September 2004

Volume 30
Back Issues: Past Library Links Articles

In this Issue

New Library Employees

Tom Bolze Catalog/Rare Book Team Catalog Librarian I began work on Aug. 2nd. I was born & raised in Carlisle, PA but am more recently from Buffalo, NY, which in many ways I consider my hometown. I attended the University at Buffalo and the University of Pennsylvania (Phila.) I enjoy reading, walking/hiking, museums, architecture, film - all the usual. I have prior training and experience as an historian, and I enjoy learning about local history and lore.
Rebekah Irwin Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library Catalog Librarian for Digital Projects I began work on July 12. I am from Madison, WI, and arrived in New Haven via Bozeman, Montana I attended State University of New York at Purchase and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I enjoy the wilderness and countryside (and more and more: the cityscape); farmer's markets, fiber arts, and sea kayaking.
Daphnée Rentfrow CLIR Post-Doc I began work on August 2nd, I am from all over, currently splitting time between New Haven and home, in Providence, RI. I attended UC Riverside for a BA and partial Master's, and Brown University for a Master's and PhD in Comparative Literature. I enjoy reading (what else!), beaches, and discovering New England.
Jill Coghlan Science Library Temporary Science Librarian I began work on August 11th. I now live in Mansfield/Storrs, having recently moved to CT from northeastern Massachusetts. I have a math minor, based on my calculus studies at Colorado, and then studied American history at UC, Berkeley; my MA in American history is from William and Mary, and my Library Science Masters is from SUNY, Albany. I enjoy community chorus singing, most classical music, and reggae.
Anthony Ferraiolo III Shipping & Receiving Manager Shipping&Receiving SML I began work on July 19, 2004 I am from Telecommunications Management Office I enjoy riding motorcycles

Promotions

Departing Employees

Event Highlights

Field Day - July 31st

photographs by Cesar Zapata

Ice Cream Social
August 19,2004

The Ice-Cream Social continued to be a huge success. The weather looked shaky at the start of the day, having organizers contemplating moving the event indoors. Fortunately for all, it was clear and sunny and a good time was had by all that attended.

Thanks to the volunteers, music performers (Mateusz Zechowski, oboe; Julie Niemeyer, clarinet; Jessica Lang, bassoon; Eva Heater, horn) as well as the members of the ice-cream social committee, Antonia Caserta, Maryetta Russell, Andrew Gray and Victoria Gambardella for all their hard work.

photographs by Sharon Tarascio

Staff in Focus

Edna Bowman graduated from Gateway Community College on 27 May 2004, with an Associate's Degree in Science--Human Services: Continued Studies. She will be continuing her studies on the weekends at Springfield College, School of Human Services. Way to go, Edna! We couldn't be prouder of you!

Staff Submissions

Staff Travel

Sandy Staton's trip to Hawaii
During an event filled trip, Sandy Staton and her friends visited Maui, Hawaii, Wakiki Beach, Honolulu and Pearl Harbor, Honolulu. She said that seeing Pearl Harbor was deeply moving. They spent five days in Hawaii and five days in Honolulu visiting beaches and historic places.

The islands are the result of volcanic eruptions. The sand is very fine. In Maui the sand is black. Surfers take advantage of the high tides for one of the world's best rides.

She visited the home of Reverend Dwight Baldwin http://www.hawaiiweb.com/maui/html/sites/missionary_house_of_the_rev_dwight_baldwin.html
who graduated from Yale in 1821. http://hml.org/mmhc/mdindex/baldwind.html. She was especially interested because his papers are in the department where she works, Manuscripts and Archives.

The Banyan tree intrigued she as well. It is the largest tree in the world, able to shade 2/3 of an acre. Visiting at the end of May, she found the temperatures to be in the 80's and 90's. "There is always a breeze," Sandy said, "so it doesn't become humid."

