Minutes of Meetings

Using Openmeeting.com was a great way to meet as a group simultaneously to review and amend an application, combined with a conference call to exchange ideas. It seems as if a wiki could be used similarly, with each person summarizing their own content so that compiling rephrased minutes doesn't have to be the task of one person.

Dating Family Photos

The tortoise shell eyeglass frames, the bow tie, your uncle's haircut, the drapes, the chair, the floor lamp all suggest this black & white photo was snapped sometime in the 1950s. He's reading a large magazine and you can just make out that the title Life and surmise the grainy black and grey shapes on the cover look religious. The way his fingers hold the edges, the top of a page turn reveals a black handle.

Can you date the magazine? Yes! Start with online postings of Life covers by the decade, then confirm by pulling the original from the long run of Life Magazine (since 1937, some gaps) on the shelves of the Newton Free Library's Periodicals Room. The cover is "Four Great Protestant and Catholic Churches" and between pages 12 and 17 there is an unnumbered page advertisement showing a black-handled pitcher pouring milk onto Jello brand chocolate pudding. Your uncle is probably reading the latest Life while on vacation. Now you can e-mail your relatives that you have a approximately dated the photo!

Concert Tips

Enjoy a concert even more by checking out a music CD or DVD, reading a biography of the composer or performer, searching our databases for articles in music journals, listening to podcasts found through Internet access. Let a librarian show you how!