Bryant Reading Roundtable on “The 19th Wife” Rescheduled

Thank you Bryant Community for your commitment to the Reading Roundtable.   Based on schedule conflicts we have rescheduled the date to Tuesday, December 1^st.   Please mark your calendars!

All interested members of our community are invited to join us for an interesting discussion during the highly successful Bryant Reading Roundtable. Our Fall reading selection will be “The 19th Wife” by David Ebershoff. The book is available for loan through the Krupp Library and HELIN Consortium.

We will meet on Tuesday, December 1^st at 12:00 pm in the Gulski Dining Room.

The Bryant Reading Roundtable provides a forum for open discussions regarding the understanding, promotion, and celebration of our global society. Please start reading and inform your friends and colleagues.

Faith, I tell them, is a mystery, elusive to many, and never easy to explain.

Sweeping and lyrical, spellbinding and unforgettable, David Ebershoff’s “The 19th Wife” combines epic historical fiction with a modern murder mystery to create a brilliant novel of literary suspense. It is 1875, and Ann Eliza Young has recently separated from her powerful husband, Brigham Young, prophet and leader of the Mormon Church. Expelled and an outcast, Ann Eliza embarks on a crusade to end polygamy in the United States. A rich account of a family’s polygamous history is revealed, including how a young woman became a plural wife.

Soon after Ann Eliza’s story begins, a second exquisite narrative unfolds–a tale of murder involving a polygamist family in present-day Utah. Jordan Scott, a young man who was thrown out of his fundamentalist sect years earlier, must reenter the world that cast him aside in order to discover the truth behind his father’s death. And as Ann Eliza’s narrative intertwines with that of Jordan’s search, readers are pulled deeper into the mysteries of love and faith.

This work from the author of “The Danish Girl” and “Pasadena” is a spellbinding work of literary suspense, set against the history of the Mormon Church that combines historical fiction with a modern-day mystery.

Sponsored by the Diversity Council of Champions

Candy!

Lots of excess Halloween candy at both the Circulation and Reference desks.

We don’t need it, and our kids at home definitely don’t need it.

So grab some as you walk by for quick study energy.

Tracking Executive Compensation

Furor over exorbitant pay for corporate executives has been brewing since the Enron fiasco and has once again surfaced with calls from some members of Congress to cap the pay of bank and insurance executives.  To locate compensation for the executive(s) of a company you may be researching, go to SEC filing 14A (the definitive proxy statement).  This filing contains a compensation table that displays the total compensation for leading executive officers.  Total compensation includes salary, bonus pay, stock and options awards, and “other compensation”.  Two library databases–Mergent Online and Hoovers Academic–can help you quickly locate the 14A form.  In Mergent Online, click on the EDGAR Search tab and fill in the company name or ticker symbol, the date you are searching for (select last 12 months if looking for recent filings), and then select “proxies, information statements” as your filing type.  In Hoovers Academic, search for a company using the company name or ticker symbol.  Once you retrieve your company, use the left bar menu to select “SEC filings”.  Browse through the filings until you locate DEF 14A.
The Conference Board Business Knowledge Research database contains the Conference Board’s annual study on Top Executive Compensation.  Click on the Annual Studies link to locate a listing of the reports, including the 2008 Top Executive Compensation Report.  This is an overall report on executive compensation and includes a comparison of compensation by industry.

Columbus Day Weekend Hours

Some changes in the usual schedule due Columbus Day:

Sunday, October 11th – Noon to 10 p.m.

Monday, October 12th – Noon to 1:30 a.m.

Normal hours resume Tuesday, October 13th.  Enjoy the weekend!

IRS.gov: Information Source for Entrepreneurs

One daunting task new entrepreneurs face is figuring out what federal and state taxes they are responsible for paying and how to go about getting the forms in place to pay them.  IRS.gov clarifies this issue and also provides useful information on how to plan and set up your new business.  To get started, go to IRS.gov  and select Businesses from the top menu.  Next, select the subtab Small business/Self-Employedto view links to the following topics: Small Business Forms & Publications (includes a link to publication 4591, Small Business Federal Tax responsibilities); Employer ID Numbers (find out if you need to apply for an EIN and how to do so online); Starting, Operating or Closing a Business (learn how to choose a business structure, select an accounting method, and more); and Employment Taxes (for information on how to collect and pay Federal income tax, social security and medicare taxes, FUTA, and self-employment taxes).  To tap into more information on how to plan and start a business, take a look at the IRS Small Business Resource Guide 2009 available at http://www.sbrg.irs.gov/, or if you are a teen entrepreneur, Teens in BIZ at http://www.sba.gov/teens.   For information on the industry you are starting your business in, select the Industries/Professions  link from the left bar menu under the Business tab.  This section of the Business page includes tax tips, trends, and statistics for various industries, as well as the Audit Technique Guides (ATGs), guides for training examiners preparing for audits of specific industries.