Steven Fromholz, Texas Poet Laureate, who is a performing artist as well as literary artist, will spend the afternoon at the library on Thursday, March 6, from 1-3 p.m., in the Friends Room. You may be familiar with Fromholz’s musical performances with Kinky Friedman and with the Texas Flatliners. If not, be assured that you’ll have a good, very unstuffy, time listening to Fromholz’s art. The event is free and open to all.

Also, during the first three weeks of March, the library will host a traveling exhibit of the visual art of Thomas Hart Benton. Benton was an American regionalist painter who worked from the 1930s into the 1960s. Benton’s work celebrated ordinary people and often depicted the era of the Great Depression.

IRS-trained tax advisors will be available to help you file your individual return.

Saturdays 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Wednesdays (for Seniors) Noon – 4:00 p.m.
Tuesdays & Thursdays 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.

Advisors will be in the library Classroom on the second floor. Sign in when you arrive–first come, first served.

Jim Minson, an experienced genealogy researcher, is willing to provide free coaching, whether it be to get you started or help you over humps you may encounter. During the past two years, Jim has taught genealogy classes at the library. He has lots of experience and, while he can’t do your research for you, he can guide you to resources that may be useful, whether your family is from central Texas or somewhere else in the world.

Jim will meet one-on-one with you in the second-floor History/Genealogy Room. He expects to be available Tuesday mornings, but since he is a volunteer, we can’t hold him to a firm schedule. Call 930-3551 after 9:00 on Tuesday to confirm that he’s in on that day, then, when you arrive, sign in at the Reference Desk, just outside the History Room. Service will be on a first come, first served basis.

Voting continues until February 15 for the book that will be the 2008 Georgetown Reads! selection. This year a committee, composed of several library staff members, two library advisory board members, and one local citizen who, with her husband, has been the angel supporting all of the past programs, selected the books that are on the ballot. The list of six is a much-discussed and shortened version of their first list of suggestions. Besides the obvious requirement of being exceptional reads, criteria influencing their choices include the availability of the books in paperback and also availability in other formats, such as large print, audio, and Spanish language versions.

The books on the ballot are:
Book Thief by Markus Zusak
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor
Isaac’s Storm by Erik Larson
Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas
A Twist at the End by Steven Saylor
The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan

Summaries and reviews for all of the books are available through the library’s online catalog at library.georgetown.org.

In addition to being available at the library and on the library’s website, ballots and ballot boxes are available at three coffee shops, Bar None Coffee Company, Cianfrani Coffee, and Red Poppy Coffee Company; two bookstores, Dog-eared Books and Hill Country Book Store; the Sun City Library; and the Georgetown Municipal Complex and the Georgetown Recreation Center.

Programming for Georgetown Reads! 2008 will take place during the spring. For more information contact Richard Groves, Adult Services Librarian, at 931-7620 or rgroves@georgetowntx.org.

Storytimes on February 13 and 14 will be joint sessions of the Wobbles and Story Pals so that they can share celebrating Valentine’s Day. Storytime will begin at 10:30 those days and everyone should bring some goodies to share.

The following week, on February 20 and 21, the two storytime groups will meet together again for Tooth ‘n’ Tales, the annual storytime session about dental health. Using stories, and with help from a dental care professional, the children will learn about good care practices and what to expect when they visit the dentist.

Once each month Wendy Demarest will be teaching American Sign Language to all who are interested. In February, she’ll be doing her class on the 26th, at 10:00 a.m.

One of the gifts that the Friends of the Georgetown Library gave us in the past few months is a subscription to a database of Texas legal forms. Legal forms are one of the library’s most frequent reference requests. We have tried for many years to keep books on the reference shelves that contain these forms, but they have a habit of disappearing, no matter how often we replace them. With the online database, we no longer have to worry about whether we’ll be able to find the book that has the form you need. The forms in the database are sortable by title and by subject, so you, or we, should be able to find whatever you need.

Presently, you may ask any staff member who is at the reference desk to look up the form for you, or you may do it yourself on our public access computers on the first floor. You will have to ask someone at the information desk for the password, though. Ultimately, we hope that the database will be accessible from our website. We’re still working through the technological problems of making that happen, but it should be soon. We respect your privacy and want you to be able to take care of personal matters without our intervention.