Volunteer opportunity

Jessa and James Huebing-Reitinger (Project InSECT artists) will be performing at Powell Gardens for the butterfly festival in August. They are seeking volunteers to assist with the butterfly house. (This involves ensuring that no one leaves the house with butterflies clinging to them.) Volunteers will be able to enjoy the garden before and after their shift with no admission fee.

Dates and times are as follows:

• Monday August 15, 9 a.m. – 1 p.m.
• Monday August 15, 1 – 5 p.m.
• Tuesday, August 16, 9 a.m. – 1 p.m.
• Tuesday August 16, 1 – 5 p.m.
• Wednesday August 17, 9 a.m. – 1 p.m.
• Wednesday August 17, 1 – 5 p.m.
• Thursday August 18, 9 a.m. – 1 p.m.
• Thursday August 18, 1 – 5 p.m.

If interested, contact James Reitinger: by email at james@projectinsect.com or by phone at (402) 677-3677.

Business Tour for Entrepreneurs

Each month the Central Resource Library offers a business tour focused on some aspect of the business collection. The tours introduce you to the exceptional print and electronic resources available at your library--resources that can help you ensure the success of your business ventures. This month's tour, held on Wednesday, July 27, 3-4 p.m., is for entrepreneurs. No registration needed. Please call (913) 495-7514 for information.

For more information about our business resources and upcoming classes, check out www.jocobusiness.net.

Calling all wanna be wizards...Harry Potter Party at the library

After speed-reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince does someone in your house need to get together with other Potter aficionados to discuss the events of book six, and speculate on what is in store in book seven? Celebrate the latest addition to the world of Harry Potter with a book discussion and trivia contest at this Harry Potter Party at the Antioch Library. Costumes are welcome. Refreshments provided. Ages 7 & up.

Location: Antioch Library
Date: Thursday, July 28, 2005
Time: 2:00 p.m.

Ask and you shall receive (well...sometimes...)

We are always pleased when patrons share their suggestions for how we can improve library services. But we are really pleased when we can actually respond to their suggestions and implement the improvements. As of Monday, August 1, we'll offer new services and launch library catalog improvements--all of which were requested by patrons. We have a long list of additional improvements we want to make, but we want to hear what you want the most, so if you have ideas, please let us know. In the meantime, here are the new services that will be available on Monday, August 1.

Option to log into the library catalog
Tired of retyping your library card number and PIN every time you place a hold or renew materials? Log in, enter your information once, and your information will be saved as you place holds, renew materials, or check your account. To exit your session, you only need to click “logout.”

Default pick-up location change when you log-into the catalog
If you log into the catalog, your pick-up location will no longer default to Central Resource Library. Instead, your pick-up location will be your home library. If you want to change your home library location, simply let a staff member know what library you would like to designate as your home library.

Pre-notices for library materials
Want a reminder when your books or other materials are about to be due? Sign up for e-mail notification, and you’ll receive a pre-notice a few days before your materials are due. If you want to renew your materials, you can click on the handy link to “my account” within the notification e-mail.

Direct links to award-winning books and best sellers
Access award-winning books and current best sellers via your online library catalog. Because these links will be included on the front page of the catalog, you can quickly locate the books, place holds, and request that the books be sent to your home library for easy pick-up.

If you have questions, please contact us at (913) 495-2400 or send us an e-mail. Keep those suggestions coming!

How to write a novel and work full-time

Saturday, July 30, 2005 at Lackman Library Local author Evan McNamara will present "How to write a novel and work full-time" (PDF) and give insight into how authors can manage a full-time life while working on a book. Please call (913) 495-7540 to register.

Community Issues 101: Transit and Transportation Forum

Transit issues are a major concern facing our community and can only be successfully addressed through collaborative exchanges with stakeholders throughout our community and the metropolitan area. Join the community forum on Thursday, July 21, 2005 at the Central Resource Library.

Please RSVP to Jill Jolicoeur at (913) 715-0438 or jill.jolicoeur@jocogov.org.

For more information, check out the Johnson County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) Transit Forum Web site.

