Macon

The very best way to be sure the materials you are using are truly public domain is to go right to the original published book. But finding an original source book can be quite difficult. Alibris makes it much easier.

What is Alibris?

In their own words:

"Alibris connects people who love books, music and movies to thousands of independent sellers around the world. Our proprietary technology and advanced logistics allow us to offer over 30 million used, new and hard-to-find titles to consumers, libraries and other institutions."

Basically if you know Amazon, you understand Alibris. The crucial difference is that Alibris allows you to do searches based on publication date and that makes it very valuable indeed.

How to search.

To start a search, you want to go to the Advanced Search page. Just to to alibris.com and click on their advanced search button right where it says books. It is located right below the basic search in the left hand corner of the home page.

This brings you to a page with many input options. In addition to the standard title, keyword, etc. inputs is one very valuable input near the bottom of the form. It is called Publication Year - and one of its options is labeled Before. And that is very powerful.

Lets say you were looking for a book on baseball that was in the public domain. Put the word baseball in the title and in the publication date/before field put 1923.

This particular research pulled up over 200 possible books that you have the opportunity to purchase and turn into a product.

A word of warning

The search results are only as good as the data input by the sellers. This means that a certain percentage of books will not match your search terms and a certain number of dates will be wrong - specifically I see lots of books with a publication date of 1900 which is clearly wrong. (I'm guessing that 1900 is the default if no date is entered.)

Therefore, before purchasing a book, it is generally a good idea to send a note to the particular seller to verify the publication date before investing money in the book.

While I would much prefer seeing the book before making a purchase to verify that it meets my needs, if the price is reasonable enough, I figure it is just part of the cost of researching for the product.

Oh, and this is also a good way to search for available books published after 1922 that are in the public domain. For instance if you are looking at doing a diet related product, you could search for books say before 1960 and then when you find books with interesting titles, you can then do a copyright search as discussed in another article on this site (link at end) to see if the book fell into the public domain. And who knows, this could result in finding a diamond in the rough. In fact, at least for diet books, there have been several bestsellers in recent years based on either a public domain book or a government publication.

Good luck with your searching.

Steven Chabotte is the webmaster of The Historical Archive and My City Travel Guide and a student of the traits of success. Learn the success secrets of the masters with your complimentary copy of Think and Grow Rich

Vacations can be even more adventurous and fun with a car bike rack. Bicycling is an important part of your life and why wouldnt you want the flexibility of being able to take your bicycle with you wherever you may go? A car bike car can give you that flexibility to bicycle in places that you have never imagined from the beaches to the forests it is entirely up to you.

It is possible that you can rent a bike, but there may be some problems with that. For one thing, it is quite expensive. The other problem may be that you will not be able to find a quality bike that you will be entirely comfortable with. By investing in a car bike rack, you will be able to take your bike on every trip that you make.

I am able to take my bicycle anywhere that I want to. My car bike rack makes it easy to load and take to any trails that I choose. I even find some unexpected places to ride on my trips.

If bicycling is one of your favorite things to do and you dont currently have a car bike rack, then you are really missing out. You can find so much information online about different bike trails and trips that revolve around bicycling. By having a car bike rack, you can take your bicycle anywhere that you want.

Your whole family will enjoy being able to take their bikes on weekend trips. Bicycling together is a great way to bond and have fun. It will also create memories that will last a lifetime, as well as give you a great deal of much needed exercise. No matter what age of your children, they are sure to love bicycling.

A car bike rack will make it more convenient for bicycling. No matter where you want to go, you are sure to find bicycling trails that will be fun and adventurous. Just load the bikes onto your car bike rack and go! No excuses necessary.

Finding things to do with your children is sometimes difficult, but you will have no trouble getting them to go biking with you. Being able to take your bicycles anywhere you choose by using your car bike rack will give you that added convenience and flexibility. Your children will enjoy spending this quality time with you.

A car bike rack can give you the tool to make bicycling more fun and versatile. By allowing your kids to gain a love for bicycling, you will give them memories that they will always treasure.

Alastair Hamilton is the author and editor of many bicycle carriers articles and newsletters published at http://www.bikecyclingreviews.com . Find more publications about car bike rack at his website.

