So You Got and E-Book Reader as a Holiday Gift....

A recent post from mashable.com is directed at new Kindle users. It is emtitled So You Got an Amazon Kindle this Holiday Season: Now What? While you cannot use your Kindle to access free content from our Overdrive e-book service -- the two are not compatible -- you can avail yourself of all the free content mentioned at the mashable.com link. There is a lot of it!

And, if you have one of the devices compatible with Overdrive, such as a Nook, you can also use the free content we offer, as well as the free content available elsewhere.

Night Sky

Here is a very interesting website called heavens-above.com. If enter your longitude and latitude or select your location from a map, it will tell you what satellites will pass over your location that day. It also lists other astronomical events, but these do not appear to be sorted for particular locations.

So if you ever wondered what satellites are passing over you, now you know where to look.

Business Databases

I don't do lots of business research (either for myself or for patrons), so when a business question comes up it can take me a while to get back in the groove. Yesterday I was reminded how cool our business databases are when a patron asked me a question about market share. I used Reference USA and Gale's Business Company Resource Center. The two make a good team.

If you are researching a business or an industry, perhaps to assess competition, you can look the business up in Reference USA, determine its SIC code and annual earnings, then jump over to Gale and plug the SIC code in to the search box and see where that company ranks as a portion of the industry's total earnings. That is just one example of an infinite number of applications for this team of powerful databases.

Here is a link to our electronic resources. You will need your card number and PIN to log in.

Google eBookstore

Google has joined the eBook fray with the debut of the Google eBookstore. The service is compatible with most devices. Unsurprisingly, it will NOT work with the Kindle.

Ebook fans have many options available to them, including Overdrive, which the NH State Library provides to our patrons free of cost.

Tax Time

Everyone's favorite time of year approaches: tax time! We should soon be getting our forms in plenty of time to make the April 15th deadline. If you want to get a head start, the IRS makes almost every form available at its web site. If you need NH tax forms, look here. If you need Mass non-resident forms, look here.

The IRS recently announced that it will no longer mail tax forms to individuals and businesses. In fact, it would not be terribly surprising if they stop printing most forms in the near future. The popularity of e-filing and the presence of the forms on the Internet make printed forms unnecessary for many people. And they are very expensive to print and distribute.

If you are interested in e-filing, the IRS has links to free options here (assuming your income is below the stated maximum).