- article by Claire Halloran

My Summer Vacation at the County Fair
Sandy Peterson

Because my niece Olga and my nephew Aman are active 4-H members, I usually spend part of August at the Buffalo County Fair in Kearney, Nebraska. There are 93 counties in Nebraska and each of them holds a county fair during July and August, followed by the Nebraska State Fair over Labor Day Weekend. The exhibits range from baking, canning, gardening, woodworking, sewing, and family history to animals (cats, dogs, rabbits, chickens, pigs, sheep, goats and cows). In all, there is over 100 possible projects in which 4-H members, age 8-18, can participate. My niece and nephew exhibited sewing, 5 cats, 1 horse, 8 rabbits, 12 chickens, 5 sheep, 4 ducks, and 3 calves (all of these, plus food and other supplies, must be transported to the fair grounds).

Each day starts early at the Miller farm. My sister's family lives 30 miles from the fairgrounds and most events start at 8 a.m. All of these animals need to be fed and watered twice a day. And it didn't help any that Violet, the 400 pound Brown Swiss dairy cow (shown in the picture), wouldn't drink the "town" water because it contained chlorine so water had to be hauled every day from the farm. Before any of the animals can be shown, they must be washed, brushed, combed, etc. Then the 4-H member needs to get ready (regulations require white shirt, blouse, or t-shirt with blue jeans). It's short of like getting children ready for an event---you clean them up and hope that they stay that way until you're ready to go or in this case, show. Fortunately, this year the weather was beautiful and not too hot. When it's hot, they take frozen water bottles to put in their cages or pens (something they do at home as well but in this case it's means transporting them).

Each day focuses on one or more animals---one-day rabbits, the next chickens, the next sheep, etc. Since Olga and Aman show everything, it means preparations for five days. Each event involves showmanship (judging the 4-H member, their knowledge of the history of the breed of the animal, the standards, the diseases, the industry, the anatomy, the care and feeding of the animals) and then judging the animal. Olga and Aman are champions at showmanship, especially for small animals. And they do okay with judging the animals, especially since they select their cats from a group of farm cats, order their chickens through the mail, and often show loaner calves and sheep. I've learned a lot about chickens over the years---Did you know that you could tell the color of a chicken's eggs from the color of its ear lobes? Did you know chickens had ear lobes? And that the size of the vent will tell you the size of the eggs the chicken will lay?

Sheep, hogs and cattle are shown in a large arena and it takes a lot of presence and control for an 80 lb. 4-H member to show a 120 lb. lamb or a 400 lb. calf. Occasionally the calf or lamb gets loose and heads for the gate to the barn but the kids help one another whenever the calf or lamb decides it really would rather be someplace else.

Besides feeding and watering the animals, each 4-H member has barn duty and cleanup duty---keep the aisles clean, replace the sawdust or woodchips in the pens. The final day of the fair is the livestock sale. Each child gets to sell one animal. The reality of live and death comes early and often on the farm but its always bittersweet to part with an animal that they've cared for during the year. However, the money from the sale and from the premiums, over the course of 10 years, provides money for their education. And the experience of raising and showing animals and participating in a 4-H club develops skills that are used throughout their lifetime---respect, responsibility, cooperation, fairness, winning and losing, commitment, friendship, team work, rules, self-confidence.

Well, I had a good time at the fair. I've gone so often now that I know their friends and neighbors. And since my father was a County Extension Agent for over 40 years and I was a 4-H member for probably 10 years, the County Fair has always been a part of my summer ritual.

Recipes

Weight Watchers Group - held over a 13-week period
There were a total of 16 members who joined
6 of these people only went twice
Total pounds lost by the whole group = 164.4
The most amount of pounds one person lost was 30.4
The least amount of pounds one person lost was 2.4

The Weight Watchers website is:
http://www.weightwatchers.com/util/lnd/index.aspx

~ Robin Gordon, Library Business Office

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A Message from the University Librarian

The Library has been working at full tilt all through this summer. Numerous initiatives are going forward, and I know Library staff have felt even more stretched than before. I am pleased and relieved that the imposition of 5% cuts on our operational budget has not forced us to lay off any members of staff for this fiscal year. The financial constraints inevitably cause strain throughout the organization, as we are obliged to keep many vacancies open, filling others on a short-term basis, and try to find ways of doing our work ever more effectively, shifting work around in order to maintain the quality of our services. It is the mark of a truly excellent group of staff, that we not only have maintained our levels of service, but also continue to move the Library forward in new directions marked out by the strategic plan. The Library owes to all its staff a huge debt of loyalty.

