Keeping you up-to-date on what's happening at your library. We invite you to join in the conversation!
NOVEMBER 14, 2009
000, 100 & 200
Last time we discussed the Dewey Decimal numbers on the spine labels of our Non-fiction books.
Listed below are the kinds of books you can expect to find in the 000 section of the Non-fiction collection, which covers computers, information and general reference:
Knowledge e.g. Guinness book of world records. Dewey number = 001
Mysteries e.g. New Zealand mysteries. Dewey number = 001.94
Computer science e.g. How to do everything on the internet. Dewey number = 004.678
Computer software e.g. Microsoft Office 2007. Dewey number = 005.369
General knowledge e.g. 1001 books you should read before you die. Dewey number = 011.73
Journalism e.g. The self-publishing manual. Dewey number = 070.593
The 100s cover Philosophy and Psychology. Examples of the books you would find would be:
Metaphysics e.g. Metaphysics - A contemporary introduction. Dewey number = 110
Astrology e.g. Behind the crystal ball. Dewey number = 133
Psychology e.g. Oxford dictionary of psychology. Dewey number = 150.3
Ethics e.g. Right and wrong. Dewey number = 170
Modern Western Philosophy e.g. An illustrated brief history of Western
philosophy. Dewey number = 190
In the 200s you will find books on philosophy and the theory of religion, the Bible, Christian church history, Christian moral and devotional theology, and other comparative religions. Some of the titles that the library holds are.…
God: a brief history. Dewey number = 202.11
The Book: A history of the Bible. Dewey number = 220.09
Chicken soup for the soul: Stories of faith. Dewey number = 242
Mother Theresa: Come be my light. Dewey number = 271.97
The major religions. Dewey number = 291
Saints and Sinners: The history of the popes. Dewey number = 262.13
Come in and have a browse, next time you are in the library.
Jennifer is attacked and sexually assaulted in her own apartment late one night. Bravely fighting off her attacker, she later gives the police a good description of the assailant. From a police line-up, Jennifer mistakenly identifies Ron Cotton as her attacker. Charged and found guilty, Cotton is sent to prison.
In PickingCotton, Ron and Jennifer tell their story from their own perspectives. Jennifer talks of the affects of the attack on her health, her family and her relationships. Ron talks about his years in prison and the fight to clear his name. After serving eleven years in prison, Cotton is finally exonerated and walks away a free man. Incredibly, Cotton forgives Thompson, and the two become the best of friends. This true story of injustice and redemption featured on 60 Minutes recently.
Due to our changeover to a new Library computer system over the next week, our services will be limited from Monday 16 November to Wednesday 18 November.
We can:
Issue items
Help you find items
We can’t:
Check in items
Renew items
Place holds
Take payments
Make changes to your account (e.g. address changes)
We hope to be able to action all checkins, changes, holds etc from Thursday 19 November.
We would ask for your understanding and patience if it takes us a little longer than usual to answer your enquiries or assist you with your Library account.
Please ask at the Help Desk if you have any questions.
When you come into the Library looking for a book on a particular topic of interest, you will find yourself in the Non-fiction area of the Library. Here, the books all have numbers on their spine labels which are called “Dewey Decimal” numbers. These numbers run from 000 through to 999.
The major Dewey Decimal sections (the first summary) are:
000Computers, information & general reference
100Philosophy & psychology
200Religion
300Social sciences
400Language
500Science
600Technology
700Arts & recreation
800Literature
900History & geography
Over the next few months, you will learn more about the Non-fiction area of the Library and the wide range of subjects in which we stock books. If you would like something more in-depth try OCLCsDewey Decimal summaries which includes the first three summaries (down to the first thousand Dewey decimal devisions)
It was Halloween on the weekend and as usual our children's staff didn't pass up the opportunity to dress up. If you were in the children's library on Friday you would have noticed the place was populated by three witches. One white witch and two not so white. So while refraining from Shakespearean references I'll leave it to you to decide which witch is which; the maid, the mother and the other one.
