Biblioteca Pública annual report from the President of the Board of Directors
By Gregory Diamant, February 20, 2009
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The Annual Meeting of the Biblioteca Pública gives us a moment to pause, reflect, look back at our activities and explore the future. The Board of Directors must continually assess progress and the role of this long-standing institution in the community with the founding mission constantly in the foreground of our endeavors. In this year of worldwide economic recession the challenges we face are greater than ever and the opportunities that will expand our mission are there for our consideration. The need has never been greater for cooperation in San Miguel between the non-profit world, the private sector, government and the community at large.
The Biblioteca with its unique standing in the community is poised to make an even larger contribution to the growth of this needed cooperation. As this institution does not receive government funding of any kind expenses must be covered from income generated by the Biblioteca enterprises or from our very generous supporters. The Board of Directors is actively working on programs to increase our donor base. The continued support of the institution by the hundreds of volunteers who give so generously of their time will remain a cornerstone to the fulfillment of our objectives for this year and the future.
More than 500 people enter the Biblioteca daily to use the variety of services offered by the different departments.
Administration
The search for a new General Manager to supervise the various operation of the Biblioteca continues.
The major maintenance project is the actualization of the antiquated telephone and communications systems. The destruction and theft of books costs the institution approximately 80,000 pesos annually and to protect our invaluable collections we have updated security systems.
Atención San Miguel
As it has in the past, San Miguel’s most informative community newspaper represents the single most important source of revenue to the Biblioteca. We will continue to invest in new personnel and technology in order to improve our level of service.
Bodega de Sorpresas
The popular Thursday sale supported by volunteers and donors continues to provide essential funds for the scholarship program.
Café Santa Ana
The cafe, with its new menu, is busier than ever. A Green program for organic waste is under discussion and will soon be implemented.
Teatro Santa Ana
The theater and Sala Quetzal are a hive of cultural activities. On average there are 10 film screenings, 10 lectures and 6 musical performances per week Theater productions and special events for local festivals that the Biblioteca hosts amount to more than 1500 cultural activities per year.
House & Garden Tour
The prestigious House and Garden tour continues to offer the best value tour in town s. 2009 attendance numbers, are despite the economy, only marginally lower than 2008. New cultural tours are in planning stages.
Library
Librarians Juan Manuel Fajardo and Rosario Muñoz have many projects underway: San Miguel’s first Book Fair, the new online catalogue system, the Rural Library Project (in Cruz del Palmar), interaction with UNAM and even finding time for advanced training in Library Science. Security of the 100,000 Spanish language collection and the 150,000 English language collections continues to be a priority for this department.
Educational activity in the library expands with the UNAM Continuing Education center and the appointment of the library as the second official site of the Foundation Center of NY in Mexico.
Robin Velte’s exceptional effort has been instrumental in building the English collection and expanding the volunteer base with graduate students from the Library School of Emporia State University in Kansas, who also donated laptops.
The Board had decided to continue to allocate a sizable budget for the two book committees so that we can continue to refresh our collections.
La Tienda
Our little shop struggled in 2008 but it is in the midst of being revamped.
Scholarship program
This year has been a particularly exciting one, we distributed 900,000 pesos in scholarships for the last school year and long time coordinator Luisa Velte, has brought in Kelvia Cervantes de Ford and Daniela Hernandez to take over the program.. The Biblioteca has teamed up with the other local scholarship organizations, Jovenes Adelante and Mujeres en Cambio to coordinate our scholarship activities while retaining the essential independence of each group. We have continued to increase the proportion of funds going to university scholarships and we are pleased that opportunities for higher education in San Miguel are becoming more available.
To read the complete report go to www.bibliotecasma.com.
How to submit
Submissions to Atención San Miguel
Editorial department: edit@atencionsanmiguel.org
Que Pasa (calendar of events): events@atencionsanmiguel.org
Advertising: ads@atencionsanmiguel.org
Classified ads: clasificados@atencionsanmiguel.org
How to… submit to Atención San Miguel
Atención San Miguel (ASM) receives and welcomes submissions in the form of articles, press releases and announcements to provide the public with the most informative publication in the city. Our mission is to inform, influence, educate and entertain. Your contributions and collaboration are essential. It takes a village to make a newspaper!
To facilitate this we have put together the following guidelines, which will be implemented as policy during the next month.
Articles, announcements & press releases to Atencion San Miguel's editorial department
It is well proven that the success of your event depends on an announcement in ASM. We recommend a length of 400 words or less for press releases, announcements and articles.
If you wish to submit a feature article with a word count above 400, please contact Suzanne Ludekens, Editor in Chief or Jesús Ibarra, Assistant Editor for approval, as we plan issues in advance.
Send article submission to: edit@atencionsanmiguel.org
Deadline: 2pm, the Wednesday of the week before publication (count 10 days prior to the publication date)
Format: Text in a Word document attachment to the email. Photographs in same email as JPEG attachments. Do not send information in the body of the email.
Subject line of email: Identify type of event & event host & requested publication date: eg Fundraiser Audubon Feb 27
Or CD with Word document.