Recent successes in working together have helped us to perform in this way, including the process improvements enhancing Eli Express, and the FROG program (Functional Redesign of Operations Group), streamlining the whole process of selection through acquisitions. New initiatives in the Service Quality Improvement agenda include training for the work on weeding Cross Campus Library collections, and for improvements to the Visual Resources Collections services. In the next few months I expect to find new areas in which to apply the lessons we have learned about working more effectively and improving the way departments collaborate throughout the Library.

Three new committees are doing work that will underpin the health of the Library as a good place to work for years to come. The Performance Appraisal Steering Committee led by Christine Weideman is shaping recommendations for a consistent, fair, and objective appraisal system for all staff in the Library. I expect them to provide the basis for a system in which all staff can work confidently and give their best, with clear guidelines and expectations for their work, and a commitment to clarity and fairness on the part of all supervisors. Training for supervisors will be part of the ongoing process of implementation. A second committee led by Susan Burdick and Patricia Thurston is working to introduce a promotion review system for managerial staff in parallel with that already employed for the library professional staff. And the Cross Training committee will be recommending ways to help all Library staff broaden their knowledge and experience of each other's work, and become more versatile.

Keeping in touch: Our communications committee under Mary Caldera's leadership continues its work to ensure that all members of Library staff are well informed, and keep each other informed, about developments in the work place. As most of you know, I maintain open office hours on Monday mornings from 8:30 to 9:30, when any member of staff is welcome to come and see me, and I am always open to visits from staff at any time that is free in my calendar. I also value greatly the morning and afternoon gatherings once every month when I have a chance to meet up with staff informally. Please suggest other ways of keeping in touch. It is vitally important to us in Library senior management to know all of you and to feel confident you will approach us with any concerns that we need to hear about.

Highlights of the spring and summer included the launch of the Integrated Access Council, led by Meg Bellinger. The council's work will be critical to our strategic priority of creating a mature integrated library. The Rare Books and Manuscripts preconference just before the American Library Association conference took place at Yale in June: the first time in twenty years or so that we have hosted a national library conference, and we attracted a bumper attendance of about three hundred. It was a magnificent success, thanks to dedicated work by Nicole Bouche and a large team from the Beinecke and the Rare Books cataloguing team. We were also fortunate to receive three new grants: from the National Historical Preservation and Records Council for our electronic archive project, from the Getty Foundation for cataloguing the archive of architect Eero Saarinen, and from the Mellon Foundation for collaborative work on historic sound recordings. Two new postdoctoral fellows have joined the Library, and our program of bringing in foreign interns as well as Yale graduate student interns, in various capacities, continues. The new semester opened with a new type of exhibition in SML: Readers' Welcome to Campus. If you haven't already seen it, go check out the life-changing books chosen and described by a wide range of Yale personalities.

In the international sphere, we hosted the second annual meeting of partners in the OACIS project, our middle east database funded by the Department of Education. This project is already leading to new collaborative opportunities that should enhance our support for middle eastern studies at Yale and among our partner universities. Our contribution to Yale's international profile during the summer was significant in other ways too. A fair number of Library staff contributed to the success of President Levin's initiative to bring a group of Chinese university presidents and other senior administrators to Yale for a two-week symposium on running a world-class university. And during one week in August, some fifteen YUL staff members attended, between them, the International Federation of Library Associations in Buenos Aires and the International Congress on Archives in Vienna. We contributed at least five conference papers and a lot of work on committees, all adding to Yale's high reputation in the international professional community.

