Where Do My Income Taxes Go?

It's that time of year again--tax season. If you've ever wanted to know just where all that money goes, now it's easy to find out--or at least get a decent estimate. For federal taxes, the easiest way is to use the White House website's Your Federal Tax Receipt page. You can enter your income tax, Social Security tax, and Medicare tax, and see a breakdown of where the money was spent. If you don't know the exact numbers, you can also estimate your taxes. For example, here's an estimate for a married couple with two kids, with a household income of $80,000. You can click on the plus signs next to each category to see more details.

The White House tax receipt page is currently showing tax receipts for the 2011 tax year, so it won't give an exact figure for where last year's taxes will go this year. Still, it's a decent estimate. There all other similar sites, but all these sites have pros and cons. The White House site is the most recent, and more accurate because it lets you enter income, Social Security, and Medicare taxes separately, but it doesn't break down spending in as much detail as the next two sites:

WhereDidMyTaxDollarsGo.com gives a breakdown of where your taxes from 2009 went in 2010. It's less accurate than the White House site because it only gives an estimate of the taxes you paid based on income and filing status, but it has better graphics, and gives a more detailed breakdown of how much money went to each government agency.

Another site, WhatWePayFor.com, gives a detailed account of the federal budget for many years up to 2013, but it will only estimate where your taxes went up to 2010 (enter 2010 or a previous year to see your share). Both of these websites are based on the same data, but they use different assumptions about what deductions people will claim, so they give slightly different estimates. To get the best overview of where your tax dollars go, you may want to look at all three to get a range of estimates.

There's no tax receipt website available for Louisiana income taxes, but the LA TRAC website has links to information about state revenues and spending. Another useful resource is the Louisiana Popular Annual Financial Report, which is published every year. The report for fiscal year 2012 is available here.

Filing Your Tax Return

Many tax forms and instructions are available at all the branches of the library. We have the 1040 EZ, 1040 A, and 1040 forms, and the instructions for 1040 A and 1040 EZ. We don't have the 1040 instructions yet, because they were printed late, but they have finally shipped, and should be at the Main Library by March 5.

Both the state and federal government are pushing to abandon paper filing and get people to file online. One advantage of doing this is that if you qualify for a refund, you'll get your refund faster. If you're comfortable filing online, you can do so at www.irs.gov/Filing. The Free File program lets you do your taxes online for free in one of two ways: You can access fillable electronic forms and submit those, or--if you make $57,000 or less--you can use online tax preparation software through several companies that make their products available free for people in certain income levels. Many of these allow you to file your state income taxes for free, too, if you meet the income requirements, but you can also file your state taxes online at the Louisiana Department of Revenue website. If your income is higher than $57,000, or you use a tax professional, the IRS site also has options for e-filing that way.

If you make $50,000 or less, you can get your taxes done for free at the Main Library by the kind volunteers with VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance), a program run by Catholic Charities. VITA is at the Main Library from 9-2 on Tuesdays and Saturdays, through Tuesday, April 9th (except March 30, when the library will be closed). For more information about the VITA program, go to bit.ly/vitainfo.

If you have any questions, give the Reference Department a call at 876-5861, option 2. Good luck with tax season!

The New Overdrive App for Nook: Downloading Library Books Just Got Easier

If you have a Nook Color, Tablet, HD, or HD +, it's now a lot easier to download ebooks from the library. Now you can download them directly to your Nook, without having to connect it to a computer, by using the Overdrive Media Console app.

The first time you use the app will be a little complicated, because you will need to download it and register it with Adobe. But you only have to do these things once, and then it will be much simpler.

To get the app, simply click "Apps" on your Nook, and then click "Shop All".

On the next screen, search for "Overdrive Media Console". When you find the app, click the green button that says "Free".

Now click "Confirm". 

Now you'll see the Overdrive Media Console home page. To start downloading a library book, click the menu button at the bottom of the screen. Then click "Get Books" at the bottom of the screen.