There is all this talk about Climate Change. I guess we all want to know how much of it is true and how relevant is it to my business? This article discusses what has happened, is happening and some of the predictions so you can assess the importance for yourself. It also discusses the causes of this and includes some discussion of available options.

Global warming is a fact. It is likely to speed up, with near record growth in greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.

The recent UK Stern Report warned that if we ignore this we are likely to have an economic impact equivalent to the combined first and second world wars plus the great depression, and that is without considering millions of people displaced around the world.

To put climate change into perspective, during the last ice age global temperatures were only 5C lower than today and much of Canada, Europe and northern Russia was covered in massive ice sheets several kilometres thick.

Half of the 65 species unique to the Australian Wet Tropics will become extinct with a 3.5C increase in temperature. A 2-3C change is expected to cause 80% of Kakadu wetlands to be lost.

Weather extremes and greater fluctuations in rainfall and temperatures caused by climate change are liable to change productive landscapes and exacerbate food, water and energy scarcities in a relatively short time span. Particularly worrying is sea-level rise because of the density of coastal populations and the potential for the large-scale displacement of people in Asia.

Climate change will cause health security consequences, since some infectious diseases will become more widespread as the planet heats up.

Rising global temperatures will see more fires, droughts and flooding over the next 200 years, according to climate scientists from the UK's University of Bristol.

It is predicted that climate change will contribute to destabilising, unregulated population movements in Asia and the Pacific. While most of population movement is likely to be internal, there will be flow on effects requiring cooperative regional solutions.

Increasingly extreme weather patterns will result in greater death and destruction from natural disasters, and add to the burden on poorer countries and even stretch the coping ability of more developed nations.

For a handful of small, low-lying Pacific nations, climate change is the ultimate security threat, since rising sea-levels will eventually make their countries uninhabitable.

Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases now, researchers predict Eurasia, eastern China, Canada, Central America and Amazonia are at risk of forest loss. Global warming of less than 2C would create a 30% probability of deforestation, while more than 3C would double the likelihood of loss. (UK research)

Now about the Causes

There are three main gases that are responsible for causing the Greenhouse Effect. The data for this has been taken from ice cores giving thousands of years of information.

- Carbon Dioxide CO2

- Nitrous oxides often called NOX

- Methane

All three are increasing exponentially at present. We are now sitting a long way outside the concentrations that have ever occurred in the past and we dont know what will happen.

Who is to blame for this? My little bit cant make all that difference. Twenty-seven per cent of carbon emissions come from homes which means the rest comes from business in some form or other and a large percentage of business involves small to medium enterprises and farms, just like most of us.

Air traffic is currently blamed for about 3.5% of the human activities that cause climate change and is the fastest growing source of emissions. Its share of total CO2 impact is expected to grow to 5% by 2050.

A recent report stated that agriculture is responsible for 40% of greenhouse gasses,

- 70% of total methane,

- 80% of NOX this comes from biochemical processes in soils. There are large losses of N from fertilizers between 15and 50% of N fertilizer goes missing. If you use N fertilizer, you need to improve the efficiency of use.

There are 1.4 billion cows worldwide, each producing 500 litres of methane a day and accounting for 14% of all emission of the gas

There is now 5 times the historic concentration of fertilizers in the sea off the coast of Queensland. This causes and increased growth of algae and algae feed Crown of Thorns starfish larvae. The combination of higher temperatures and Crown of Thorns Starfish is seriously threatening the Great Barrier Reef.

Impacts on water

Global warming is expected to intensify the water cycle, with increased risk of floods and droughts. One of the effects of global warming is likely to be changes in the seasonality of river flows in regions where winter precipitation falls as snow. Additionally, rising sea levels will damage the quality of fresh water available from coastal aquifers and wetlands.

Less freshwater is likely to be available in West Africa, Central America, southern Europe, the eastern US and southern Australia. Other regions, particularly tropical Africa and northwest South America, will be at significant risk of excessive runoff as trees are lost, increasing the chances of severe flooding.

We need to preserve our water quality. There are more of us and fresh water is deceasing. Anything discharged into drains ends up in lakes, dams, rivers or the sea. Do any rivers or lakes near your business have algal problems? A wetland can remove up to 90% of sediments, nutrients and bacteria from stormwater.

