April Fools' Day facts

Sunday is April 1st, a day many people use as a chance to play pranks on friends, and a day many of those friends learn to hate. Here are some websites that provide some history and facts about the day.

• First is Snopes.com, a great place to go to check on hoaxes and urban legends. Here is their investigation into the origins of April Fools' Day.
• Here is an animated video about the history of April Fools' Day and some famous pranks.
• Finally, here are some safe but fun pranks to pull on your friends and family on April Fools' Day.

Weather resources online

This is a topic we have discussed before on the blog, but after the epic amounts of rain followed by flood warnings that we have had this week, it seems timely to revisit it. There are several good places to go online for up-to-date information regarding possible severe weather and weather warnings for your area.

The primary one is the National Weather Service Forecast Office for Little Rock. You can also choose another area to view by entering a city and state or zip code. The website has maps that show any warnings for the general area, specific warnings for your town or county, radar images, and forecasts for up to five days.

The Weather Channel website (http://www.weather.com/) is a slightly slicker, more user-friendly website that also shows warnings, radar images and forecasts for the country and local areas. These may be less detailed than the National Weather Service, but easier to glance through quickly.

Many of the local news stations and meteorologists have Facebook and Twitter accounts these days, and you can often sign up to follow them for breaking weather news. Just search for the channel's main webpage using a search engine, and once on the webpage, there will be links to social media sites as well.

Tech Petting Zoo at ASL

Did you know that we have a Tech Petting Zoo here at the Arkansas State Library? If you are a public librarian, you have probably started to get many questions from patrons about the many e-readers that are now on the market, and you may have some of your own. Questions like: How many books fit on an e-reader? Can it also play audio files? How long does the battery last? and so forth. If so, that is where the Petting Zoo comes in. It is a collection of e-readers put together by Donovan Mays, the Coordinator for Technical Support for the Extension Services office here at the library. He holds occasional workshops here at the library, and is also available for site visits at your library to show off the various readers and answer questions. For more information about the Zoo, you can email him at donovan (at) library (dot) arkansas (dot) gov, or call him at 501-682-5291. This service is only available to public libraries within the state.

Get Registered to Vote!

As everyone should know by now, 2012 is a presidential election year. Anyone who is interested in voting in the preferential primary on May 22nd will need to be registered by April 22 - 30 days before the election. If you don't plan to vote in the primary (but why wouldn't you?) but want to vote in the general election in November, you must be registered by October 6th. Are you registered to vote? If you are, do you know where your polling place is? The Secretary of State's office has several ways for you to find out the answers to those and many other voting questions.

• For general voting information, including a calendar of the various state-wide elections that occur throughout the year, visit the Secretary of State's Elections Division page.
• If you need specific information about your voting information, visit the Vote Naturally webpage, which you can also access through the Elections Division page. This is your one-stop shopping place for all election information. You can search the voter database by your name and birth date; if you are registered, you will see the address where you are registered, as well as your various congressional, judicial, school and state congressional districts.  Your polling place location and address will also be listed.  Vote Naturally also has information about when and how to vote, candidates, the machines you will be using to vote, and past elections. 
• Prefer to check via your smart phone?  The Secretary of State has just introduced a new mobile application for you. Check it out on the SOS website: www.sos.ar.gov/m  
•  If you are not yet registered, and want to know if you are eligible, check the Voter Registration Information page from the Secretary of State's Office. There, you can also find a list of places where you can pick up the registration form, including here at the Arkansas State Library, as well as a printable PDF of the form that you can fill out and mail in.

 Plan to vote and make your voice heard this year.