Now click "Add a Library". You should just have to do this once.

On the next screen, type in Terrebonne Parish and click "Search". Now click "Terrebonne Parish Public Library".

Now click the star next to "E-Library Co-Op of Southeast Louisiana".  

Now you can search for a book. When you find one you want to check out, click "Add to Cart". 

Now click "Proceed to Checkout".

Select "Terrebonne Parish Library".

Click "Confirm Check Out".

Now click "Download".

The first time you download a book using the Overdrive app, you'll need to register the app with Adobe. You will only have to do this once. If you already have an Adobe ID, click "Settings" and enter your login information. If you don't have an Adobe ID, click "Get ID". This will take you to a website where you can sign up for one. Be sure to write down your password.

Once you have an Adobe ID, you can enter it at the top of the settings page, and click "Authorize".

Now your book should automatically download! Just click on it to open and start reading. Once again, this whole process will be much easier the second time, because you won't have to download and authorize the Overdrive App. Just click on the Overdrive icon, go to "Get Books", and start browsing. As always, if you have any questions, give us a call at 876-5861, option 2. Happy ereading!

We Have an App for That! Using the myTPL App.

The new myTPL app allows library patrons to access Terrebonne Parish Library anytime, anywhere--and it even lets you scan books in bookstores to see if they're available at the library!  To download the app, go to the App Store on your iPhone or iPod touch, or the Google Play store on an Android device, and search for "Terrebonne Parish Library".

The app is divided into six features accessible from the main menu: Catalog, My Account, BookLook, OverDrive, Library Locator, and Social Media.

The Catalog feature allows patrons to search all the library’s catalogs for books, DVDs, books on CD, ebooks, and more. The catalog also allows patrons to request items to be put on hold for them.

My Account shows a patron what items he or she has checked out, and when they are due, and offers the option to renew them.  Patrons can also view the status of items requested in My Account and check for overdue balances.

BookLook allows a patron to scan the ISBN barcode or enter the ISBN number on any book anywhere to see if it’s available in the library system.  This is great if you're trying to decide whether to buy a book. If we have it, you don't need to!

If the Overdrive app is installed on the device (instructions can be found here), patrons can check out or request EPUB and audio books, as well as manage digital accounts within the Overdrive feature of the myTPL app.  Checkouts will download in the Overdrive app.

The Library Locator lists the addresses, phone numbers, operating hours and supplies directions to all the branches in the Terrebonne Parish Library System.

Social Media links connect patrons to all the library’s social media accounts, like our Facebook and Twitter pages, which are updated daily with programs, events, and services offered at the library.  Text-A-Librarian offers tells patrons how to send text questions to the library, and Blog connects patrons directly to this blog; Bayou Reference.

If you have any questions about the myTPL app, just give us a call at 876-5861, option 2!

Robert Jenkins
Reference Associate

Zinio: Your Favorite Magazines on your Computer or Mobile Device!

Do you like to read magazines? If so, you'll love our newest offering: Zinio Digital Magazines. With Zinio, your library card lets you read dozens of popular magazines on your computer, iPad, Android device, Kindle Fire, and many other mobile devices.  Zinio shows the magazine just as it appears in print. Magazines available include National Geographic, Cosmopolitan, Field & Stream, Consumer Reports, Rolling Stone, and many more!

To get started, you will need to create two separate accounts: one through the library's Zinio page, and one through Zinio.com.  We recommend that you use the same email address and password for both accounts.  This may seem a little complex at first, but it's easy once you have the accounts created.

SETTING UP ZINIO

If you are using Zinio on your computer, you can read magazines in your web browser. If you're using an iPad, Android device, or certain other mobile devices, you will download the Zinio app. But whether you're reading from a computer or a mobile device, the first thing you need to do is use a web browser to create an account at the library's Zinio page, at bit.ly/mytplzinio. This takes you to this page:

Enter the "Create Account" button, and on the next screen, enter your library card number and hit the "Validate" button.