When we go boating we really enjoy being in the environment but have we thought about the impact we may be having on water quality. Two-stroke engines produced up to 10 times more water pollution than four-stroke. They acidify waterways and release heavy metals from sediments resulting in underwater pollution up to 1000 per cent worse with two-stroke engines.

What can we do about this?

We can think about our buildings and try to reduce energy use there. Eighty-four per cent of property owners, architects and consultants are involved in green development to some degree, but there are still limited choices of green building products, according to the first major survey of attitudes to sustainability.

While governments are seen as having the greatest influence on society's reaction to climate change, 65% of surveyed people expected the private sector to take the lead in coming years.

Wind power could supply one third of the world's electricity by 2050 and save 113 billion tones of CO2 emissions, according to a report by the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) and Greenpeace.

We can think about our waste

When our waste breaks down in land fills, it generates large amounts of methane gas. Some of the newer landfill sites have been carefully designed to prevent leaching into the water table and to capture the methane gas generated. In Victoria in 2004-5, 5.4 million tonnes of waste was recycled. This is a 7% increase from the previous year it showed recycling saved over 78 million gigajoules of energy, 52 GL of water and 4 million tonnes of greenhouse gasses. 55% of the total solid waste stream was recovered.

Germany has become the 18th country to join the international Methane To Markets Partnership, an initiative to turn the toxic greenhouse gas in the coalmining, landfill, agricultural, and oil and gas sectors into a clean energy source.

India wants industry to use waste-to-energy technologies to both generate electricity and help address waste disposal challenges in various core industries including pulp and paper industry, breweries, textile mills, rice mills and solvent extraction units.

The paper industry is eminently suited for power co-generation as 75-85% of energy is to heat the process and 15-25% as electrical power. "The large quantity of wastewater generated in pulp and paper industry can be used for generating biogas which can be used to produce thermal energy electricity."

And we can consider using other fuels as well as how far we transport things and whether the transport is efficient.

The biggest initiatives here are alternative fuels such as harnessing solar and wind energy and also using fuels made from plants and other biological sources instead of fossil fuels. This is logical because fossil; fuels are just fossilised forests from the past.

Victoria's wind farms are saving more than 250,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year, according to an independent study. A typical 2 MW wind turbine reduces greenhouse emissions by about 6,000 tonnes per year, with 1,000 MW of installed wind able to displace around 600 GWh of brown coal generation per annum.

A meat works in Victoria, is investigating the use of animal fat from its abattoir operations for making biodiesel. The potential 10 ML of biodiesel a year would fuel the company's own transport fleet, with the excess sold on the open market. In Australian biodiesel is being made from canola but sugar would be another good source.

In New Zealand biofuel is being made from algae grown in sewage ponds. This is important because a major obstacle to biodiesel is the fact that the same land used to grow biodiesel crops is also needed to grow food.

Trading carbon is a sensible strategy so that people who do use large amounts of carbon based energy can pay other people who are growing trees. One of my clients has a forestry project to enable their business to be carbon neutral. At Enviro Action we donate a portion of all our income to Trees for Life to support them growing seedling native trees for farmers and other land owners to plan each year.

Governor Schwarzenegger says California, the world's 12th largest carbon emitter, will become a global leader in greenhouse emissions reduction following agreement on a cap and trade system.

So how does this affect me?

Personally I feel deep concern about the future my grandchildren and their friends face. I think we all need to take the many small steps that may seem to not make much difference to try to reduce the overall load on the system. I use low energy fluorescent bulbs in table lamps instead of the ceiling full of halogen lights in both my home and my office. I chose to live in a well insulated north facing place so that I get winter sun coming under my verandah but no summer sun and I seldom use the air conditioner. I used heating for only for 4 hours last winter and that was when the ground outside was white with frost. In summer 40oC outside translated to 29 oC inside and I decided I was comfortable as it was under 30 oC. I drive a duel fuelled car and walk or ride my bike when this is possible.

These are little steps to reduce our foot print and if we all do this in both our businesses and our homes we do have a cumulative effect. We can choose green power in most places. In our business we can think carefully about all the impacts we have just discussed and work out how to save green house gas use and remember this also saves us money.