A fascinating tale of two doctors, one black and one white, set against the tumultuous backdrop of 1960s Mississippi with integration just around the corner. The blacks and whites of this small town do not mix – or do they? When a young black boy brings a white man who has been shot to the local hospital, the sheriff orders an investigation which will bring long-buried secrets and tensions to the fore. Wonderfully drawn characters and a good dose of mystery make this a very readable book. Fans of The secret life of bees should enjoy this.
Earlier this month the 2009 winner of the Man Booker prize and you know what that means . Well you probably don't. It took me a while to realise myself but it means I've been writing this blog for a whole year now (and hopefully you've been following for just as long).
During this time the library has gone through a number of changes. We've had a new lending services manager, now known as the old lending services manager. Her replacement starts Monday (Welcome Cynthia). Keith left us as well so there has been a general shuffle as things settle into their natural state.
In truth too much has happened here for me to fit it all into one blog post. Suffice it to say its been a good year and I look forward to the next.
To the business at hand. This years Man Booker winner was Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. A novel set in Henry the eighth's England and focusing on Thomas Cromwell and the self-interested men who revolved around the king. Hilary Mantel is an English author. Wolf Hall is her 10th novel and her second to be nominated for the Man Booker, Beyond Black made it as far as the short list back in 2005. Holds are filling up on Wolf Hall as you read this so get in and place yours today.
In November we are scheduled to see the launch of SirsiDynix Symphony, our new Library computer system. Staff training in Symphony, which will replace our current 15-year-old system, is now underway. The new online public catalogue interface looks very attractive and easy to use and we are sure that you will enjoy using it to locate and reserve items and access your account details, either in the library or the Internet in the comfort of your own home.
Further information about the improvements to our computer system will be available soon, so watch this space or check out our newsletter In the Know!
October is New Zealand book month. Despite the title it's not a time for us to bury our heads in a good New Zealand book. Instead it's a month of getting out there and celebrating local books, authors and stories.
Visit http://nzbookmonth.co.nz for all the info on events around the country and make sure to tune into TVNZ7 on 17th October for a televised debate on the great kiwi novel. Just to wet your appetite for New Zealand Literature here's the trailer to The Vintner's luck, a movie based on Elizabeth Knox's award winning novel, due for release next month.
The Library book sale is back once again. We'll be holding it this Friday running all day. However if you can't make it Friday the books will stay out over the weekend.
As usual we'll have withdrawn books for our collections; children's and adult's fiction and non-fiction, magazines and the occasional graphic novels. There are also quite a few videos this time around as the library's video collection is slowly being replaced by DVDs.
Magazines and Fiction (both adult's and children's) will sell for 20 cents while Non-fiction and videos (again both adult's and children's) will go for 1 dollar each.
Reuben and I will be working the till during the day so come on in, say hello and buy a few good books.
Occassionaly it's good to look back at the society from which we evolved so here are four novels all set in good old England and reviewed by Donna.
A hidden life
Adele Geras Four generations of an English family are portrayed, with historical details gradually being revealed as the protagonists wrestle with the outcome of the reading of the matriarch's controversial will. Although written in a 'kitchen-sink' style, where much detail is given of what everyone eats for dinner and how they like it, this is still an enjoyable, relaxing read.
FIC / General GER
LPF / General GER
The uncommon reader
Alan Bennett
Late in life, Queen Elizabeth becomes a 'reader for pleasure'. This brings enormous satisfaction to her, but makes her courtiers edgy and unsettled. In the author's inimitable style, regal dismissals and monarch manipulation are shown to be not much different from the days of history.
FIC / General Humour BEN
Brick Lane
Monica Ali
A Bangladeshi teenager enters an arranged marriage with a man some years her senior and moves to London. Here she experiences a life of difficulty, but not without highlights of hope for the future. Back home her sister, who makes a love marriage, falls on hard times but also demonstrates a remarkable resilience in the face of poverty and despair.
