Tutt Library News

Huzzah! The School Year is Over! Huzzah! Our Seniors Are Graduating!

Every block 8, we celebrate our student workers with an all-staff fiesta and potluck.  This year the weather kept us in the atrium, but we managed to refrain from recreating the Harlem Shake video from earlier this spring :).

Once again, we find ourselves looking forward to Commencement on Monday with mingled joy and sadness (but mostly joy). We congratulate ALL of CC's graduating seniors, but especially those of you that we've been lucky enough to work with over the last few years: Achini, Anna, Eddie, Kathleen, Margo, Mikail, Phoebe, Saraiya, and Tatyana.  Best wishes to everyone at CC who's graduating; please come back and visit us!

 

Haiku Winners and Zine

Our enthusiastic congratulations go out to the winners of the Sixth Annual Tutt Library Haiku Contest, and our deepest thanks to everyone who sent us their poems.  The blind voting is over, and the results are in!

Third prize went to Rebecca Harburg's evocation of a typical window-gazing moment at Tutt:

Essay's killing me
I see friends slacklining while
I am flatlining

Anna McCreedy won second prize with her commemoration of our nightly ritual:

Lights wink, the bell dings,
reluctantly shut your book.
Closing time at Tutt.

In first place this year, Louisa Rich wrote about the power of language.  We imagine her flipping through the dictionary on top of the Century Chest as she composed this senryu: 

Words each taste unique
Some are marbles in my mouth
Like "impossible"

These three poems, and several of our other favorites, have been brought together in the 6th annual Tutt Library Haiku zine, which is available at the circulation, reference, and ID desks for free, until we run out (which probably won't be for a week or two).  If you stop by and don't see any, please ask at circulation!  Also, if you are one of our farflung alumni or other friends, you can email tuttcirc@coloradocollege.edu to find out about getting an electronic copy instead. 

Happy spring!

Wondering What to Read Next? Tutt Can Help!

One of our favorite questions at Tutt Library is "I have some free time: what should I read?"  Over the years, we've found a whole passel of online resources that help to answer that question, and we'd like to share them with you!  Check out the Tutt Library Guide to Finding Books You Can Love ... or just come over and visit with us, any time. 

(photo credit: released under a CC-BY Creative Commons license by Virginia State Parks staffers,flickr username: vastateparksstaff)

Documents in the News

Amendment 64 Implementation

The State of Colorado has recently released its Task Force Report on the Implementation of Amendment 64, Regulation of Marijuana in Colorado.  This task force, created through Executive Order B2012-004, "was asked to identify the legal, policy and procedural issues that need to be resloved, and to offer suggestions and proposals for legislative, regulatory and executive actions that need to be taken, for the effective and efficient implementation of Amendment 64 -- the constitutional amendment authorizing the use and regulation of marijuana in the State of Colorado."

(from the State Library 4/01/13)

Tutt Library Sixth Annual Haiku Contest

Spring Break is over and block 7 is underway!  It must be time for haiku in the library.

In celebration of National Poetry Month and National Library Week, Tutt Library is once again happy to be asking for your original, library-themed haiku. Between April 1st and April 30th, please submit no more than a dozen entries to the reference desk (or email them to tuttref@coloradocollege.edu, or comment on this post).  Winners will receive fabulous prizes and their haiku will be creatively immortalized. 

 The fine print: If you use more or less than seventeen syllables, if you aren’t a CC student or employee, if you don’t talk about libraries or your experience in them, or if you submit pseudonymously, you are unlikely to win any prizes (but we’d still like to read your poems). 

 Use your imagination!  Embrace your poetic nature!  Tell all your friends!

always wanted to
tell libraries how you feel?
Five-seven-five it!

Want to know more before you take the plunge? Well, this is a library -- we can help! 

The online Oxford English Dictionary defines haiku here and senryu here, and you will make Jessy Randall, our resident poet-librarian, quite happy if you remember the difference. Steve Lawson, Tutt humanities liaison, explains further:

A poem is not a haiku
If it celebrates robots or shoes.
You must mention the season
or at least throw some bees in!
Unnatural haiku's "senryu." 

