first chapters, brief reviews. Click on the 'More About This Title' button, or on the cover image—you may find a table of contents that helps you conclude that, yes, now that the rush is over on Jared Diamond's Collapse you want to get hold of it; or a first chapter excerpt from Michelle Martinez' new title, The Finishing School, that makes clear that really you aren't interested; or a review of The inheritance of loss that makes you rush to put a hold on it. There are even large cover images.

The other day we had a patron who wanted a list of the Plainsmen series by Terry Johnston. The series lists are a little buried, but pure gold to people who like to read in order. Find a book in the series; hit the cover image or the "More" button; chose the "Title Profile;" at the bottom of the Profile click "Series" and voila! sixteen Johnston titles listed in order.

Important note: If you don't see anything when you click on the cover image or the button, take a look at the settings in your popup blocker. You want to tell it to allow windows opened by syndetics.com .

It's Just... Spring

The end of a dry winter in a dry place. There's a dusting of snow on the mountain, the first for weeks; the apricot trees are in bloom against the sunny east wall of City Hall.

That snow hasn't helped us much. This morning's snotel readout (1)(2)(3) has the snowpack in our mountains at 4% of average.

People Also Want To Read...

We've updated the list of the titles with the most holds on them, Books You're Willing To Wait In Line For (what we call among ourselves 'the manyholds list'.) There are no surprises at the top of the list, lots of people waiting for

• Nothing but trouble / Michael McGarrity
• The year of magical thinking / Joan Didion
• The 5th horseman / James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
• The Old Wine Shades / Martha Grimes
• Sea change / Robert B. Parker
• Death dance / Linda Fairstein
• Saving fish from drowning / Amy Tan

But on beyond the bottom of what we show on the web page—past The glass castle : a memoir, by Jeannette Walls ; Postwar : a history of Europe since 1945, by Tony Judt—we have a very long list of titles that at least a handful of people are waiting for. Videos such as March of the Penguins and Islam, Empire of Faith (which we have in both VHS and DVD). Titles back in demand or forever in demand: In Cold Blood and The Da Vinci Code, presumably because of movies; the sound recordings of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander and Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. There's yet another new Alexander McCall Smith with the usual charming title, Blue Shoes and Happiness; Sylvia Browne's newest book, If you could see what I see; audio versions of Claudia Funke's Inkheart & Manuel Ruiz' The Four Agreements; intriguing, well-reviewed fiction titles like Kiran Desai's The inheritance of loss; new non-fiction like Dogs of God : Columbus, the Inquisition, and the defeat of the Moors by James Reston, Jr.

There's no particular reason to single out some rather than others. It's just that it's endlessly interesting for us, what people want to read...

Tax Oops

You probably don't want to hear this, but if you missed the various news stories, you do need to know. According to a story in the Santa Fe New Mexican on February 24th, the IRS expects us to pay income tax on the state energy rebate that we received last fall. If you've already filed your Federal income tax, you are expected to amend your return with a 1040X form (available from the IRS website). The New Mexico Taxation and Revenue site confirms this, and includes the information that you may enter the rebate amount as 'Other income' on line 21 on Form 1040; as 'unemployment compensation' on line 3 of Form 1040EZ; or as 'unemployment compensation' on line 13 on Form 1040A. Stories the following day said the IRS ruling might be challenged.

The March 4 Albuquerque Journal had a couple more stories (sorry, they're not available for free online), including another story which said accountants are still in doubt whether the IRS is correct to rule that the rebates are taxable.

If you don't remember how much your rebate check was, you're certainly not alone... Perhaps you can use the rebate schedule on the New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department website to figure it out.

What's New?

...or in some cases, what's so new it's not here yet? The various What's New lists have been updated. You can place holds on anything you see, whether it's already arrived or just been ordered.

Media materials, Southwest titles, etc. Take a look at the lists.

Andé — A Program Worth Planning Ahead For

The Andé Marimba Band will be playing at La Farge Library at 2 PM on Saturday, March 18th, 2006. Andé is a seven member young adult co-ed band that plays all over Northern New Mexico. They currently play on six marimbas of varioius sizes, hosho (shakers) and a drum set. Most of the songs Andé Marimba Band play are traditonal songs from the Shona people of Zimbabwe. Some of the songs Andé plays are composed for marimba in the traditional style by modern Shona and American composers.

It's not possible to be within earshot of Andé without starting to dance around to the music. They're terrific.

More Building Day By Day

Nothing especially new to report on the site of the Southside Library. They just keep adding more result to what they're already doing: structural steel going up; pouring concrete retaining walls.

The most recent construction progress photos are always available on the progress page.

'What We've Got In Common' : Playing With Librarything

Librarian bloggers were buzzing last week about the newest feature on LibraryThing.com. LibraryThing is a website where people can list and track their personal books online, creating a catalog of their own library; and as of early last week the users were also able to begin cleaning up the collective database by lumping editions together which are really the same book.

LibraryThing is an enormous lot of fun to play with. Not only is there finally an entirely workable web-based tool for cataloging your personal library--a tool changing and improving right before our eyes with the work of programmer Tim Spalding, and an already large community of users-- but it comes with the pleasures of social networking, if you care to play. It will show you how many librarything users also have your book, how many others of your books you share with each of those people, what other books they have, what 'tags' (subject headings or sorting terms) they used, what reviews they have posted... you can communicate with each other.