FIC / General ALI
The sea lady
Margaret Drabble
Just after the war, four children spend the summer at a seaside town in Northern England. Fifty years later, they meet again, and come to learn just how formative that early summer was for all of them.
Another busy month is in full swing here at the library. Our new outreach Librarian (Kirsty Graham) started in the nick of time just before the readers and writers alive festival kicked off. The festival is now in full swing. Last weekend saw writing workshops held by Owen Marshall on both Saturday and Sunday while Monday night Readings cinemas showed a special screening of And angel at my table. Still to come are The Owls do cry book group were you can discuss Janet Frame's seminal novel with Lawrence Jones from Otago uni, The Southern verses and voices evening with Cilla McQueen & Brian Turner, and The art of conservation evening with Brian Turner , Grahame Sydney & Craig Potton. All Great events with tickets still available.
This week also happens to be Home Safety week around New Zealand. You might notice videos running in various council building; the central administration building, the museum and here in the library. ACC also has a fun interactive website: www.homesafety.co.nz with games, videos and information about injuries at home. You'll be amazed at just how often we injure ourselves at home in New Zealand and a lot of the time it's due to small simple things we could avoid.
Lastly it's been several months now so we've decided it's time for another Library book sale. Pencil in Friday the 25th of September because the library has lots of pre-loved books and their all looking for new homes. As usual prices will be very reasonable and there will be EFTPOS available. We will be selling all day (That is 9am – 8pm) but if you can't make it on the Friday don't worry the books will stay out Saturday and Sunday for our weekend patrons.
As usual you can read about all the goings on at the library in our newsletter In the Know which you can pick up any time from the adult library. It also has staff reviews and new book lists each month so it's well worth the read.
Away from home for almost 3 years, the Sleavin family had been sailing throughout the Pacific and Caribbean on a cruise of a life-time, in their boat the Melinda Lee. Mike and Judy, and their two children, Ben and Annie, were heading towards Opua in the North Island of New Zealand when tragedy struck. An unidentified freighter struck their yacht and sailed on, abandoning the Sleavins to their fate.
Ten Degrees of Reckoning is the true story of how Judy Sleavin survived the accident and rebuilt her life. Overcoming horrific injuries and suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, Judy vowed to bring those responsible for her tragedy to account. This is an inspiring and powerful account of her battle to have her day in court. This is not only a good read, it also provides lots of insight into life on board a yacht.
Jack Reacher is back. This time he witnesses an apparent suicide on the New York subway but soon becomes suspicious that there is more to it when several groups of “interested parties” demand that Reacher hand over whatever the woman gave him before she died, and won’t take no for an answer. A thrill-a-minute, satisfying page turner which pits Reacher against some of the most deadly opponents he has come up against.
As you probably know last week was Library week giving the staff here at the library another chance to dress up (like we need an excuse). The theme for this year's library week was “escape, explore, discover” so if you were passing on Friday you might just have seen a collections of explorers, adventurers and other assorted people in hats. Here are some of our characters.
Lyndsay makes a superb Captain Cook.
Jill as a gowgirl discovering the wild west.
Nothing says escapism to me like a five year old plying dress up. I'm not five but you get the general idea.
Lastly we found this lot hanging around the children's library. They claim to work there but I'm not so sure.
How to look after your best loved item borrowed from the public library.
A Book is for reading, for sharing aloud the ideas gleaned from within, a treasure to hold close, a tool for learning and a means of exploring the planet – nay, the Universe, from your armchair. Displayed casually in a prominent position within your home, a book can say a lot about you, your character, your personality, your tastes, and your innermost thought processes.