Now enter your email address, enter and retype a password, and enter your name. Then hit "Create Account".

Now you will see a message that says "Successful! Email has been sent to you". Now check your email for a confirmation message, and click on the link in the email. This will bring you to a page like this.

Click "Return to Login", and enter your email address and the password you just created. On the next page, click the link provided.

This brings you to the library's Zinio page. Now you can browse through our magazine subscriptions, or search by keyword, title, or genre.

When you find a magazine you want to read, click on it. This will open a new tab or window in your browser, where you can register for a Zinio.com account. Once again, we recommend using the same password that you used for the first account.

When you hit "Continue", you will see a page that lets you enter information about yourself. Then hit "Submit"; or "Skip" if you don't want to enter this information. Now you come to the page that shows your Zinio magazines!

Now, if you're on a PC or Mac computer, you can click on the magazine you chose, and it will open up in a special reader window, that looks like this. Congratulations! You're reading your first magazine through the library's Zinio account! You can zoom in, turn the pages, and even see all the pages at once. 

 

Now you will have three windows or tabs open in your web browser. To choose more magazines to read, go to the one labeled "Return to Library Collection", which is this page:

Now you can find other magazines you like. When you click on them, they will appear on the Zinio.com page. Simply click on the magazine's icon there to open it in the reading window. 

Using Zinio on iPads, Androids, and other Mobile Devices

If you want to read Zinio magazine through a mobile device, you will need to have created both your library Zinio account and your Zinio.com account. Then go to your device's app store, search for Zinio, and download the app. When you open the app, enter your login information (your email address and Zinio password). This will bring you to your library magazines, and allow you to browse and purchase other magazines the library doesn't subscribe to. To get more magazines from the library, open the web browser on your device and log in the library's Zinio collection page: bit.ly/mytplzinio. Click on the magazine you want, and it will appear in the Zinio app on your device.

If you need help reading Zinio magazines, you can find help on various topics at their help page:  www.zinio.com/help/index.jsp.  You can also watch a video about getting started here: vimeo.com/54464215.

If you have any further questions, give us a call at the Reference Department, at 876-5861, option 2. Happy reading!

The First Thanksgiving: Separating Fact from Legend

Chances are, what you learned in grade school about the first Thanksgiving was a lot like the painting above: a group of very religious people called Pilgrims had a communal meal to celebrate their bountiful harvest, and shared it with a few Indians* in feathered headdresses.  But if you dig into the real history of the first Thanksgiving, it wasn't quite like that.  First of all, the "First Thanksgiving" wasn't really the first day day set aside for giving thanks in the North American colonies.  There were probably earlier thanksgiving observances in the Virginia colonies, as well as the French and Spanish colonies.  However, the celebration by the Pilgrims of Plymouth was a primary inspiration for the modern Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, so it's interesting to look at what really happened.  It turns out the real occasion didn't resemble the traditional images of Thanksgiving very much at all.

The people we call Pilgrims actually called themselves Separatists, because they believed in separating completely from the Church of England (unlike Puritans, who wanted to purify the church from within).  They weren't commonly called Pilgrims until the 1700's.  They were persecuted in England, so they fled to Holland for several years before sailing for the New World.  When they arrived in what's now Massachusetts in November 1620, they were amazed to find cleared fields among the forests.  They settled in one of them, and named it Plymouth.  In fact, the site was cleared because just a few years earlier it had been a Wampanoag village called Patuxet, which was abandoned after a plague killed most of its residents.  In the winter of 1620-21, it became the site of another tragedy, when nearly half the Pilgrims died of sickness and starvation.