(The astute or anxious reader may now be wondering whether senryu are also allowed in our contest.  Absolutely! Also, we are now wondering whether we should have a limerick contest next year...)

Tutt Library has books of haiku by Basho, Shiki, Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser, and Jack Kerouac - and our Curator of Special Collections, the above-mentioned Jessy Randall, has published several haiku, including this one.  You can find thousands of examples of and scholarly articles on haiku in Granger's, JSTOR, MLA Bibliography, Humanities International Complete, and more, via our English Subject Guide.

We hope all this haikuphilic information serves as an inspiration for you to get started writing your own, and sharing them with us.

procrastinating?
put your daydreams to good use
send us a haiku

Best of the Best Books of 2012

Hungry for something fun to read over Spring Break (or once you come back to campus)?

Once again this year, we've pulled together recommendations from our favorite "Best of" lists and literary awards to build a "Best of 2012" display. These books are available for checkout in the lobby area, between the interlibrary loan office and the east windows; you can also browse the list online before you come in. If you are reading this over Spring Break, you might like to know that the library's hours are quite a bit shorter for the next week or so: we're open until 5 pm daily, except for the 16th, 17th, and 23rd, when we are closed all day.  We'll be open noon-8 pm on the Sunday before Block 7 (March 24th), and then back to regular late-night hours on the 25th.

New Mexican Folk Ballads Exhibit

An exhibit designed for the Smithsonian called “Corridos sin Fronteras” about New Mexican folk ballads is on display for the next 3-4 weeks before it moves on to UC-Boulder.

It was brought to campus by Southwest Studies and was in Packard for a short time.

If you missed it there or want to view it again, stop by the atrium on the 2nd floor of the library.

Income Tax

February marks the 100th anniversary of the income tax. The 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, authorizing a graduated income tax, was ratified on February 25, 1913. 

The deadline for filing your taxes is April 15, 2013. See Tutt Library's Tax Guide for links to forms and publications for both federal and state.

Not sure you need to file? Watch this IRS Youtube video and see.

Top Ways to Get Help from IRS.gov

1. Get 24/7 Access.  Whether you do your taxes during the day or burn the midnight oil, IRS.gov and 1040 Central you can view and download tax forms and use the Tax Assistant tool to answer many of your tax law questions.

2. Use IRS Free File. 

3. Try IRS E-file - the safest, easiest and most popular way to file a complete and accurate tax return.

4. Check Your Refund Status with the Where's My Refund? tool. You can start checking on the status of your refund within 24 hours after the IRS has received your e-filed return or 4 weeks after you mail a paper return.

5. Make Payments Electronically.  they are convenient, safe and secure.  

6. Use the EITC Assistant.  The Earned Income Tax Credit is a tax credit for working people who earned less than $50,270 in 2012. Check your eligibility.

7. Figure the Right Withholding with the IRS Withholding Calculator.

8. Request a Payment Agreement. 

9. Get the Latest Tax Law Changes. 

The address of the official IRS website is www.irs.gov. Don’t be misled by sites that claim to be the IRS but end in .com, .net, .org. Some thieves use phony websites to gain your personal and financial information. They then use this information to commit identity theft or steal your money.

 

Harlem Shake @ Tutt Library

We know, we know, the Harlem Shake is sooooooo last block. But for those of our readers who have not yet seen the absolutely gonzo Harlem Shake flash mob that took place in the Tutt atrium last Tuesday night, as well as for those of us who just want an excuse to watch it AGAIN, here it is:

 

The consensus at Tutt is that this is the absolute BEST Harlem Shake video out there (bias? what bias?). Hats off to Stanley Sigalov, '13, and the rest of the crew who made this happen, as well as to the 200+ CC students in the video. 

Block 5 Book Display: Romantic Literature

 

Have a hankering for literary love, or a taste for the tragic romance? Check out our Romantic Literature book display, set up in honor of Valentine's Day. The display is located on the first floor of Tutt Library, east of the Circulation Desk.

To assemble the books on display, we thought of some classics on our own. To find less well-known or more modern novels, The Guardian was very helpful. See their multi-part series starting here: 1000 novels everyone must read: Love (part one).