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.

Celebrate Banned Books Week, Sept. 26 – Oct. 3

Banned Books Week is the annual event in which libraries, schools, and people who generally care about ideas and democracy celebrate the freedom to read and the importance of the USA’s First Amendment rights.

Many books are challenged in communities and schools throughout the country every year, simply because someone somewhere disagrees with the ideas contained within and/or does not feel said ideas are appropriate for the general public.  The most challenged books for 2008, according to the American Library Association, are as follows (via):

1. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
   Reasons: anti-ethnic, anti-family, homosexuality, religious viewpoint, and unsuited to age group
2. His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman
   Reasons: political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, and violence
3. TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle
   Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
4. Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
   Reasons: occult/satanism, religious viewpoint, and violence
5. Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
   Reasons: occult/satanism, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, and violence
6. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
   Reasons: drugs, homosexuality, nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit, suicide, and unsuited to age group
7. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
   Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
8. Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen
   Reasons: homosexuality and unsuited to age group
9. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
   Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
10. Flashcards of My Life, by Charise Mericle Harper
    Reasons: sexually explicit and unsuited to age group

(Shocking that none of the Twilight series made the list in ‘08.  I imagine they’ll be making a comeback on the 2009 list.  Possibly Harry Potter, too.)

And just so you don’t think that only recent books are challenged or outright banned, ALA also keeps a list of classics named on the Radcliffe Publishing  Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century that have been frequent challenge subjects, along with the typical reasons for those challenges.  At least 42 of the 100 have been challenged thus far.

Celebrate your freedom to read!

The Bryant Reading Roundtable : A Community Book Club

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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 Thursday, November 19th 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

All Things Entrepreneurial

Writing a business plan, selling the plan, raising capital, locating customers, marketing the business–the work of the entrepreneur never ends!  Now Proquest has developed a database devoted exclusively to helping entrepreneurs find the information they need to save time and execute a successful venture.  The Entrepreneurship Database  targets practitioners and researchers.  Database content includes articles, tools and templates, business cases, and more than 11,000 video clips of successful entrepreneurs offering encouragement and advice.   Access to the database is seamless on campus; off-campus users will be prompted to type in their name and 14-digit barcode number (located on your student ID).

To locate more valuable resources for enterpreneurs, go to the Research Guide for Small Business.  This guide contains entrepreneurial resources available through the library as well as links to sites with useful free content.  The Wall Street Journal Small Business page and the James J. Hill Reference Library are two excellent additional sites to explore.  Search the library catalog for books on entrepreneurship and small business, such as How to Raise Capital: Techniques and Strategies for Financing and Valuing Your Small Business.

How to subscribe to a specific blog category through RSS

Presumably you already know how to subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed (and if you don’t, there’s a tab above the title that’ll take you to a how-to page, a link on the lower left sidebar that’ll do the same, or you could even reach it by just clicking this bit here).  But did you know that it is also possible to subscribe to specific categories, too, allowing you to receive just the posts that interest you?  It’s pretty easy.

1. Click your chosen category heading over on the lefthand sidebar… we’ll use “Business” for our example.

2. You’re instantly brought to the page containing only the posts listed in the Business category.  The URL in the address bar will read:    http://krupplibrary.wordpress.com/category/business/

3. Go to the address bar and type this – /feed/ – at the end of the URL.  The URL will now read: http://krupplibrary.wordpress.com/category/business/feed/

4. Copy this URL into the RSS reader of your choice (Google Reader, Bloglines, Outlook, etc.) and subscribe and you’ll be good to go!