Building works have included redesigned office spaces providing homes for our Development Office, our Phase II renovation project and others. Warmest thanks go to John Vincenti for his extraordinary work with contractors, and to all those members of staff involved in the moves, especially the few who have moved, uncomplainingly, more than once within the year. A generous donation from a Library benefactor has enabled us to renovate and refurnish the second-floor history reading room in SML at the same time as carving out office space alongside it. The Provost's office has promised help with essential upgrading in some of the school and departmental libraries. The Beinecke Library meanwhile has shouldered the greatest burden in terms of building and disruption. Sympathy goes to Beinecke colleagues who continue their work (and ran the RBMS conference) through all the vicissitudes of reconstruction on the plaza, including flooding and damage to collections, not to mention the daily stress of noise, dirt and disruption. The work is expected to be completed at last in December, and we can only hope it will be at least another forty years before the plaza needs attention again.

Looking to the future, new initiatives will include the huge program of Phase II renovation of Sterling and Cross Campus Libraries; major rebuilding in the Social Science, Science and Arts libraries; and the ambitious programs of international work and integrated access that are central to our strategic plan. Watch this space too, for news of an ambitious approach to collections space management. This will position the Library better to command attention and support in the future, for all the great new innovations we wish to introduce in support of Yale's curriculum, and all the research activities of faculty and students.

Last but not least, it is a great pleasure to start this year by welcoming Sharon Tarascio as editor of Library Links, in her role as Human Resources Coordinator. We are fortunate to have recruited Sharon, in succession to Jessica Linicus, who shaped Library Links and kept the flow of Library staff information going admirably. I would like to extend our sincere thanks to Jessica for her great work over the past four years, and to give Sharon a very warm welcome.

Library in Focus

Did You Know?

Is there an organization chart for the Library?
Yes, the library does have an organization chart. You can access it via the Library Human Resources web site under Staff Resources (http://www.library.yale.edu/lhr/resources/orgchart.doc).

HR in Focus

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Upcoming Events

Yale Holiday Calendar

Learning Plan Highlights

C&T Spotlight

Kelly Perry
Kudos goes to Kelly Perry, Library Services Assistant at Medical Library for her Computer Boot Camp.

Kelly was able to notice ways in which her co-workers could improve their computer skills and would give them tips on different features in the applications. Since her tips were so helpful, one of them suggested that she teach what she knew about the applications to the department. She decided to give it a try and put it on her Learning Plan because she knew that it would enhance her own knowledge about different aspects of computers.

Kelly took the suggestion very seriously and created an Application for Enrollment for the Computer Boot Camp. This application was actually an assessment tool that she created to determine what topics to focus on and the best time of day to deliver the sessions.

After she decided on the topic, Kelly took a few weeks of preparation and research for each session to make sure that she was relaying correct information. She also wrote documentation that her co-workers could reference. Kelly's Computer Boot Camp has covered viruses, spam, basic Windows skills, Document Delivery software, and using the department's scanner. Wanting to make the Computer Boot Camp enjoyable, Kelly used humor in both her written materials and her one-hour sessions. She commented, "It's cool to see them either remember how to do it or pick up the document."

Kelly found the Learning Plan helpful in attaining the Computer Boot Camp goal because writing it down and sharing it with others increased her accountability and commitment to accomplishing it. She is keeping the Computer Boot Camp as part of her Learning Plan goals for the upcoming year. She says, "At the end, I feel good that I did it and they learned something". Keep up the good work Kelly!

M&P Spotlight

Patricia Thurston
In recognition of the great achievements that Library staff have accomplished with their Learning Plans, a different staff member will be recognized in the Learning Plan Spotlight section of Library Links. This month, congratulations go to Patricia Thurston, Catalog Librarian and Slavic Team Leader, for obtaining her CMT (Competent Toastmaster) from Toastmasters International.

Patricia Thurston wanted to improve her speaking skills and presentation skills. So, when the Learning Plan Program was launched at the Library last year, she included it as one of the skills that she wanted to develop. Already a member of Toastmasters International, she set a goal to earn her CTM (Competent Toastmaster) by completing her 5 remaining speech requirements at Yale Toastmaster Club meetings.