Your submission must contain:
1. Name of contributor with contact info: telephone or email
2. Name of event
3. Type of event
4. Day, date, time
5. Location & address of venue
6. Price, or if free
7. Contact phone (if applicable)
8. Suggested article title
9. Author’s byline (who wrote the article) & photographer’s name( if applicable)
10. Article, approximately 400 words,
a) Spell checked, fact checked, please check your dates with a current calendar!
b) Single-spaced, font Times New Roman, 12 point
c) Sentence case (ABSOLUTELY NO ALL CAPITALS)
d) Justified to the left
e) No photos imbedded in the article (attach as separate files), no formatting techniques such as boxes, no imbedded logos, etc.
11. Photo captions, identifying each photo and names and place or a description of the content of the image
By submitting an article to Atención San Miguel, you grant us permission to publish it and to edit it for length and content.
Your article must include contact information for the author; Atención San Miguel editorial staff engages in some fact-checking processes before publishing articles, so author availability for editor fact-checking is presumed.
Photos must be submitted as high resolution JPEG or TIFF attachments (300 dpi or higher).You can check the file size of the image by right-clicking on the image and select “Properties.”
Articles submitted to Atención San Miguel are presumed to be previously unpublished in local media, and by submitting an article you claim sole authorship.
Around Town
Same procedures apply, steps 1) thru 11) but submissions have a 200-word limit
Que Pasa
Events for Que Pasa, the original calendar for San Miguel, must be submitted to events@atencionsanmiguel.org in the following format:
Line 1: Day and date
Line 2: Two-word description of event
Line 3: Time of event
Line 4: Name of event or place
Line 5: Price (or state if free)
Line 6: Contact telephone number
Line 7: Address
Deadline for Que Pasa is 2pm, Wednesday of the week before publication (10 days prior to the publication date).
Thank you for your cooperation,
Suzanne Ludekens
Editor-in-chief, Atención San Miguel
1. Name of contributor with contact info: telephone or email
2. Name of event
3. Type of event
4. Day, date, time
5. Location & address of venue
6. Price, or if free
7. Contact phone ( if applicable)
8. Suggested article title
9. Author’s byline (who wrote the article) & photographer’s name( if applicable)
10. Article, approximately 400 words,
Linda Whynman at 152-2139; vellum1@mac.com
Casita de Aves
Benefit Auction for Audubon & el Charco del Ingenio
Sun, Feb 15, 12–3pm
El Charco del Ingenio
Members, 250 pesos; nonmembers, 300 pesos
A birdhouse in your hand supports natural conservation
By Carol Wheeler
Calling all birders, bidders, lovers, bird-lovers, art-lovers, nature-lovers and you who just like a festive afternoon in the country! The Audubon/Charco Birdhouse Auction is this weekend at the Charco del Ingenio, San Miguel’s botanical gardens. Food, drinks, jazz, open air, native plants, original artworks, and the most congenial, artistic and ecological people in San Miguel will combine for a unique event in San Miguel's natural history—the first joint benefit for our two top conservation groups—the Charco and Audubon de Mexico
Celestial Lights
By Phyllis Pitluga
Sky Calendar – March 2009
By following the Moon as the biggest and brightest “pointer” in the sky, you can identify different planets and bright stars. On following nights you can relocate them but without the Moon, which moves about 25 times its own diameter from one night to the next. It is much closer than the planets of our solar system, while the stars are much farther. So, when the Moon appears close to a celestial light they are actually separated by millions, billions or trillions of miles.
1 - Sunday: Mercury is just south of Mars at dawn.
2 - Monday: crescent Moon passes just north of the Pleiades star cluster in the dawn sky.
4 - Wednesday: first-quarter Moon looks like half a moon but is really a quarter-lit moon because only half of the moon faces us.
8 - Sunday: Saturn is at opposition. Saturn rises at sunset and sets at sunrise today. Daylight saving time starts in US and Canada, Not in Mexico yet.
10 - Tuesday: full Moon with Saturn just north of it. The Moon rises at sunset and sets at sunrise, crossing the sky all night long as the Earth rotates.
13 - 27: the Zodiacal light is visible in the west after evening twilight for the next two weeks. This is caused by dust in the plane of the solar system that forward-scatters sunlight into a cone of light.
16 - Monday: waning Gibbous Moon is sliding just above the bright star Antares after midnight.
18 - Wednesday: last-quarter Moon rises at midnight.
20 - Friday: Spring Equinox, with 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night, worldwide. The exact moment occurs at 5:44am, central time zone. When the Sun rises this morning it is due east.
22 - Sunday: the Moon passes above Jupiter around 3am.
23 - Monday: the last evening Venus will be visible in the evening sky. By March 27, Venus passes above the Sun and, a few days later, reappears in the morning sky where it remains for the rest of the year.
26 - Thursday: new Moon, when there is “no moon” because the side of the Moon facing Earth is in complete darkness.
30 - Monday: crescent Moon passes above the Pleiades star cluster for the second time this month. This is because the sidereal month (star back to same star) is 27.3 nights, whereas the synodic month (full Moon to full Moon) is 29.5 nights. The cause of the difference is that the Earth has moved from one month to the next so the Moon has to travel another two days to be opposite the Sun again.
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