Obviously we also need to take big steps as well and new technologies must also be developed as existing technologies are not adequate to solve the problem, but we can reduce the load and the rate of global warming by all taking our small steps and we need to start now.

Helping the environment can be a real win-win.

Author Bio
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Hi I am Jean Cannon and my passion is helping small and medium businesses to fully realise the amazing help and protection a management system can bring. I am especially excited about the win-win of environmental management systems, when I help clients like you truly understand that reducing environmental impacts also saves time and money.

I am also an extremely pragmatic business person who knows that small business is under enormous pressure. My unusually wide background as a business person, consultant, trainer, marine biologist, teacher, speaker, auditor and author provide a wide knowledge base to give you better service.

Building a management system is really easy! Yes, I will admit that up front it does take some time but we keep it simple and use tools to minimise this and once in place you soon find it SAVES time and money!

Please visit our website at http://www.enviroaction.com.au/default.asp

New Authors, contracts, and Publishing:

Many new authors sign a contract with a publisher without reading it thoroughly. The excitement of being published for the first time is so overwhelming that they ignore the fact that they are signing a binding contract. Later they are shocked that once published they have not become an immediate millionaire. They lose all contact with reality, immediately find fault, and blame with the publisher.

These disappointed authors tend to join various writers boards and then bash their publishers, or complain about the low royalty check they receive. It never occurs to them that the author regardless as to who publishes them always does promotion. Publishers will tend to aid and support any previously famous author who has made money for the publisher, but usually not an unknown.

I think we must all realize that we tend to join various boards as a means of promotion for our book or books. This is a wise decision by all new authors, but some may get carried away by some negative postings of the discontented.

I for one have joined countless boards. From time to time I even forget which ones, and am shocked to read that some are bashing Publish America, a successful publisher in Maryland, who accepts many new authors. Publish America is a print on demand publisher, one of the first, and now followed quite recently by many bigger, well-known publishers. I think that none of us should condemn anyone if by accident or he or she is a member on such a board.

Like all authors and shoppers there are always some things we could complain about. Whether a product we bought in a store or a publisher, we all have some complaints. However, I never forget that Publish America was the only publisher so far that willingly gave me an opportunity to be published. For that, I am eternally grateful. I do mean eternally. Why bash or bite the hand that feeds you? However, there is far more than monetary gains to this business of writing and being recognized.

Having been in the accounting and business world most of my life, I recognize the need for all companies to make a profit to stay in business. How they do that is up to their own ingenious ways and I respect anyone and all who can do this successfully in these difficult times.

I do think that many new authors are a bit naive about business, profits, and bottom lines. This confusion leads to misunderstandings.

The reality is that Publish America and many new publishers are doing so many things right. The publishing business is presently in some change, some due to publishers of print on demand such as Publish America. It is obvious that Publish America is making a profit. I only hope they continue and grow as they are. My advice to all authors is to read your contract carefully before signing and recognize exactly what is expected of you. Do not expect fame and fortune and do not feel cheated when the reality is that it may never come. Don't bash or blame your publisher.

POD publisher stands for two types of publishers, and is a new expression not used in the same way by all people. Print on demand, and publish on demand. Both are referred to as a POD publisher. The Vanity press is used to recognize publishers who serve authors who wish to self publish. Too many people seem to think this is a negative form of publishing. Why? Some of the most famous writers self-published, a few still self publish as it offers the option of no contract and the freedom to sell or promote their book without any sharing of profits. Before anyone signs with a publisher, they must understand the publishing market and all the options available to them. Then they must consider and understand that various competing publishers will use negative advertising to obtain your business in a very competitive market.

It is all a part of the saying "Buyer Beware."

Anne Lebrecht, author "Memories of a Forgotten Past" "Discoveries of a Hidden Past"

Anne Lebrecht is a published author. She writes novels, poetry, short stories and articles. She lives on Balboa Island, California with her husband of 53 Years. They have two daughters and two grandchildren.

"Memories of a Forgotten Past" "Discoveries of a Hidden Past" Visit her web site: http://www.annelebrecht.com