Actually, it seems to be warming up a bit. So there’s no excuse not to check out the Buhrrr Fest this Saturday! According to the Ann Arbor Observer, there will be ice skating, a bonfire complete with s'mores, and special events, including “a figure skating exhibition, an ice cream eating contest, and broomball.” Sound fun? I think so!

You can now find all your favorite Mystery, Sci-Fi, or Fantasy authors all in one place at the Downtown Library. The formally all paperback section is now interfiled with the hardbound books. Romance and Western books are now interfiled in the general fiction area and can be identified by a label on the book spine. We hope you enjoy the ease of browsing these collections.

Got some tough questions for Lloyd Carr and his 2006 team? Head to the Neutral Zone on Thursday, February 15 to hear more about Coach Carr’s favorite off season pastime: reading. Carr will be joined by Adam Kraus, Chad Henne, and everyone’s favorite powerhouse, Michael Hart to discuss not the successes and failures of the 2006 season, but rather the importance of reading in their lives. The event is a fundraiser for the Ann Arbor Book Festival, which runs from May 17-20 this spring. Tickets are $10 for individuals and $30 for families, and can be obtained on the festival’s website. So leave those lingering football questions at home and find out what Chad Henne keeps on his nightstand.

Please visit our book display on the 2nd floor reference section of our Downtown location. Throughout the month of February, browse our book display of titles representing the history of African Americans in the U.S. All books from the display can be borrowed for your reading pleasure.

Americans are not accustomed to designing single-family homes for the probability that someone close to them will have mobility problems in the future. At a recent meeting of Senior Advocates of Washtenaw (SAW), a workgroup of Blueprint for Aging, Carolyn Grawi, Sue Hart and David Esau introduced the concept of visitablility. The goal is for anyone living in or visiting your home to be able to enter, move about, and use the bathroom.

AADL is barrier-free, and has books that address this concept: Design for Assisted Living, Design for Dignity, Beautiful Barrier-Free, and Building Design for Handicapped and Aged Persons. Go to concretechange.org for more information.

The Nonprofit Resources Center is a new collection at AADL that focuses on nonprofit organizations. Nonprofit expertise in the areas of fundraising, governance, administration, and employment is now collected together and available for circulation. The Nonprofit Resources Center contains approximately 400 items and is located on the 2nd floor of the Downtown Library. The Nonprofit Resources Center is a collaboration between the NEW Center and Ann Arbor District Library to facilitate the use of these books and to make them available to the widest audience possible. We wish to thank Borders which generously made these materials available.

This month Proyecto Avance: Latino Mentoring Association, or PALMA, will begin holding English language tutoring sessions at the Downtown Library. PALMA is the brainchild of Cristhian Espinoza, a Spanish professor at the University of Michigan’s Residential College. The organization pairs UM students with native Spanish speakers in the community who are interested in learning English. Participants range in age from infants and preschoolers to adults, and many attend as families.

While PALMA currently has a waiting list, the library has lots of materials for patrons looking to learn English, from DVDs and CDs to books written specifically for adult English learners.

Please join us in welcoming PALMA to the Ann Arbor District Library!

camp

Here we are at … the City of Ann Arbor’s Holiday Break Camp for kids ages 6 – 10 years old. The Bryant Community Center is the place to be 10:00 a.m. – 3:30 p.m., Jan. 2 – 5, 2007. Lots of activities, lunches, snacks and field trips are included in the $50 resident fee. For more information contact Community Outreach at 994.2722.

Why pull out all the decorating stops when someone else has already done it for you? According to the Ann Arbor News, the Museum on Main Street is serving up nostalgia this holiday season—glass ornaments, aluminum trees, and even a tree made from goose feathers (!) fill the small house on the corner of Beakes and Main. The museum is open on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays from 1-4, and procrastinators need not fret—the exhibit runs until January 17. For the industrious at heart, the library also carries a large selection of holiday decorating books.

One of the Ann Arbor District Library's outreach programs is Library Songsters, where a musician teaches K-12 students to how to write songs using information they learn in history or geography class. The students start to understand why the traditional songs they grew up singing are still popular a century or two after they were written.

There are whole books about one song: the seasonal White Christmas, the early American tune, Yankee Doodle, the ballad of a St. Louis barroom brawl, Stagolee, the folk/blues classic John Henry. New York, our most famous city, has more songs written about it than any other metropolis in America. The folk process itself is examined in volumes like American Roots Music and Making People's Music.