Central Library

Best Bets Belvedere Square - corner of York Road and Belvedere Avenue, presents Summer Sounds at the Square, a weekly outdoor concert series featuring free live music by local bands on Friday evenings. The series continues July 22 with the rock band Sons of Pirates, 6-9 p.m. Go to http://www.belvederesquare.com. Creative Alliance at the Patterson - 3134 Eastern Ave., presents the concert "Pass It Down!," featuring dulcimer player Ken Kolodner, his son, Brad, Lea and Jonathan Gilmore, and Billy McComiskey and sons, July 23, 8 p.m. Tickets are $16, or $11 for members.

Marylanders are being asked to brave dusty attics to help preserve history. The Enoch Pratt Free Library is in search of Civil War-era documents and wants to preserve them on computers and share them on the Internet. Librarians have joined up with the Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage Program. "We're really trying to find things that are hidden in personal collections and share them with everyone online and allow both historians and the general public to have access," said Michael Scott, the library's digitization supervisor.

Central Library 10375 Little Patuxent Pkwy., Columbia. 410-313-7800. •All Together Now. Saturdays, 10:15 and 11:30 a.m. All ages; 30 minutes. •Eclectic Evenings. Second Tuesdays, 7 p.m. •English Conversation Club. Mondays, 10 a.m. and Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. Practice speaking and understanding English in a group setting. Register before attending. •How to Select a Financial Planner and the Financial Planner Process. July 6, 7 p.m. Presented by Stanette Robinson.

"A Matter of Life and Death" (1946) will make excellent post-Valentine's Day viewing at the Enoch Pratt Free Library 's central location Saturday. It's about love as the force that takes the full measure of a man or a woman, even during wartime. The movie starts when an RAF poet-pilot (David Niven), stuck in a plane blasted to ribbons, bails out without a parachute — and lives. The "conductor" meant to transport him to heaven loses him in dense English fog. A sensitive American (Kim Hunter)

Baltimore's spending board approved a $100,000 settlement Wednesday with a city library employee who was denied adequate access to handicapped parking. The employee, Joan Bourne, filed suit against the city claiming that for four years she was denied a parking spot at the Enoch Pratt Free Library 's central library that was compliant with federal disability laws, City Solicitor George Nilson said. Bourne, who uses a walker or crutches because of a hip problem, had repeatedly asked supervisors for more accessible parking, Nilson said.

Here is a partial list of closings and service changes in the area today. For a full list, go to baltimoresun.com. The federal government in Washington is closed. The Maryland General Assembly has canceled its session. Anne Arundel County government offices are closed, and the county Department of Public Works has suspended curbside recycling and trash pickup for today and Tuesday. Harford County government is closed. Howard County's library system and its senior centers are closed.

Since Washington has had a majority African-American population for many years, monuments in the city to important blacks should be a cinch to locate, right? At least that's what author and journalist Jesse J. Holland thought when he moved to the nation's capital a decade ago and embarked on a mission to acquaint himself with the history of a city that is practically overrun with statues. What he discovered was eye-opening, he told an audience of 30 who gathered Wednesday to hear him talk about his book, "Black Men Built the Capitol," at the central library in Columbia.

As you look across an inlet to the circular domed building at the water's edge, clusters of pink flowers tug your gaze back toward the foreground. Whether or not you have visited the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, it's instantly recognizable. And the profusion of color framing your view means the 3,000 cherry blossom trees are in bloom. You have been transported to another time and place, yet you are staring at a wall. That is what a painting can do: effortlessly take your mind on a journey without loading it down with a body to lug around.

Because of tough budget constraints, the Enoch Pratt Free Library has closed some library branches on some days and ended late-night hours for its Telephone Reference Service. "We had to try to make sure that the decisions we made wouldn't have a huge impact on our patrons," said Roswell Encina, director of communications for the Pratt. The Central Library has shorter weekday hours as a result of the change. The library used to be open until 8 p.m. Monday through Wednesday and until 5:30 p.m. Thursdays.