Wednesday is No Housework Day - no trash, no dishes, no making of beds or washing of laundry. And no guilt! Friday is National Siblings Day, which honors all brothers and sisters, and Saturday is Barbershop Quartet Day. Monday is the anniversary of the announcement in 1955 that Dr. Jonas E. Salk had developed the polio vaccine. Incidence of the dreaded infantile paralysis (poliomyelitis) declined by 95% following the introduction of the vaccine.

WHAT'S HAPPENING?

April showers bring May flowers and Ducks to Wednesday's 10:00 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. storytimes. Crafts will include paper bag puppets and Pom Pom Ducks. A good laugh will be had by all at Saturday morning's 10:00 funny storytime. Crafts will include clowns, complete with red noses, and a joker stick puppet.

BOOK TALK

Librarian Barbara Harris provides this week's book information. One of the most crowded (and popular) areas of our crowded library is the Southwest fiction collection. Many of the new books are mysteries set in our part of the country. Here are some authors who have written new Southwest mysteries in the last year and who may not be familiar to most readers.

Sharon Kahn introduces us to a rabbi's widow who does her sleuthing in Eternal, Texas, in "Fax Me a Bagel." An El Paso police detective and a female engineer team up to solve a crime in Aileen Schumacher's "Framework for Death." Towns on the Texas-Mexico border are the settings for Allana Martin's "Death of a Saintmaker" and Rolando Hinojosa's "Ask a Policeman."

Our neighboring state to the north figures in a number of fictional crime scenes. Marianne Wesson is a University of Colorado law professor whose first book, "Render Up the Body," is set in Boulder. Denver African-American bail bondsman C. J. Floyd is the protagonist in Robert O. Greer's novels. Christine T. Jorgensen's books feature another Denver resident, Stella the Stargazer, an advice/astrology columnist. James Doss writes about a small-town Colorado police chief who frequently seeks the assistance of a Ute tribal policeman.

For mysteries set a bit closer to home, try Connie Shelton's book featuring Charlie Parker, a (female) Albuquerque accountant and private investigator. In Ron Querry's latest book, "Bad Medicine," a Choctaw Indian Health Service doctor investigates a mysterious virus on the Navajo reservation.

DID YOU KNOW?

As Barbara Harris said, the library is crowded. Our library was built in 1978, with a capacity for 110,000 volumes, a peak capacity that we reached in 1991. At the end of 1998, the library had 156,734 volumes, including talking books, videos, and compact discs. Technology has also had an impact on space. Automation of the library, Internet access, and online databases all require terminals, and terminals require space.

In May, you will be given an opportunity to vote on a bond issue that will almost double the size of the existing library. Between now and then, we will be bringing you more information about the library, its services, its users, and its needs. We hope that you will visit your Roswell Public Library to see for yourself how busy it is and how much it provides our community.

If you have questions or would like a speaker to visit your organization or club, contact Betty Long at 622-7101 or Darlene Logan at 624-8191.

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK: For the next few weeks, we'll be using quotes that the people quoted probably wish they had thought about more. This one comes from Boston mayor Menino on the shortage of city parking spaces: "It's like an Alcatraz around my neck."