Need Help with Your Taxes?

Rocky River Public Library has the help you need to get your taxes done right. We've conveniently listed all the links you need--from forms to online tax preparation on our website. Just check out http://www.rrpl.org/research/tax_info/taxinfo.html and you're good to go.

AARP volunteers are even available to do your taxes for you by appointment until April 13th. Please call 440-333-7610 ext. 3700 to make an appointment.

Get into OverDrive: Exercise Your Mind as Well as Your Body

Did you make a New Year's resolution to save time and money? Be more organized and efficient? Exercise more? Here's a way to do all that at once: Get into OverDrive!

Download an audiobook on your iPod or MP3 player and listen to it while working out instead of just your usual music playlist. Rocky River Public Library offers free digital downloads from home on our OverDrive website or come in and use our convenient download station near the reference desk and download an audiobook in about 5 minutes.

Titles on OverDrive include everything from the latest bestsellers to business and self-help books. Why not try it out today?

Advance Your Job Search with Job & Career Accelerator

Job & Career Accelerator™ combines everything you need for a successful job search into one easy-to-use online application. With this innovative job-hunting system, you can:

*Explore detailed information on over 1,000 different occupations
*Match your interests and skills with the career that's best for you
*Search over five million up-to-the-minute local and national job postings
*Create professional resumes and cover letters
*Practice and master interviewing skills
*Get invaluable tips and advice every step of the way—from your initial search to accepting an offer
*Conveniently organize and track your job-search progress all in one place

Just go to our home page: http://www.rrpl.org/ and click on Research Resources. Choose the Ohio Web Library icon and Learning Express Library from the list of resources.

Learn a Language Before You Know It

Check out our new online language learning service called BYKI (as in before you know it)! Just enter your library card number and then create your own username and password. Click on the Quick Start button and you're set to go. BYKI features more than 70 different languages as well as English for Arabic, Spanish or Chinese-speakers.

Or you can click on the "word of the day" tab to learn a new word in your chosen language--what a great New Year's resolution!

I'm leanring Italian, what will you choose?

Treasury Hunt - Is there money out there with your name on it?

Remember when US Savings Bonds were given as gifts for weddings, birthdays, christenings, etc.? Did yours mature? Did you cash them in? Maybe they are still in a file somewhere? If you're not sure, check out the Treasury's new website: Treasury Hunt to find out if you or a loved one has savings bonds that have stopped earning interest. The site includes forms for lost, stolen, or destroyed bonds as well as ones to reinvest your bonds so that they are earning interest again.

The Best FREE Websites!

The American Library Association has put together its eleventh annual list of the best FREE reference websites for 2009. The current list contains 29 websites that the ALA has recognized as outstanding sites. Topics include presidents, careers, countries, the Bible, books, newspapers, health, scholarships, language, hiking, gardening, science, sports, and more!

Here are a few of my favorites from the list:

Title: Business & Human Rights Resource Centre

URL: http://www.business-humanrights.org/

This site is one of the fastest ways to find information about the exploitive practices of 4000 businesses worldwide, which would be difficult to locate by other means. Users can begin searching by company name, issue, country, or topic. Balanced coverage is provided via news, announcements, and special resources while providing responses from the accused companies. By making negative enterprise behavior more transparent, the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre may help stop companies’ human rights abuses.


Title: PDRhealth (TM)

URL: http://pdrhealth.com/

Drawing on the trusted Physicians' Desk Reference (PDR®), this site provides information for prescriptions drugs, over-the-counter medications, and herbals/supplements. Included are recommended dosage, side effects, possible food and drug reactions, and in many cases pictures to assist with drug identification. It also offers excellent overviews of numerous diseases and conditions, from kidney stones and migraines to teething and Cushing Syndrome. And there is even of listing of clinical trials, searchable by region and illness, for those living with cancer or rare diseases.

Title: Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)
URL: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/

The Writing Lab at Purdue houses 200 free writing resources and instructional materials for students, teachers, and trainers. Included are formatting and style guides, grammar and mechanics, internet literacy, ESL, job search and technical writing, and research. There are sections geared to writing for specific disciplines (e.g. experimental report writing in psychology) and forms (e.g. writing about poetry).


Title: Sports Reference

URL: http://www.sports-reference.com/

This valuable resource provides statistics for four major sports: baseball, football, basketball, and hockey, and each sport’s section is browsable and searchable in many ways. Baseball aficionados will find regular season box scores back to 1957 along with minor league stats back to 1992. Football lovers can look up draft picks and review single season and career leaders in passing, rushing, and kicking. Basketball devotees can find the top performers and award winners of the NBA and WNBA. Hockey enthusiasts will be able to find all players who wore the sweater number 25. With all of this and an additional section focused on Olympics history, Sports Reference hits the ball out of the park!

http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/rusa/sections/mars/marspubs/marsbestfreewebsites/marsbestfree2009.cfm

**Since the Web is constantly changing, readers should note that these Web sites were as annotated on the date the member reviewed the site**

Freedom To Read

September 26 through October 3 is Banned Book Week but we are celebrating the Freedom to Read!

Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. All of the books featured during the week have been targets of attempted bannings. The American Library Association recorded 513 challenges in 2008 but estimates that this reflects only 20-25% of actual incidents, as most challenges are never reported. Fortunately, while some books were banned or restricted, in a majority of cases the books were not banned, all thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, booksellers, and members of the community to retain the books in the library collections.

There are some great resources to check out to celebrate your freedom to read:

- RRPL Adult Services Read it or Weep blog discusses favorite banned books
- The ALA co-sponsors the Banned Books Week website that offers a wealth of information
- Check out the Interactive Google Map from the Banned Books Week website to see where all the challenges and bannings have occurred from 2007-2009. You might be surprised!

The 10 Most Challenged Books of 2008
- And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
- His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman
- TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series) by Lauren Myracle
- Scary Stories (series) by Alvin Schwartz
- Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
- Gossip Girl (series) by Cecily von Ziegesar
- Uncle Bobby's Wedding by Sarah S. Brannen
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
- Flashcards of My Life by Charise Mericle Harper