Library Hours for 12/24 – 12/27

The Bristol Public Library will be open on Thursday, December 24th from 8:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. The Library will be closed on Friday, December 25th and Saturday, December 26th in recognition of Christmas, but will resume normal hours on Monday, December 28th.

 

Librarians Cancan

As a little light holiday entertainment, we bring you the (in)famous Can Can’t dancers performing at the National Library of Australia’s Christmas party:

 

Wright Brothers Day 2009

Observed on December 17 since 1963, Wright Brothers Day marks the anniversary of Orville and Wilbur Wright’s first manned flight near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina when Orville flew  for 12 seconds over the North Carolina sand dunes.  If you can’t commemorate the day with flight, then how about a good book?

• The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Aerial Age by Tom Crouch (B Wright | MAIN)
• The Flyers: In Search of Wilbur and Orville Wright by Noah Adams (629.13 AD19 | MAIN)
• To Conquer the Air: the Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight by James Tobin (629.13 T554 | MAIN)
• On Great White Wings: The Wright Brothers and the Race for Flight by F. Culick (629.13 C898 | MAIN)
• Dawn Over Kitty Hawk: The Novel of the Wright Brothers by Walter Boyne (F Boyne | MAIN)

You may also be interested in visiting these websites:

• The Wright Brothers: The Invention of the Aerial Age
  The exhibit, sponsored by the Smithsonian’s  National Air and Space Museum is broken into three sections with interactive timelines: Who were Wilbur and Orville?, Inventing a Flying Machine, and The Aerial Age Begins.
• The Times Archives
  Read historic articles written by Times of London’s reporters about the Wright Brothers “aeroplane experiments.” Articles featured cover 100 years, from 1785 to 1985.
• The Library of Congress’s American Memory Project “Today in History: December 17″
  This description of the flight at Kitty Hawk includes digitized prints and photographs, most taken by the Wright Brothers, as well as a thumbnail history of U.S. flight.

(Learning to fly? We’ve recently updated our flight instruction materials. Check out the 629.132’s at the Main library).

 

Is That Charity Legitimate?

This time of year, pleas for charitable donations seem to be coming from everywhere  — on the street, at the grocery store, by phone, in the mail, and via the Internet. The appeals can easily tug at the heart and make it hard to say no. Of course, you want your dollars to go to those who deserve it, but ever wonder what charities do with your donations or whether the charities soliciting you even legitimate? How can you know?

First, you can check with the Public Charities Unit.  In Connecticut, under the Solicitation of Charitable Funds Act, the Public Charities Unit oversees all charitable activity within the state. All charities (and any paid soliciting firms hired by them) are required to register, file a notice of each upcoming solicitation campaign, and submit a post-campaign financial report. To find out if charity is registered in Connecticut, or to see if the charity is a scam, or to complain about a charity’s fund-raising practices, call the Public Charities Unit at (860) 808-5030.

Under federal law, charities are required to register with the IRS and must annually file a Form 990 which provides to the IRS their activity, income and expenses. You can search the online version of IRS Publication 78, Cumulative List of Organizations described in Section 170(c) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 for registered charities.

There are also several useful websites that rate national charities:

• Philanthropic Research Inc.’s Guidestar.org includes a searchable data base of more than 700,000 non-profit organizations as 501(c)(3) by the IRS. Data is collected directly from the charities and from the IRS Business Master File, IRS Forms 990, and 990s EZ.
• The American Institute of Philanthropy’s charitywatch.org is “the only national charity watchdog to evaluate social welfare groups that are not eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions such as the ACLU, Human Rights Campaign, League of Women Voters, NARAL Pro Choice America, National Right to Life Committee, and Sierra Club.”
• The Better Business Bureau’s national charity reports index, bbb.org/charity, rates charities according to the BBB’s 20 charity standards.
• Finally, Charitynavigator.org rates the financial health of over 5,000 of America’s best-known charities.

 

Radio Nostalgia: Jack Benny (Free Event)

Come to the Main Library on December 12 from 11 am – 12 pm, pull a chair up next to the fireplace, and listen to an old-time show with RadioGuide’s Webmaster Ed. This month it’s the Jack Benny episode, “Jack Buys Don Cuff Links for Christmas,” that originally aired on Dec. 2, 1951 — Jack and Mary shop for Christmas presents, but Jack keeps changing his mind and drives the sales representative (Mel Blanc) insane.

Refreshments provided by the Friends of the Bristol Public Library. Free. No registration required.