Vacation on a budget...

SuDocQueen@evpl — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:38:00 GMT

Nowadays everyone’s talking about staycations. This reminded me of the wonderful vacations my parents took me on even when we had to watch every penny. How’d we do it? By visiting our National Parks and State Parks (and camping, but that’s a whole ‘nother story). Most parks have entrance fees for an entire passenger car that are cheaper than an individual ticket to Disney World.

Starting in the winter my parents would send away for scads of pamphlets and maps of parks like the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, and Slide Rock State Park. Planning early is still a good idea but now it’s even easier. All you have to do is go to www.nps.gov. From there you can learn about every national park in the country. They have a great search tool on that front page. Just click on the state you’re interested in visiting and you’ll get a list of all the parks in that state. But what if you know the name of a park but not what state it’s in? No problem. Click on the “Advanced SearchTool and Map.” From there scroll below the map and you’ll see a great browser tool that will let you pick your park by name, location, preferred activity, or even topic (like mountains or volcanoes or coral reefs).

But what about state parks? Well, if there’s a site out there that pulls all state parks under one “roof” I haven’t found it yet, but putting “state parks (insert the state name of your choice)” into Google does a terrific job of pulling up each state’s website.

And, if you’re at Central Library stop by and take a look at some of the books and pamphlets the National Parks Service still puts out. We have a whole series of pamphlets on the Blue Ridge Parkway trails. Just ask one of us about Call # I 29.149. Or if you’re interested in the historic details of sites, you might want to take a look in our I 29.88 area. Those are historic structure and site reports on places like Fire Island Lighthouse, the Eleanor Roosevelt Historic Site, and Antietam National Battlefield.

New support for your charitable cause

banksoftheohio@evpl — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 19:37:00 GMT

SO... you have a great idea for making Evansville a better place to live but no clue of how to get a grassroots effort started...

The Foundation Center now offers free training webinars for nonprofit organizations through its website, http://foundationcenter.org. Click on a topic that interests you to learn more about the course and to see the scheduled instruction times. Some of these sessions are being offered in Spanish, which should be of interest to our growing Spanish speaking community. The webinars will change periodically, so check back occasionally. If a group is interested in a participating in one of these webinars in the Central Library Tech Center, let's talk about it at AskEVPL.

When you're ready to begin looking for project funding, come to Central Library to log into the Foundation Directory Online. You'll have access to searchable information on over 92,000 foundations, corporate donors, and grantmaking public charities, including those that are located right here in the Tri-State area. Because EVPL is a Foundation Center Cooperating Collection, use of this database won't cost a thing.

Research Blog : central library, Online resources

Vacation on a budget...

New support for your charitable cause