You may enter up to 200 books for free. To explore a little, go to the zeitgeist page. You may get addicted to looking at people's tag clouds and author clouds. The most-owned books among the 26,472 users are the Harry Potters, The Hobbit, The Da Vinci Code, and Pride and Prejudice. ??Pride and Prejudice?? Read some of the kudos on the buzz page.

The phrase above, "what we've got in common," comes from one of the conversations on the librarything blog.

"African Effect" at CCA This Week

The Center for Contemporary Arts Cinemateque's Fourth Annual Film Festival is in progress. This year's program, March 1-5, is The African Effect. The description of the films is very seductive.

Octavia E. Butler, 1947-2006

Octavia E. Butler, the distinguished science fiction author, died over the weekend. Many tributes to her are turning up on the web: for example, the L. A. Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (her home town), from friend and author Steven Barnes. There was an interview on Democracy Now last fall, available free online as audio or transcript.

It looks like we missed ordering her 2005 title, Fledgling, and will set about filling that gap. We have her other titles.

Cruisin' the Book Blogs

The Putnam editor who does BookAngst 101 says that the book he so much enjoyed editing last year, Dope by Sara Gran, has now appeared. It must be getting some buzz: there are already several library patrons waiting for it. He has an annotated blogroll of other book blogs, and Agent 007 on Publishing immediately caught our eye.

What else is going on? Propernoun.net reviews a children's picture book, Memories of Survival. Yes, it's already on order. After a period of being stuck, having no idea at all for the next book, Sandra Scoppetone has kickstarted her writing process with nothing more to go on than the titles of 100 noir films for her chapter titles. The Waterboro Lib Blog has found us Locus Magazine's recommendations for the best fantasy & science fiction novels of 2005--(we don't have them all, but we do have a good many of them. Check the catalog for availability)-- and pointed us to an article in the Guardian that includes J. K. Rowling's list of 10 books every schoolchild should read (?should have read before finishing school??): Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl; Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe; David Copperfield, Charles Dickens; Hamlet, William Shakespeare; To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee; Animal Farm, George Orwell; The Tale of Two Bad Mice, Beatrix Potter; The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger; Catch-22, Joseph Heller. Hmmmm...

The What's New in Online Books page at U. Pennsylvania is mostly boring, boring, but tells us indirectly that Max Brand is now out of copyright: Project Gutenberg has posted several Brand titles this month. Read Sarah Weinman's Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind if you're interested in crime fiction. Grumpy Old Bookman has a young-author story that he got in turn from GalleyCat. Beatrice has a seductive piece about a poet named Amy Gerstler and, yes, we have the book cited, Bitter Angel. Take any literary blog's list of other blogs--have we mentioned the Litblog Co-op lately?--and start wandering. Keep this in mind: we count on our library users to remind us to buy the books you learn about and want to read that aren't in the catalog yet.

Let The Good Times Roll

Going on six months ago, we were addicted to the New Orleans Times-Picayune online; to Gulf Coast web cams; to images of caravans of buses leaving their flooded city behind... Hard times; and hard times aren't over.

But for the moment, it's Mardi Gras. The parades have begun. (Parade schedule.) Nola.com is offering a parade cam (and others).

Yes, it's true: all our guides for the whole Gulf Coast are out of date, for Louisiana and for the media-forgotten swathe of destruction all along the shore and deep into the forests of the South. Put on your Mardi Gras beads to keep in mind all those folks whose lives are going to need a lot more than six months to be put back together.

P.S. The 2006 Annual Conference for the American Library Association will take place in New Orleans as scheduled at the end of June. This is an enormous convention, as many as 20,000 attendees; only a handful of cities have facilites and hotel accomodations which can handle it, and the venues are booked years in advance. It would have been a considerable financial blow to the city if ALA had cancelled, or scaled it down; and the decision to proceed full tilt with planning was made very soon after Hurricane Katrina.

Steel on the Skyline

Southside Library continues to grow. The architect's notes are just in, and include the following: "Steel studs are up along the north wall of the building. Structural steel is being erected throughout the building. The retaining wall along Country Club was poured. Two of the cistern pads have been poured. A meeting of the cistern suppliers, landscape architect, and architect will be convened at the project site in the near future to discuss the submittals. Details for the layout of the South Patio and Children’s Patio were reviewed. There were comments and these are being finalized."

The building is going to look pretty impressive from down on Jaguar Drive... Construction progress photos are always available on the progress page.

Bye Bye Bye Sweeney Bye-Bye

Well, it's not going to be a spectacle like the implosion of Pruitt-Igoe, but the Sweeney Convention Center is coming down on Monday afternoon. We received the following message from City Hall: "After many, many years of discussing, planning, studying, shelving the studies, restudying, working the numbers, reworking the numbers, etc. the demolition of Sweeney Center will begin Monday February 27 at 2:00 p.m. with Mayor Delgado driving the bulldozer to make it Sweeney Center's 'last bash.' Please mark your calendars and watch a bit of history unfold. Members of the Sweeney family have been invited and many of you may have played basketball there when it was a gym, or can recall some fabulous city employee Christmas parties, Fiestecitas, and other events.

"Around the fall of 2007 there will be a beautiful, state-of-the-art 72,000 square feet civic center with an underground parking garage that will more than double the current parking capacity..."

"See you Monday at 2:00 p.m.

"LET THE DEMOLITION BEGIN!"