USA.gov provides a listing of popular New Year's Resolutions and related government resources to help you meet any of these goals. The Library is also a great place to find information to help you start off the New Year on the right foot.

What are you going to focus on this year?

• Drink Less

  

• Eat Healthy
• Get a Better Education (follow the Lifelong Learning and Facing the Page blog channels)
• Get a Better Job (follow the Job Search Central blog channel)
• Get Fit
• Lose Weight
• Manage Debt
• Manage Stress
• Quit Smoking
• Be Green
• Save Money
• Take a Trip (follow the Ticketless Traveler blog channel)
• Volunteer (check out how to volunteer at NYPL)

And one more just from us:

• Read More!

The new year is also a great time to think about a project or plan you want to accomplish. With that concept in mind, I created a book list of the genre I like to think of as the "One Year Challenge." (For a while there it seemed like anyone could get a book deal with a blog and an outrageous idea about how to spend 12 months!)

• 1 Year, 100 Pounds: My Journey To a Better, Happier Life / Whitney Holcombe
• 365 Thank Yous: the Year a Simple Act of Daily Gratitude Changed My Life / John Kralik
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: a Year of Food Life / Barbara Kingsolver
• The Art of Eating In: How I Learned To Stop Spending and Love the Stove / Cathy Erway
• Chastened: the Unexpected Story of My Year Without Sex / Hephzibah Anderson
• Counterclockwise: My Year of Hypnosis, Hormones, Dark Chocolate, and Other Adventures In the World of Antiaging / Lauren Kessler
• Diary of a Real Estate Rookie: My Year of Flipping, Selling, and Rebuilding—and What I Learned (the Hard Way) / Alison Rogers
• Dream Year: Make the Leap From a Job You Hate To a Life You Love / Ben Arment
• Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest For Bodily Perfection / A. J. Jacobs
• Give It Up: My Year of Learning To Live Better With Less / Mary Carlomagno
• The Gratitude Diaries: How a Year Looking On the Bright Side Transformed My Life / Janice Kaplan
• Growing At the Speed of Life: a Year In the Life of My First Kitchen Garden / Graham Kerr
• Happier At Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments In the Practice of Everyday Life / Gretchen Rubin
• The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying To Sing In the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun / Gretchen Rubin
• Helping Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, Ten Self-help Gurus, and a Year On the Brink of the Comfort Zone / Beth Lisick
• Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously / Julie Powell
• A Kitchen In France: a Year of Cooking In My Farmhouse / Mimi Thorisson
• Living Oprah: My One-Year Experiment To Walk the Walk of the Queen of Talk / Robyn Okrant
• Mastering the Art of French Eating: Lessons In Food and Love From a Year In Paris / Ann Mah
• Mirror, Mirror off the Wall: How I Learned To Love My Body By Not Looking At It For a Year / Kjerstin Gruys
• Mr. Smith Goes To Prison; What My Year Behind Bars Taught Me About America's Prison Crisis / Jeff Smith
• My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life / Ruth Reichl
• My Year of Flops: the AV Club Presents One Man's Journey Deep Into the Heart of Cinematic Failure / Nathan Rabin
• My Year of Running Dangerously: a Dad, a Daughter, and a Ridiculous Plan / Tom Foreman
• My Year With Eleanor: a Memoir / Noelle Hancock
• Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America / Barbara Ehrenreich
• No Impact Man: the Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts To Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life In the Process / Colin Beavan
• Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping / Judith Levine
• Paris, My Sweet: a Year In the City of Light (and Dark Chocolate) / Amy Thomas
• Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally / Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon
• Quarter-Acre Farm: How I Kept the Patio, Lost the Lawn, and Fed My Family For a Year / Spring Warren
• Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages / Ammon Shea
• Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey Into Manhood and Back Again / Norah Vincent
• Sitting In Bars With Cake: Lessons and Recipes From One Year of Trying To Bake My Way To a Boyfriend / Audrey Shulman
• Skulls / Noah Scalin
• Sleeping Naked Is Green: How An Eco-Cynic Unplugged Her Fridge, Sold Her Car, and Found Love In 366 Days / Vanessa Farquharson
• So Many Books, So Little Time: a Year of Passionate Reading / Sara Nelson
• Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously / Adrienne Martini
• The One-Week Job Project: One Man, 1 Year, 52 Jobs / Sean Aiken
• Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading / Nina Sankovitch
• Unprocessed: My City-Dwelling Year of Reclaiming Real Food / Megan Kimble
• Until I Say Good-Bye: My Year of Living With Joy / Susan Spencer-Wendel
• Voluntary Madness: My Year Lost and Found In the Loony Bin / Norah Vincent
• The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else / Christopher R. Beha
• A Year At Otter Farm: Inspiring Recipes Through the Seasons / Mark Diacono
• A Year In Provence / Peter Mayl
• The Year of Cozy: 125 Recipes, Crafts, and Other Homemade Adventures / Adrianna Adarme
• The Year of Eating Dangerously: a Global Adventure In Search of Culinary Extremes / Tom Parker Bowles
• The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest To Follow the Bible As Literally As Possible / A.J. Jacobs
• The Year of Living Danishly: My Twelve Months Unearthing the Secrets of the World's Happiest Country / Helen Russell
• Year of No Sugar: A Memoir / Eve O. Schaub
• A Year of Pies: A Seasonal Tour of Home Baked Pies / Ashley English
• The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-so-great Ones) Saved My Life / Andy Miller
• A Year Without "Made In China": One Family's True Life Adventure In the Global Economy / Sara Bongiorni
• Year of Yes / Shonda Rhimes
• A Year With Peter Drucker: 52 Weeks of Coaching For Leadership Effectiveness: Based On the Work of Peter F. Drucker / Joseph A. Maciariello

Another type of resolution you could make is to embark on something called a "365 project." Do something—anything—but the same thing every day for a year. Draw a picture, take a snapshot, jot a short journal entry, or write a poem—do whatever it is you enjoy that will help jump start your creativity or help you improve your technique. You can post your project on specifically designed websites, Flickr (see groups/366photos; groups/365days), Facebook, Twitter, or your own blog. 

Have you read and enjoyed another "One Year Challenge"? What is your resolution for the year? (Posting here might just make you feel more accountable for it later on.) Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

I am finding that having access to great ebooks is helping me with my personal resolution to read more; with the Kindle app installed on my iPad and iPhone, it syncs to the last page I've read on either device. As my colleague says, reading on your phone is great because you can have an emergency book with you at all times!

Whatever your plans for the year, wishing you 366 happy days!