Patricia noted that the Toastmasters program is well defined and self paced so it was "a good thing to have on the Learning Plan". She also commented that, "The Learning Plan gave her the motivation" to set a timeframe for attaining this goal.

The good habits that she has learned from participating in the Toastmasters International Communication and Leadership Program are readily transferred to running meetings and lunch dates. Patricia learned to eliminate fillers from her speech, to use her voice in a way that maintains the audience's interest and to stay focused on the topic. She has learned that after 2 minutes, no one is listening anyway!

This year, as Vice President of Education of the Yale Toastmaster Club, Patricia is responsible for keeping abreast of the speeches that the members are doing and providing or coordinating mentoring. She has also set a new Learning Plan goal - to obtain her ATM (Advanced Toastmasters). Way to go Patricia!

The Yale Toastmasters Club meets every Friday at 12pm for an hour at 221 Whitney Avenue. You can contact Patricia at patricia.thurston@yale.edu for information.
For more about Toastmasters International, visit the website at http://www.toastmaster.org.

If you have a Learning Plan success that you would like to share, contact Shaundolyn Slaughter at 432-1810.

For more information on the Learning Plan go to: http://www.library.yale.edu/training/stod/learningplan.html

Each One Teach One

Feedback
I would like to send my compliments to the STOD committee for their great work on the Each One Teach One database.

I found myself looking at three documents that were written completely in Chinese. It is my charge to describe these items. Not being able to read them, made it very difficult if not impossible.
I called up the EOTO data base, and there were two people here in the library that could read, write and speak Chinese!

Sarah was more than helpful to me. I would like to extend my gratitude to not only her, but to the entire STOD committee for a job well done !

Thank You,
Renee

Renée L. Cawley
University Archives & Records Services
203 432 7002
renee.cawley@yale.edu
Sterling Memorial Library
Yale University
130 Wall Street
New Haven CT. 06520-8240

Suggestions and Comments

Send all comments to the Editor, Sharon Tarascio

If you would like something or someone featured in the next Library Links, please contact me at sharon.tarascio@yale.edu.

Library Human Resources hopes you enjoyed this issue of Library Links.
You can also contact one of the members of the Library Links Committee.

~Robin Gordon~Randy Main~Marybeth Bean~Susan Brady~Lynn Sette~George Stranz~Pedro Soto~
Julie Niemeyer~Tanya Allen~Emily Horning~Diane Ducharme~Ceasar Zapata~Claire Halloran~Andrew Gray~

Wellness in Focus

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Humor in Focus

GREAT MOMENTS
IN THE HISTORY OF
TECHNICAL SERVICES

8560 B.C.
Cultivation of emmer, barley, and other wild grasses begins on the steppes of Central Asia, leading to the development of specialized occupations, such as cereal catalogers.

4362 B.C.
First evidence (from Scythia, modern day Crimea) of a four-wheeled book cart. Within two generations this design was adopted throughout Europe and Asia, replacing the more maneuverable, but much less stable two-wheeled book cart.

Spring, 3193 B.C.
First serial title attested: "Publications of the Royal Sumerian Academy."

Late summer, 3193 B.C.
First serial title change attested: to "Royal Sumerian Academy Publications."

537 B.C.
The National Library of Babylon, finally switching to papyrus, ceases maintaining its clay tablet shelflist, but is unable to discard it for nostalgic reasons. 2 years later, under seige by the Persians, the city finds a new use for the old tablets and manages to inflict severe losses on the beseiging army by pelting them from the ramparts with large quantities of shelflist tablets.

43 B.C.
First attested use of an ISBN (for the special collector's edition of Caesar's Gallic Wars with an introduction by Marc Anthony): IXIVVIIXVIIIVIIIVIVII.

81 A.D.
Second gospel of the Christian New Testament becomes the first document written in MARK format.

427 A.D.
The Library at Alexandria decides to contract out its annual weeding project; Vandal hordes are the lowest bidder.

1066 A.D.
William the Conqueror defeats his cousin Harold at the Battle of Hastings and imposes the Anglo-Norman Cataloging Rules, 2nd ed. (ANCR2) on his new subjects. 10 years later he commissions the first systematic catalog of selected realia (the Domesday Boke).

