THE CENTRAL LIBRARY GALLERY

Red Fish by Glen Franklin

The Central library gallery has been home to a variety of exhibits that reflect the diverse interests of the community and the broad mission of the library. Some of our most recent exhibits include: De Norte y Sur-an exhibit by Mexican Artists Gustavo Gonzalez and Alejandro Barajas, Masked Marvels: Xavier Garza’s Super Luchas, and The San Antonio Potter’s Guild juried exhibition of ceramic works.

A committee comprised of Central Library staff solicits and reviews proposals for gallery exhibits. Library staff, Foundation, Friends, and Board members as well as the community may recommend exhibits to the Gallery committee for consideration. Criteria for exhibit selection will include the quality of presentation, relevance and potential appeal to the community, and the appropriateness to the venue. Exhibitors are responsible for all costs and labor related to the installation of exhibit, reception, promotion, and publicity. If you know someone who is interested in displaying in the gallery, please ask them to send a proposal to:

Sonia Isaac
Events Coordinator
600 Soledad
San Antonio, TX. 78205

Proposals should include the following:

1. Description of the proposed exhibit.
2. A biographical or historical statement about the exhibiting artist(s), group, or program.
3. Requirements of exhibitor (regarding wall space, hardware, etc.).
4. Preferred exhibit dates.
5. Preferred reception date, if requested.
6. Visual examples of at least four works to be exhibited or similar works. Photographs or color photocopies are preferable, but slides are acceptable. If work to be exhibited is not available, a reproduction of a similar work by the artist, guild, or works from a recent exhibition is acceptable.

Our next exhibit will open Sunday, February 3 at 11:00 AM. The title is RENACIMIENTO: Revolucion Cultural del la Raza Cosmica. The exhibit is accompanied by a symposium in cultural observation of the 154^th Anniversary of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. In March the Ethnic Art Society will have items on display in the gallery. The image above will be featured in that display.

FEATURED DATABASE 

Biography is the fascinating and intriguing story of human life. It enriches our understanding of ourselves and others, the forces that make history, and the bonds that all of us share. Perhaps you have just seen a classic movie like The Grapes of Wrath and want to find out more about John Steinbeck or Henry Fonda. Perhaps you have read stories by Toni Morrison and want to know what inspires her to write the way that she does. Or, perhaps you have just heard a National Public Radio presentation of explorers of the Amazon River and want to know why they devoted their lives to such a risky undertaking. The Biography Resource Center will help you find the answers to questions like these and many more.

A search can be as easy as typing in a person’s name, or more advanced, where you can specify ethnicity, nationality, gender, occupation, birth and death date, or birth and death place. For example, just typing in Monica Seles retrieved 3 narrative biographies, 4 pages of magazine and newspaper article titles, an image, and a list of other books in which her biographical information appears. A more complex, customized search looked for Hispanic American females born in Texas and came up with 9 names including Vikki Carr and Pat Mora.

Biography Resource Center includes both historical and contemporary figures, so if you need to find out most anything about most anybody, go into your nearest branch and ask a librarian for help.

Name the Newsletter

As you probably noticed, we finally have a name for the newsletter - Bookmarks!. Thanks to all of you who contributed, and especially to the anonymous person who suggested Bookmarks!. Expect the next issue of the newsletter to come under this title.

FREE E-MAIL

Well, the old saying is true: the best things in life are free. And the best example of that is free e-mail. At no cost, you can contact family members, potential employers or important government officials. You can even join e-mail groups consisting of members who share similar hobbies, interests or concerns. E-mail is truly democratic, crossing political, national and geographic boundaries, linking people worldwide.

Free e-mail is available through most major search engines. The best known include Yahoo.com, Lycos.com, Excite.com and Hotmail.com. Setting up an account is simple. Simply log onto the host site and click on the icon marked "e-mail." You will then be prompted to provide some information, create a password and an Internet e-mail name. You should pick a password that’s easy to remember but hard for others to guess. Your e-mail name can be anything you choose, provided someone else has not selected it. Your new e-mail address becomes that name plus the host name. For example, lsmith@yahoo.com. When you have created your new e-mail account, you will find you have one message waiting for you. It’s your welcome message, and it will briefly explain how your new e-mail account works, and what restrictions, if any are applicable. Some accounts are limited in their size, and some are automatically cancelled if not used on a regular basis.

You may be wondering why you need a free account when you already have one through a commercial provider such as AOL, Microsoft or TexasNet. Well, you can use your free account for public posting and confine your commercial account to family and friends. Or, you may have a professional e-mail account but want an additional one for home and family. Since most free e-mails are web based, you can still access them through computers at work. Another advantage to having two e-mail accounts is that it provides some protection from spammers (junk e-mail). If you only use one account for public posting and confine the other one to family and/or business, you may manage to keep the family account free from spammers. There is no guarantee of course, but it does help prevent spammers from finding your second e-mail account and flooding it with unwanted emails.

Free Internet access is available at Central and all SAPL branches.

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