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February 29 - A Very Rare Day
February 29 is the result of Leap Year. Leap Year occurs because the length of a year is about 365 days and 6 hours. (The exact length of a year is 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes and 46 seconds.) Most years beginning centuries are not leap years, so that takes care of the not quite 6 hours part. Let's thank Pope Gregory in 1582 with devising a more accurate calendar, which replaced the Julian calendar. The Gregorian calendar is a civil, solar, or sun centered, calendar. In Islamic lands a lunar, or moon centered, calendar is used. There has been attention paid to the Mayan Calendar that is due to run out after the last baktun, or period of 144,000 days long. The last of great cycle of 13 baktuns ends December 23, 2012. This information and more is available in The Time Book: A Brief History from Lunar Calendars to Atomic Clocks.
Computer Assistance & Services
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Technology continues to evolve rapidly. Are you keeping up?
Computers, software, laptops, devices, internet cloud, and more...
We are here to help you learn!
Santa Teresa Branch offers a wide array of computer assistance.
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One -on-one Computer Help
30 Minute sessions with very knowledgeable mentors.
Wednesdays, 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Advance registration required. -
Laptop Class
Bring in your laptop & learn to get the most out of your laptop!
Wednesdays, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Advance registration required. -
Beginning Computer Class
Various weekly topics in using a computer, software & the internet.
Thursdays, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Registration encouraged.
Can’t make it to any of these classes? Check out this great online resource that offers basic tutorials over a wide array of topics: Goodwill Learning Foundation
SAT Essay Writing Workshop
Need practice with your SAT writing skills? Teens, learn how to write a great essay for the SAT test. In this workshop presented by Kaplan, get advice about what essay graders are looking for, as well as strategies on writing effective essays. This workshop will include practice essay writing and evaluation.
This practice test will be held on Thursday, March 8th from 4pm-5pm in the Santa Teresa Branch Library Community Room. Pre-registration is not required.
Free Tax Preparation Help
Do you earn less than $50,000 a year? Do you need help filing your taxes? You can get help from Earn it! Keep it! $ave it! provided by the United Way Silicon Valley.
You can get free tax preparation help from trained volunteers at the library, the Center for Employment Training (CET), Catholic Charities, and other places in Santa Clara County. Last year more than 5,700 customers got free tax help and more than $7.1 million in refunds came back to the community.
If you used to go to the King Library for help from volunteer tax preparers you can go to CET, because they may still have your information from past years.
Click here to see a list of some of the sites that are offering free tax preparation. You can also call 211 or 1-866-896-3597 if you have questions or need to find other places that offer tax help. You can also get tax help at these San José Public Library branches: East Branch, Joyce Ellington, Hillview, Tully, and West Valley.
When you visit a tax preparation site please bring:
- Last year’s tax return if you have it
- Valid ID
- Social Security cards for everyone in your family
- W-2 forms, 1099 forms, and 1098 forms
- A blank check so a refund can be deposited directly into your account
For more information visit http://earnitkeepitsaveit.org/economic-impact-of-free-tax-prep.
The Absolute Value of Mike
So, your dad’s a genius, and you have a math learning disability. He thinks you should be an engineer, and you think: “what about ‘math learning disability’ don’t you understand?” And now he wants to pack you off to rural Pennsylvania (isn’t that where that groundhog lives?) to stay with elderly relatives you’ve never met--Poppy and Moo (Moo? Seriously?) while he goes to Romania to teach for six weeks. You’re supposed to help Poppy with an engineering project called the “Artesian Screw” (“good training for an engineer”, Dad says) and in your spare time do the tons of math problems he sends along with you. Not your idea of summer fun. But you go (what choice do you have?), you meet your crazy relatives and their possibly even crazier neighbors, and to your immense surprise your summer turns out not half bad.
That’s 14 year old Mike Frost’s life in a nutshell. You’ll be entertained by his adventures in Do Over, Pennsylvania; maybe you’ll even laugh out loud. And you’ll certainly cheer for him as he learns the absolute value of Mike.
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Review by volunteer Robert D.