1757
Lakota Indians begin recording information on the insides of their portable dwellings; this is the first known use of the teepee verso.

1778
A small group of Irish-American colonists from County Cork form the Dublin Corps to assist in the struggle for independence. By limiting themselves to only the most essential supplies, members of the Corps could be prepared and mounted more quickly than other militias.

August 5, 1782
Birthdate of the Werke brothers, Gesammelte ("Gus"), Sämtliche ("Sam"), and Ausgewählte ("Wally"). In addition to being prolific authors, the brothers were devoted to their military music, and appeared in countless Bands, always in uniform.

1870s
Widespread use of highly acidic paper for book production begins, thus introducing the first disintegrating resource.

1883-4
Cattlemen at the Bar and Drum Ranch, outside Lone Stack, South Dakota, develop the 'barcode' brand as a way to keep track of individual animals in the herd.

1916
Jean Arp, Marcel DuChamp and others mount an assault on the traditional definition of art. Catalogers attempting to describe their work respond with the invention of metadada.

Compiled by W. Lewis; edited by M.Urrizola
Both of the Catalog Department, UCI Libraries

Wellness Now

Healthy 'Briefcase Breakfasts'

Apples and Bananas

"What's quicker than putting a banana in your bag and eating it on the way?" Rarback says. The same could be said of apples, only you have to wash an apple. A banana alone will give you 110 calories, plus 1 gram of protein, and 16% of your daily fiber requirement. Add an apple, and you're up to 190 calories and 36% of your daily fiber, but you don't gain any more protein.

Overall, apples and bananas are low in protein, but a big plus is that you don't need utensils to eat them.

Bar Food

Energy bars, protein bars, cereal bars: We love our bars. Like bananas and apples, you can eat them with one hand, and they don't have much potential for making a mess. They can be good for you, too. But watch out for those that are so fatty and sugary that they're essentially candy bars. As with any packaged food, read the nutrition label.

Breakstone's Cottage Doubles

The container has cottage cheese in one well and fruit the other. You spoon the fruit into the cottage cheese, mix it, and presto -- breakfast. You would have to bring a spoon with you, however. One Cottage Double packs 14 grams of protein into 140-150 calories and 2.5 grams of fat total, although there's very little fiber.

Carnation Instant Breakfast

If you have time to chug a glass of orange juice in the morning, you have time to make a Carnation Instant Breakfast. Just add the powder to a glass of milk, stir, and drink. A packet of "No Sugar Added Rich Milk Chocolate" added to 8 ounces of skim milk yields 150 calories, one-quarter of your daily protein requirement, just half a gram of fat, and no saturated fat.

Morningstar Farms Breakfast Sandwich

If you like McMuffins, then you may like these little food units. Morningstar Farms has used the wonders of food science to create tasty alternatives to high-fat meats out of soy and other vegetable products.

Their healthy breakfast sandwiches are made with egg substitute, a meat substitute that looks and tastes like sausage, and American cheese on an English muffin. One of these will fill 20% of your daily fiber requirement, and it's loaded with protein -- 28 grams. The fat tops out at 3 grams, and only half a gram of that is saturated fat. It gives you 280 calories.

Compared with a McDonald's McMuffin, these sandwiches are obviously the healthier option. One Egg McMuffin has 290 calories, 12 grams of fat total, and 5 grams of saturated fat. A Sausage McMuffin has 360 calories and 23 grams of fat (8 grams saturated).

"You'd have to eat really low fat and really healthy the entire rest of the day in order to offset that Egg McMuffin," Finley says. And she sees another advantage to "nuke and go" breakfast sandwiches, besides how they stack up nutritionally. "You save time by packing it yourself rather than trying to go through a drive-thru," she says.

Other Healthy Breakfasts?

If you can think of something more appealing and just as healthy, eat it. "There's no one right breakfast food," Rarback says. "It's what feels right to someone."