This bleak story began to brighten the next March, when the Pilgrims were visited by Wampanoags named Samoset and Tisquantum, who walked into their village and started speaking English.  Tisquantum--better known as Squanto--was an amazing man.  He had grown up in Patuxet, on the very site where the Pilgrims had settled. He had been captured years before by English fisherman, and was brought Spain as a slave.  He escaped to England, and, in hopes of returning home, befriended some Englishmen who planned to colonize the New World.  Eventually, he joined their expedition and returned to New England.  Arriving the year before the Pilgrims landed, he found his old village inhabited only by skeletons. Devastated, he made his way to another Wampanoag village, the home of the powerful chief Massasoit.  After the pilgrims settled in his old village of Patuxet, Squanto went to live with them.  He showed them how to grow corn and catch fish, and arranged an alliance between the Pilgrims and Massasoit.  Massasoit's people were badly weakened by Europeans diseases, and they needed the Pilgrims' guns and cannons to defend themselves against the Narraganset tribe to the west.

The Pilgrims had an excellent harvest with Squanto's help, and as the next winter approached, they had plenty to eat.  Overjoyed at their change of fortune, they decided to celebrate in the fall of 1621.  One of the only descriptions of this celebration was written by a Pilgrim named Edward Winslow:

"Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruits of our labor. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which we brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty."

This wasn't just a meal--it was a three day festival.  And there were almost twice as many Wampanoag as Pilgrims.  Some historians think the Wampanoag heard the Pilgrims' guns, and came with warriors in case they needed to help their new allies.  Others think the Pilgrims fired their guns after the Wampanoag showed up, to show they could defend themselves if the uneasy alliance fell through.  In any case, the festival stayed peaceful, if not overly friendly, and the Indians contributed to the feast with five deer.

This festival wasn't much like the traditional images of the first Thanksgiving.  First, nobody knows if turkey was on the menu.  Cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie certainly weren't, because those recipes hadn't been invented yet.  The Wampanoag certainly didn't wear feathered headdresses--that was the style among plains Indians out west, not New England tribes. And the Pilgrims didn't dress in black--that was dreamed up by artists later on.  Finally, the Pilgrims didn't think of the event as a traditional thanksgiving observance. Both the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags probably thought of the event as a harvest festival, a tradition with a long history in both cultures.  The pilgrims did observe days called thanksgivings (with a small t), but these were unscheduled days of prayer and fasting that were declared after fortunate events.  Two years later, Governor William Bradford declared a thanksgiving for the end of a drought, and it was a solemn affair, not like the earlier festival.

Unfortunately, the brief moment of peace at the first Thanksgiving didn't last.  Squanto had his own agenda, and he became a source of tension between the Pilgrims and Massasoit.  He died of a fever in 1622. The relationship between Pilgrims and natives soured by the late 1630's, and turned into all out war in the 1670's.  When the colonists won, they declared a day of thanksgiving that certainly didn't include any feasting with the Wampanoag.

In later years, Pilgrims and Puritans in New England continued to observe solemn, unscheduled thanksgivings, although they grew less stern as attitudes loosened in the 1700's. Eventually, the custom spread beyond New England, and the first few presidents sometimes declared national days of thanksgiving (though Jefferson declined to do so, believing it would violate the separation of church and state).  Presidents after Madison stopped making these proclamations, but in 1863, Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of a magazine called Godey's Lady's Book, convinced Abraham Lincoln to make Thanksgiving a national holiday.  Lincoln hoped the new holiday would help unify a country torn apart by the Civil War.  Many of Ms. Godey's recipes became standard Thanksgiving dishes.  Around the same time, some of the original Pilgrims' writings were rediscovered, sparking a great deal of popular interest in their story.  By the late 1800's, people were associating Thanksgiving with the pilgrims, and the story of the Pilgrims and Indians sitting down for a communal turkey dinner began to take hold.  This was a time when immigrants were pouring from many different countries, and the story of Thanksgiving became a way of assimilating many cultures into a distinctly American tradition (other countries have Thanksgiving holidays, but they're based on different traditions). In 1941, Congress established Thanksgiving as a national holiday, to be observed on the 4th Thursday of November.

