November 2009 Checklist of Official Publications

The New York State Library has posted the November 2009 Checklist of Official Publications of the State of New York. Links to individual monthly issues in 'rich text format' as well as the annual cumulations in HTML are also available here.

1st Friday

David Brickman tells all.

Unfair credit card industry practices continue

Credit card companies are busy crafting new tricks and traps to bypass both Federal Reserve Board rules and new federal law set to take full effect in late February 2010, a new research report from the Center for Responsible Lending finds. Entitled “Dodging Reform: As Some Credit Card Abuses Are Outlawed, New Ones Proliferate,” the report explains why the nation’s 80 million families with one or more credit cards continue to be hit with arbitrary, unfair interest rate hikes and fees.

Legislative Office Expenditures

Office expenditures of individual state Senators and Assembly members for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2009 have been posted in a searchable format on the Empire Center's government transparency web site, www.SeeThroughNY.net.
The full text of this press release is available here.

Contact: Lise Bang-Jensen
518.434.3100

ACHA Black History Month Program

The Albany County Historical Association (ACHA) announces a special program in celebration of Black History Month. ACHA is pleased to host Sherrill D.
Wilson, Ph. D., Saturday, February 20 at 1:00 pm, at Ten Broeck Mansion, 9 Ten Broeck Place, Albany. This Speakers in the Humanities event is free and open to the public, and made possible through the support of the New York Council
for the Humanities’ Speakers in the Humanities program. Dr. Wilson’s
topic is “Celebrating Freedom”.

For questions or information call 436-9826 during regular business hours.

Black History Month in Downtown Albany

Look no further than these scheduled events as you celebrate Black History Month!

Infomavens' Desktop

A blog described as "informing, never boring," Infomavens' Desktop "is a fun and insightful (hopefully) blog maintained by a lawyer and a librarian, with diverse interests and backgrounds!"

Recent posts include a list of librarians dancing to Michael Jackson’s Thriller video (1/31), Southern California schools banning Merriam Webster’s 10th edition dictionary (1/27), the (possible) effect of social media on democracy (1/27), and a piece called Stop Freaking Out and Head to the Library! (1/20).

I found it, BTW, when ID started following me on Twitter (infomavensblog).

Back to the New Branches

Swiped, yet again, from APL's Stephanie Simon:

Mark your calendars. We have set the grand opening celebration dates for our last three new neighborhood libraries. All grand opening parties take place on Saturday afternoons, during the branch library service hours of 1 to 5 p.m.

March 27 -- John A. Howe Branch Library at Schuyler and Broad Streets.

May 15 -- John J. Bach Branch Library at 455 New Scotland Avenue. This party will be held in conjunction with Spring Spree, the sixth annual event organized by the Woodlawn-New Scotland and Helderberg neighborhood associations in celebration of the New Scotland Avenue neighborhood and its merchants.

June 12 -- Arbor Hill/West Hill Branch Library at 148 Henry Johnson Boulevard.