Upcoming events on global warming.

Our City Forest & Eco-Silicon Valley present Jay McGowan, one of Al Gore's first climate change messengers. Jay will be speaking on global warming and how we can work to stop it. The event is FREE and will be held at Our City Forest's office in San José. Event Details: Date: Thursday, February 15th Time: 6:15 PM Location: OCF Offices at 595 Park Ave. Suite 100, San Jose, CA 95110. Call (408) 998-7337 for more info.

Also, on Thursday, February 15, the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology in Kansas City, Missouri, and the Johnson County (Kansas) Library will co-sponsor an online presentation and discussion about land use and climate change. Everyone is welcome to attend and participate. There is no need to register, and no registration fee. Details are at: http://67.19.231.218/v4/login.asp?r=67955673&p=0 ; visit http://www.opal-online.org/progschrono.htm for details.

Free access to "Black History Month" primary sources for students and libraries.

AwesomeStories - a subscription-based web site (with 125,000 links to primary sources at national archives, libraries, government and academic websites worldwide) and freely used in more than 25,000 schools and libraries - has extended its holiday-season waiver of subscription fees ($9.95 a year) to assist students and library-patrons as they search for "Black History Month" topics and primary materials.

With a password, people can access the primary-source database from any computer connected to the Internet. Through mid-February, individuals can receive free access to the site by simply requesting it with this form.

Get ready for tax season: Free tax assistance from V.I.T.A. for those qualifying.

The web page that lists VITA income tax assistance sites and meeting times in the local area is now set up for interested income-earning patrons.

It's easy to get to: 1. Select the link to Tax Forms & Information on the home page, 2. On the resulting page, select the link to Free Help With Your Taxes, 3. On this page, select the link to VITA Tax Help... (i.e., the first link). If only filing our income taxes were this easy! To get there more quickly use this link: http://www.sjlibrary.org/research/web/vita.htm.

Luis Valdez appearing at King Library.

Celebrate San Jose State University’s 150 Anniversary with Luis Valdez!
The General Collections Department of King Library is proud to present playwright and SJSU alumnus Luis Valdez on January 31st. He will be speaking from 7-8:30 p.m. in Room 229 at King Library.

Tonight is another Spare the Air night.

Help reduce air pollution!

- Do NOT burn wood tonight.
- If you must burn wood, burn less and use only dry, clean, seasoned wood, and nonglossy white paper. Moist, or "green" wood smolders more, producing greater amounts of harmful air pollutants.
- Check the chimney. Where there's smoke, there's a bad fire. Excess smoke means that the fire isn't burning properly.

Silicon Valley Reads starts today!

This year's Silicon Valley Reads community program is "The Tortilla Curtain" by T.C. Boyle. The author will make an appearance to discuss the book tonight, at the Campbell Heritage Theatre. It's a free program. Hope to see you there!

The importance of reading aloud to children of all ages...

I attended a workshop last night at the Santa Clara City Library on the importance of reading aloud to children, led by led by Jim Trelease. The program was geared towards parents, promoting the need to read aloud to children through all grade levels and the importance of eliminating television sets from children’s bedrooms. Did you know that two-thirds of school-aged children in the U.S. have television sets in their bedrooms? He also had some good recommended read-aloud books. These included: the series "Deltora Quest" by Radda; "My father’s Dragon" by Gannett; "James and the Giant Peach" by Dahl; "The Neighborhood Mother Goose" by Crews; "The Day the Babies Crawled Away" by Rathmann. All of these titles are available at SJPL.

Spare the Air Tonight! Yes, another one...

The air quality tonight is forecast to be unhealthy. The Bay Area Air District is asking residents to refrain from burning wood in their fireplaces and woodstoves, and to drive less.

New e-book series: Missions of California.

We have a subscription to "Missions of California" in ebook format. You can only access is through catalog records; there is no home page for this series. We also have audio books for learning languages, ebooks for legal topics, and much more. Check out our digital library page for details.

Recommended link: choosing a wireless provider.

Here is a good consumer information page on wireless phones: http://tinyurl.com/yk9vl2. This site contains many objective, useful articles on various technology issues. Check it out!

A CalTrans highway closure is planned.

Beginning late Friday night Jan 12, and continuing through early Monday morning, Jan 15, Caltrans will be alternately closing the connecting ramps from both north- and southbound I-280 to southbound Route 87 to complete a critical roadway paving stage of the Route 87 HOV (South) project.

The library catalog will be down on January 9, 2007.

The library catalog will be down for a scheduled upgraded the morning of Tuesday, January 9, 2007 from 7:00 - 11:00 AM. This also includes My Account features - such as renewing items, placing hold requests, and paying fines online. Please make sure to log in over the weekend to take care of any account-related tasks.

Christmas trees will be collected until Februrary 2 for recycling.

San José expects to collect up to 200,000 trees!

Upcoming program at King Library: all about cleaning products.

There will be a free program of environmental education on cleaning products at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library on Saturday, January 27, 1:30 pm. Jessie Denver, the scientist at the Environmental Service Dept. specializes in the water quality of the S.F. Bay. Her previous presentation at King received excellent responses from the audience so this is an encore presentation.

Best Free Reference Web Sites 2006 from RUSA Machine-Assisted Reference Section (MARS).

The Machine-Assisted Reference Section (MARS) of RUSA has published its 8th annual list of Best Free Reference Sites. You can view the list here.

FYI: some network problems at our branch...

We're having some network problems; our systems will be intermittently on and off today. Vineland Branch is our closest branch and their systems are all up and running.