Bill Bryson is quickly becoming well known for his humor and wit while tackling subjects that are often delivered in dry, dense books. Those who have checked out his new book, At Home: A Short History of Private Life, are familiar with the way Bryson wanders from subject to subject. In A Short History of Nearly Everything, he starts at the very beginning with the Big Bang and the sarcastic roots of that name. Bryson's humor is well paired with topics such as the knock-down, drag-out personal battles between scientists over things such as fossils or the subject of continental drift. Bryson has managed to do the impossible, to make science and history fun for the average person to read and explain its context in a way that's understandable to the average person.
Book Sale This Saturday
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Calling all book lovers! The Friends of the Santa Teresa Library are having a HUGE book sale this Saturday, February 4, from 10-4 in the Library’s Community Room. They have gently used books for all ages and interests as well as media—cd’s, dvd’s, and more. Prices are ridiculously reasonable—you can’t go wrong. So come, browse, and take home exciting titles to enjoy.
All proceeds from the sale are used to support library programs such as January’s Mad Science and February’s upcoming Nick Barone Puppet Show and Teen Rock Concert.
Plunkett Research Online: Great way to keep up with emerging industries!
Are you looking for a job transition to a new industry? Do you want to follow trends in wireless/cellular, biotechnology, alternative energy, Asian companies, nanotechnology, or Games, apps & social media?
Check out the great, FREE market research on these and other cool industries available from
Get market research and trends, create lists of companies and executives, gather statistics, find industry associations, and create custom reports on 33 different industries - all in one place.
Profiles also include non-technology industries such as food, textiles, chemicals, outsourcing, banking, retail, sports and entertainment. The Build-A-Report feature allows you to create customized PDF's based on data from specific segments of your industry. Check it out!
Allez, Allez! Tour de France
Mont Ventoux, l’Alpe d’Huez, Col d’Aubisque, Col d'Izoard, Col du Tourmalet are just a few of the most infamous Tour de France climbs. The Tour de France favorites rise to the occasion hammering the uphills, measuring each other’s fitness and occasionally attempting to breakaway for a stage win. While the overall general classification Tour winner is most often determined in the alpine landscape, there are additional competitions within the Tour de France.
The San Jose Public Library has a collection of Tour de France media including books and DVDs. Inside the Tour de France : The Pictures, the Legends, and the Untold Stories of the World's Most Beloved Bicycle Race is a compendium of stories and photographs of the legends of the Tour de France. It was published in 2006 and includes Lance Armstrong’s historic seventh win.
The Official Tour de France Centennial, 1903-2003 celebrates 100 years of the world’s most famous bike race. It contains photographs and anecdotes from the Tour de France archives and was produced in connection with L’Equipe, France’s daily sports newspaper and originator of the Tour.
Another title in the Library’s collection is Tour de France/Tour de Force: A Visual History of the World’s Greatest Bicycle Race. This book features hundreds of photographs and tells the tale of the Tour dating back to its beginnings. There are illustrations of the evolution of the Tour de France bicycle, chapters on race strategies, race results dating back to 1903 and a section on the Tour’s unfortunate link to the use of performance enhancing drugs.
Check out more Tour de France titles at the San Jose Public Library.
The Hollywood Librarian
THEY HAVE MORE CARDHOLDERS THAN VISA, MORE CUSTOMERS THAN AMAZON
AND MORE OUTLETS THAN McDONALDS . . .
Meet America's Librarians
You might not have given much thought to the librarian behind the desk at your local branch — much less her often caricatured depiction in Hollywood — but being a dedicated library user (as I'm sure you are!) you might want to find out a little more.
This quirky but informative documentary about librarians and their portrayal in the movies —and their important role in defending our civil rights will definitely fit the bill.
Listen to what Vartan Gregorian, President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York has to say about this intriguing film:
"The Hollywood Librarian is an illuminating portrait of librarians as they have been portrayed in the movies—often bespectacled, occasionally glamorous, sometimes too brainy for their own good—juxtaposed with the real-life librarians, both men and women, who are the gatekeepers of knowledge in an increasingly digital and globalizing world. A touching, amusing, insightful and entirely delightful film, The Hollywood Librarian also manages to make critical points about how censorship still intrudes on our lives and how the freedom to read remains a right we must all defend."
And by clicking on "Request" you can have this documentary DVD transferred to your neighborhood SJPL library!
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