DIGITAL LIBRARY  CRSReports.com is a free web based repository of Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports.  This digital library is dedicated to hosting an extensive collection of CRS documents.  All information provided by CRSReports.com is publicly available and can be accessed for free without sign-up or registration.  This growing collection of CRS reports is made freely available to policy makers and other users.  https://www.crsreports.com/about

VIRTUAL MUSEUM  A virtual museum is a digital entity that draws on the characteristics of a museum, in order to complement, enhance, or augment the museum experience through personalization, interactivity and richness of content.  Virtual museums can perform as the digital footprint of a physical museum, or can act independently, while maintaining the authoritative status as bestowed by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) in its definition of a museum.  In tandem with the ICOM mission of a physical museum, the virtual museum is also committed to public access; to both the knowledge systems imbedded in the collections and the systematic, and coherent organization of their display, as well as to their long-term preservation.  Find a list of museums online before 2000 including Museum of Computer Art (MOCA) and more recent online museums including Virtual Museum of Canada at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_museum

A U.S. Passport Book is valid for international travel by sea, land or air.  A U.S. Passport Card is valid when entering the United States from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda at land border crossings or sea ports-of-entry.  It is not valid for international travel by air.  Find details at http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/passports/information/card/Difference-Between-Passport-Book-and-Card.html

A visa (from the Latin charta visa, meaning "paper which has been seen"), is a conditional authorization granted by a country (typically to a foreigner) to enter and temporarily remain within, or to leave that country.  Visas typically include limits on the duration of the foreigner's stay, territory within the country they may enter, the dates they may enter, or the number of permitted visits.  Visas are associated with the request for permission to enter a country and thus are, in some countries, distinct from actual formal permission for an alien to enter and remain in the country.  In each instance, a visa is subject to entry permission by an immigration official at the time of actual entry and can be revoked at any time.  A visa is commonly a stamp endorsed in the applicant's passport or other travel document.  The visa, when required, was historically granted by an immigration official on a visitor's arrival at the frontiers of a country, but increasingly today a traveller wishing to enter another country must apply in advance for a visa, sometimes in person at a consular office, by mail or over the internet.  The actual visa may still be an endorsement in the passport or may take the form of a separate document or an electronic record of the authorisation, which the applicant can print before leaving home and produce on entry to the host country.  Some countries do not require visas for short visits.  Some countries require that their citizens, as well as foreign travelers, obtain an "exit visa" to be allowed to leave the country.  Read more and see graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_(document)

"If a joke needs an explanation, there is no point."  "You are a virtuoso of the virtual."  Bones Never Lie, a novel by Kathy Reichs

Sandra Lynn Brown (born March 12, 1948) is an American bestselling author of romantic novels and thriller suspense novels.  Sandra Brown was born in Waco, Texas, and raised in Fort Worth.  She majored in English at Texas Christian University (TCU) in Fort Worth, but left college in 1968 to marry her husband, Michael Brown, a former television news anchor and award-winning documentarian of Dust to Dust.  After her marriage, Brown worked for KLTV in Tyler as a weathercaster, then returned to the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex area where she became a reporter for WFAA-TV's version of PM Magazine.  Brown started her writing career in 1981 after her husband dared her to.  Since then, she has published nearly 70 novels and had more than 50 New York Times bestsellers. In 2008, she was presented with an honorary doctorate of humane letters from her alma mater, TCU.  Find her bibliography at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Brown

From Sandra Brown:  Several readers have asked why Dent refers to Bellamy as A.k.a. in the novel Low Pressure.  That stands for "also known as" and he uses it as an affectionate nickname since Bellamy wrote her own novel (also with the name of Low Pressure) under a pseudonym.  Early in my career, I wrote under several different names, leading friends to nickname me A.k.a. To this day, more than 30 years later, they still call me that.  https://www.facebook.com/AuthorSandraBrown/posts/10151286369448627

Distance is a noun meaning space between people or things.  Find other interesting uses of distance as a noun:  remote, interval, length, and reserve.  Find uses as a verb:  make someone or something remote and in phrases: go the distance, keep one's distance, within striking distance at

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/distance  Other phrases abound:  time lend distance, distance lends enchantment.

 

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, often simply called Cervantes, (1547-1616)   The year 2015 marks the 400th anniversary of the publishing of the second volume of Miguel de Cervantes’ novel “Don Quixote.”  Both volumes were published by Francisco de Robles, volume I in 1605 and volume II in 1615.  Early on, the work was recognized as an important literary offering.  There was a French translation of the work by 1618, and an English version by 1620.  Since 1617, both volumes were published as a single work.  Cervantes lived in Madrid from 1606 to 1611.  During this period, he worked on volume II of Don Quixote as well as his Novelas Ejemplares and the poem Viaje del Parnaso.  Cervantes’ “Don Quixote” has inspired other works throughout the centuries:  programmatic symphonic music (Richard Strauss), a Baroque orchestral suite (Telemann), opera (Massenet) and ballet (Marius Patipa).  The musical “Man of La Mancha” was also inspired by the novel; it premiered in 1965 on Broadway and ran for more than 2,000 performances.  http://www.press-citizen.com/story/entertainment/go-iowa-city/2015/06/13/opinion-don-quixote-anniversary-novel/71128024/

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)  Shakespeare’s Globe theatre is to mark the 400th anniversary of the bard’s death by turning London’s South Bank into a huge pop-up cinema showing 37 new films--one for each of Shakespeare’s plays.  Some 2.5 miles (4km) of the Thames path between Westminster Bridge and London Bridge will be given over to 37 screens placed in order of when the play was written.  Although each film will only run for 10 minutes--repeated on a loop throughout 23 and 24 April--viewing the entire collection would take over six hours, not counting coffee breaks and walking from one screen to the next.  The new scenes will be filmed on location:  Hamlet will be shot in Elsinore (Helsingør) in Denmark, Cleopatra in front of the Pyramids in Egypt, and Romeo and Juliet in Verona in Italy.  Maev Kennedy  http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/nov/19/a-film-for-each-play-to-mark-400th-anniversary-of-shakespeares-death

A Muse reader serves the Feast of the Seven Fishes (Festa dei sette pesci), also known as The Vigil (La Vigilia), an Italian celebration of Christmas Eve.  When a colleague of hers said she substituted two "fish" for the traditional, our reader changed her own meal to nine "fish."    Menu:  (1) SURPRISE FISH!  (Goldfish crackers) (2) Shrimp cocktail (3) Tuna (4)   

Anchovies (5) Smoked Salmon (6) Stuffed Squid (7) Eel  (8) Baccala (cod fish) (9) SURPRISE FISH! (Swedish fish--chewy candy)    

The old year now away is fled, the new year it is enterèd; Then let us all our sins down tread, and joyfully all appear.  See five verses of The Old Year Now Away is Fled sung to the tune of Greensleeves at http://www.lukehistory.com/ballads/oldyear.html

May you greet the new year with fresh eyes and fresh ears.       

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1402  December 31, 2015  On this date in 1696, a window tax was imposed in England, causing many householders to brick up windows to avoid the tax.  On this date in 1879, Thomas Edison demonstrated incandescent lighting to the public for the first time, in Menlo Park, New Jersey.