News junkies alert: C-SPAN bus at the library

For all those news junkies out there, here is your opportunity to see the C-SPAN bus up close and personal. This 45' coach is a mobile classroom and production studio. Tour the bus and get an insider's view into aspects of C-SPAN.

The C-SPAN buss will be at the Central Resource Library Wednesday, July 20 from 9:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. More information is available from our news release (PDF) or from the C-SPAN Web.

Wi-Fi at JoCoLibrary in the news

Today's Kansas City Star features information about the library's wireless services. The article, "Libraries are the latest to cut the cords," is available online.

Information about wireless services at the library, signal maps, and frequently asked questions about our wireless services are available at: www.jocolibrary.org/wireless.

Lords and Ladies and Knights

Visit the Blue Valley Library on Saturday, July 30, 2005 at 2-4 p.m. for an exciting program about life in the Middle Ages!

The Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) will teach you about combat, coats-of-arms, cooking and more. Information and displays for all ages with a mock “battle” in the courtyard. Bring your family, bring your questions, but most of all – bring your imagination! Registration is not required.

Download a printable flier. (PDF)

Summer getaway

If you want to get away from it all but are strapped for cash, let the Johnson County Library be your travel guide! The Library has many titles about wild summer adventures, exotic locations, and enticing mysteries.If you're not sure what you're in the mood for, browse the fiction and nonfiction booklists available online.

Featured book: Love in Idleness by Amanda Craig.
Theo, a successful American businessman residing in London with his wife, Polly, and their son and daughter, Robbie and Tania, rent a house in Tuscany for a two-week vacation. With match-making intentions, they invite seven friends. This book is listed on the Let's book a trip booklist.

Johnson County at 150

All of the 476 square miles that are now Johnson County were once part of the Shawnee Indian reservation. The Kansas Territory was opened to settlement with the passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. At that time, the Johnson County area was crisscrossed by a number of transportation arteries, including the north-south Fort Leavenworth Military Road and the Santa Fe and Oregon-California Trails, major westward migration routes.

Johnson County was created on August 25, 1855 and officially organized as a county in September of 1857. One of the first 33 counties in the state, it was named for the Reverend Thomas Johnson, founder of the Shawnee Methodist Mission. Learn more about our county's history and the county-wide birthdday party on Saturday, September 17 at the 150th Web site: www.jocoks150.org

In honor of the 150th anniversary of the county, now through September 16, read a weekly fact about the founding of one of the 19 cities in Johnson County from the library's home page at: www.jocolibrary.org.

Looking for a good resource for market research or customer analysis? Check out ReferenceUSA.

ReferenceUSA includes over 12 million business listings with company profiles, over 120 million nationwide telephone listings gathered from telephone white pages, and over 680,000 listings for physicians and dentists nationwide.

What could be better? It’s available online from your home or office via the library’s Web site with only a library card number and PIN.

Potential reasons to use ReferenceUSA:

• Develop a mailing list of customers within a zip code
• Identify a list of competitors within an industry
• Locate list of company executives
• Determine an industry classification code (SIC & NAICS) for a business
• List of potential employers to target in job search

How do you get to it?
This month, ReferenceUSA is our featured database, so you can access it from the home page of the library. After July is over, just go to Search & Research, and select “R” to find the database by name, or click on the link for “Business” databases.

If you have questions about this or other online resources available from the library, please let us know.

Celebrate the 4th of July

On the ultimate American holiday, enjoy reading the text of the radical document that declared America's independence to the world. View the original and learn more about the Declaration of Independence at the National Archives Web.

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

• He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
• He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
• He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
• He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
• He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
• He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
• He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
• He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
• He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
• He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
• He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
• He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
• He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
• For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
• For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
• For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
• For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
• For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
• For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
• For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
• For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
• For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
• He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
• He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
• He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
• He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
• He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Play by the book

If you can’t make it to the stadium this summer, why not bring the stadium to you? Grab some peanuts or Cracker Jacks and one of the titles on the "Play by the Book" booklist featured on Readers’ Corner.

Find more great staff picks suggested by Johnson County librarians.