Although a turkey sandwich, for example, isn't a traditional breakfast food, no one would disparage you for eating one at 8 a.m. "I'd say maybe you want it on whole wheat bread," Rarback says. Some people have their dinner leftovers for breakfast, and that's fine, too.

For those who say they're just not hungry in the morning, Rarback has a rebuttal. "When people start eating breakfast, they have to continue," she says. "You get used to it and then your body does want it."

Think Now

Cancel a credit card -- the right way
A paid-off card that's still on your credit report as active can hurt you as you try for a mortgage. Here are 4 critical steps.

By Holden Lewis, Bankrate.com

There's always a right way and a wrong way to do things, and that goes for canceling a credit card.

Whatever your reason for getting rid of a credit card (more on that later), you'll want to make sure you do it thoroughly and that no harm is done to your credit report.

First, don't try to cancel a card while you're paying the balance. Cancel the card only after you have paid off the balance in full.

"There isn't a need to cancel that account until you're through with it," says Jean Brannan, community outreach coordinator for Consumer Credit Counseling Service in West Palm Beach, Fla. She adds that you have to employ self-discipline and stop using a card while you're paying off the balance.

OK, let's say you have paid off a card's balance and you want to cancel the account. Brannan suggests that you do the following, in order:

• Notify the card issuer by phone.
• Follow up by notifying the card issuer in writing.
• Get a copy of your credit report and make sure it's accurate.
• Repeat, if necessary.

Notify the issuer by phone
Your issuer's customer-service number will be printed on the back of the card, on the monthly statement, or both. Call that number, confirm that your balance is zero, and notify the customer-service representative that you're canceling the card. If you truly intend to cancel the card, hold firm if the rep tries to talk you out of it by promising lower rates or fees.

If you can, Brannan says, find out the name of someone to send a confirmation letter to. At the least, ask for the address.

Follow up with a letter
Write a short letter to the card issuer. "If you can get a name so you can send it directly to someone, that is better," Brannan says.

The letter should say that you're closing your account and that you want your credit record to reflect the fact that you requested that the account be closed. Provide your name, address and account number.

Send the letter by certified mail or return receipt requested. That way you can prove that the card issuer received your letter, Brannan says.

Then, wait a month.

"You can allow as much as 30 days for the closing of your account," Brannan says. "Then get a copy of your credit report and make sure it says 'Closed at customer's request' and that (the account) actually has been taken off your credit report."

Check your credit report
You don't want your report to say the account was "closed by creditor," because that reflects negatively on you.

If the card issuer mistakenly reported that the issuer, not you, closed the account, you'll have to return to the beginning. Call the customer-service department to report the mistake, follow up with a letter sent by certified mail (include a copy of the letter you wrote requesting that the account be closed), and check your credit report again.

"Remember that a credit report is your credit history," Brannan says. "The information is submitted by lenders, but it's your individual responsibility to make sure it's correct."

Believe it or not, it's not the credit bureau's responsibility to make sure that your credit report is correct. Credit bureaus report what creditors tell them. So if your credit report is inaccurate, don't ask the credit bureau to fix it. Ask the creditors to correct inaccuracies and update the credit bureaus.

Experts recommend that you check your credit report annually to spot inaccuracies and detect identity-theft problems. Check your credit report before buying a house or car so you can correct any problems before applying for a loan.

Why cancel a card
"One of the reasons people would want to close out credit cards is if they want to purchase a home," Brannan says. "To have a lot of available credit is not to your advantage."

In other words, if you have, say, three cards with low or no balances, a mortgage lender considers that "potential debt." If you have a lot of potential debt, a mortgage lender might not be willing to lend all the money you need because you could take out a mortgage and then run up your credit cards, endangering your ability to pay all your debts.

And some people get in over their heads in debt and realize that they need to rid themselves of the temptation of credit cards.

"You might want to close a credit card because you've re-evaluated your budget and you knew you were overextended," Brannan says. "Or if you are in debt and trying to get out of debt."

And there's nothing wrong with canceling a card because it's a bad deal.

Whatever the reason for canceling a credit card, it pays to do it right.

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