As much as the image of the first Thanksgiving differs from the real thing, there's no doubt the Pilgrims had a great deal to be thankful for.  Massosoit had given them food, and Squanto had helped them feed themselves.  They could expect their second winter to be far better than that first, lethal one.  The Pilgrims were celebrating the fact that, for the first time, they could reasonably expect to survive, and perhaps even prosper, in the New World.  Things didn't turn out so well for the Wampanoag, many of whom still observe a day of mourning on Thanksgiving.  Like many other holidays, Thanksgiving can be controversial, even today.

Of course, we librarians try not to take sides in controversies.  We help people look past spin and legend to find facts, and we carry materials on all sides of controversial issues.  We're here to help our patrons exercise their freedom to decide for themselves what to think. As for this librarian, I'm thankful for that freedom, and for the privilege of helping preserve it.

Happy Thanksgiving to Everyone!

Recommended Resources:

1621 : a new look at Thanksgiving / Catherine O'Neill Grace and Margaret M. Bruchac with Plimoth Plantation ; photographs by Sisse Brimberg and Cotton Coulson.  This young adult book is an excellent source-for adults as well as teenagers-for learning about the first Thanksgiving.

Desperate Crossing: The Untold Story of the Mayflower.  An A&E video, available for streaming through Access Video on Demand.  Call the Reference Department at 876-5861 for login information

Mayflower : the Pilgrims and their legacy / Nathaniel Philbrick.

The Thanksgiving ceremony : new traditions for America's family feast / Edward Bleier.

The First Thanksgiving.  Elizabeth Armstrong. Christian Science Monitor. 2002 

Plimoth Plantation Website: Article about Thanksgiving 

Pilgrim Hall Museum 

* I'm using the term Indians instead of Native Americans, because that seems to be the way most of them refer to themselves.  

Google-Fu: Little Known Tricks for Google Searching

There are over 600 million websites in the world right now.  To put this number in perspective, if you started trying to count all the websites that exist today, it would take you about ten years of counting around the clock.  The internet is a pretty big place.  To find your way around, you have to know how to use search engines such as Yahoo, Bing, and Google.  Google is by far the most popular but, even though people use it every day, most of them don't know the tricks that help to narrow their search down to exactly what they need.  In other words, they don't know the basic moves of Google-Fu.  There are dozens of these, but in this post we'll just talk about a few of the most useful ones.

One basic trick everyone should know is to use quotes when searching for an exact phrase. If you want to know how to use the phrase "fine as frog hair" in a sentence, you don't want a page that just happens to have the words "fine", "frog", and "hair".  Putting quotes around a phrase will tell Google to search for the full phrase, instead of searching for each word separately.  However, this may not be necessary with common phrases, because Google is able to recognize those. For example, if you type in lord of the rings, Google will recognize the phrase, and give you results related to the books or movies first, instead of pages that just happen to have those individual words in them.

Operators

A good way to get exactly what you're looking for in your search is to use special commands called operators.  For example, if you want to search within a particular site, such as this blog, you can use the operator "site:". If you're looking for information related to Thanksgiving, you would enter:

thanksgiving site:bayoureference.blogspot.com

This will show you results just from within this website, as shown below.  Notice that you don't have to capitalize "Thanksgiving", or any other word in a Google search.  Google isn't case sensitive--it treats capital and lower case letters the same way.

You can also use the "site:" operator to search by domain (.com, .gov, .org, etc).  This is useful if, for example, you just want sites from the US government.  These have the domain .gov.  Let's say you're looking for information about hurricane protection on government websites.  Type in:

hurricane protection site:.gov

You can also use operators to define a word.  Let's say you're trying to remember what the word "calaboose" means.  Simply type in:

define:calaboose

Google will give you a definition at the top of the page, and let you choose between definitions from different online dictionaries:

Incidentally, Google and other search engines are a great way to quickly check your spelling, because they can usually recognize the word you're trying to type, and suggest the correct spelling.

Another useful operator is the minus sign, which you can use to find sites that don't contain a certain word.  For example, if you want to find websites about Spam, the meat product, instead of spam as junk email, you could enter

spam -email

This will leave out webpages that contain the word "email".  Of course, it may be better to simply make your search more specific, by typing in "spam meat" or "fried spam casserole recipes".  Still, the minus sign operator can come in very handy sometimes.

Have you ever looked at a website and thought, "I wish I could find more websites like this".  Here's how you do that:  use the operator "related".  If you want to find websites similar to Pinterest, for example, enter:

related:www.pinterest.com

Another way to do similar searches is to use the website SimilarSites.com, which is a more powerful tool for finding related websites.

Advanced Search

If you prefer not to remember a bunch of operators, an easier way to use some of the most common Google tricks is to use the Advanced Search page.  Just scroll to the bottom of the search results and click the Advanced Search link there.

One of the things Advanced Search lets you do is search for recent information by specifying when the page was last updated.  If you're searching in a rapidly changing field, such as science or technology, it's useful to be able to exclude older webpages. I was recently searching for reviews of digital cameras.  When I typed in "best digital cameras", some of the websites were from 2006 and 2007, which is ancient in the digital camera world.  So, I used Advanced Search to specify that I wanted a review from within the last year.

Advanced search also lets you specify the language and region of the webpages you want.  If you want, say, French language websites from Canada, Google can do that.  You can also specify what file format you're looking for, if you're looking for PowerPoint or PDF files.  The best way to get a feel for Advanced Search is to simply go there and try it out. 

I've just talked about a few of the great tricks you can use to make your Google searches more rewarding.  There are many others, as well as many specialized search pages within Google, such as Google News, Google Image Search, and Google Books.  We'll talk about those in future blog posts.  But remember, not everything online is Google-able.  A lot of the information on the internet is hidden away behind pay walls and passwords.  For example, what if you're buying a new computer, and want to read reviews in Consumer Reports?  If you go to the Consumer Reports website, you'll find that you need a paid subscription to read the articles.  Does that mean you have to get a subscription?  Not if you have a library card.  Just go to one of our databases, enter your card number, and start reading. 

Just because you can't find something through Google doesn't mean it's not available online. It may be available through the library.  To find out if we have what you're looking for, just give the reference department a call, at 876-5861, Option 2. Google is great, but the combination of Google and your library is even better!

Early Voting and other Voter Resources

"Vote early and often!" goes the old election day joke.  Well, you can't really vote often, but you can certainly beat the election day crowds by voting early.  Early voting for the November elections started Tuesday, October 23, and will run through next Tuesday, October 30.  If you live in Terrebonne Parish, the location for early voting is the office of the Registrar of Voters, in the Courthouse Annex.  The address is:

7856 Main St., Suite 110

Houma, LA 70360

Early voting hours are from 8:30 AM to 6:00 PM.  The office will be closed on Sunday.  For more information on early voting, click here to go to the Secretary of State's website.

To view sample ballots for your district, or to find your polling place for election day voting, go to www.geauxvote.com.  This is a very useful website, and if you need some help using it, check out our blog post here. If you would like to find out more about the state constitutional amendments on the ballot, the non-partisan Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana has put together a guide for voters.  

For other information about finding facts and non-partisan information on the issues, we put together a blog post on fact-checking sites here.   Since that post, we've also found some other good voter information sites.  One is Public Agenda, a non-profit and non-partisan policy research organization.  Their Public Agenda for Citizens web page has excellent guides to issues, with charts, statistics, and explanations of views from all sides.  The page also offers more in-depth research reports, as well as links to other useful websites.

Another great resource is Project Vote Smart.  Their website lets you easily search "biographies, voting records, issue positions, ratings, speeches, campaign finance information" for all the candidates, and has guides to the issues with up-to-date information on key votes, interest group ratings of politicians, public statements by politicians, and ballot measures.  All this information is available at the national and the state level.  

Happy voting!