Yes, a book has so many useful properties. Unfortunately, this year there seems to have been a deluge of books returned to the library in a damaged condition. As I have said previously, 99.9% o damage to books is accidental and mostly preventable. And for the most part, the damage is fairly straightforward to repair. We have our own in-house ‘Book Doctor’,(yeah Steve!) who is very skilled in the art of biblio-surgery. Steve knows all the right chemicals to treat stains, and he can wield a knife in just the right way to trim ‘chewed’ corners or to remove pages. So fear not, if baby Jane scribbled in biro, on the front page of a new book, we can mitigate the damage to a certain extent. However, if biro is throughout the book, and it is deemed beyond repair, then a charge for the damage may apply.
Probably the worst thing that can happen to a book, is if it gets wet. If we don’t notice the dampness at the point of return, (and this is quite possible given the volume of books returned on any given day)then the book can become moldy. And once the book is back on the shelf, the mold can spread to the books on either side. A wet book, attended to immediately, can be put into a press (to squeeze out the excess water and help keep the pages flat) and dried out thoroughly. This means that we don’t have to delete the book, and we don’t have to charge for its replacement – winners all round.
How do books get damp you might ask? Apart from the obvious – dropped in the bath or puddle, and spilt drinks etc., I think the problem is the weather. Running to the library from your car in the pouring rain, its easy to miss the fact that rainwater may have gotten into your book bag. Water pools in the bottom of your bag, the pages of the books soak up the water (like litmus paper), and boom! we’ve got a ticking timebomb. (Actually, leaking drink bottles are a big problem too.)
So, how do we fix this problem? Vigilance my friends, and a little care. And also an awareness that books are a treasure, sometimes hard to replace and mostly pretty expensive to buy. Let’s keep our books in good condition so that everyone can enjoy their many benefits.
At the end of July the winners of the Montana book awards were announced With Emily Perkins' novel A Novel about my wife picking up the prestigious Montana medal for fiction or poetry. Read what staff thought of it either here or in this months In the Know newsletter. Runners up in the fiction category were Bernard Beckett's Acid song and Kate De Goldi's The 10pm Question, which also won the Reader's choice award. As mentioned earlier in our blog The 10pm Question won both the Young adult section and book of the year in the New Zealand Post Children's book awards back in May. It's been a good year for Kate De Goldi.
The other Montana winners were The rocky shore by Jenny Bornholdt (Poetry), Buying the land, selling the land by Richard Boast (history), Rita Angus: an artist's life by Jill Trevelyan (biography), Collected poems:1951-2006 by CK Stead (Anthology), Ladies, a plate: traditional home bakingby Alexa Johnston(lifestyle and culture), A continent on the move: New Zealand geoscience into the 21st centuryedited by Ian J Graham (Environment) and Len Castle: making the molecules dance by Len Castle (Illustrative).
A moving story about the devastating impact of World War II on a New Zealand couple. Ellen, unsure if George is alive or dead, falls in love with another man and bears his child. Ten years later, trapped in a loveless marriage, Ellen leaves George. In 2000, Ellen’s daughter retraces George’s steps in Italy in an effort to find out more about the man she thought of as her father. A New Zealand tragedy.
Have you been into children’s services lately? If you haven’t you should. Over the last couple of weeks the dedicated children’s staff have been adjusting and rearranging everything in order to create a more welcoming space for everyone to enjoy.
The centrepiece of this new and improved area is the revamped pre-school area, which now takes up the centre of the room. It has been arranged to try and provide an area where children can browse the picture books and play on the toys with couches nearby for their parents to relax on. The parenting collection, which was hidden, with the audiovisual collections is now on the side of this area to make it more accessible to parents.
The rest of the children’s library has been arranged to flow on from the pre-school area. You can follow on through to the junior fiction collection. New Zealand titles, and short stories are now interfiled with the general fiction. We’ve done this so that you don’t have to try and figure out which collection you need. You can just browse by author.
Moving on from junior fiction we come to the new teen area tucked comfortable into the corner. We’ve added a couple of couches here as well rearranging the area to make it more user friendly. Teens can now grab a comic and chill on one of the couches. The playstation is now gone so they no longer have to worry about younger kids invading their space.
The Non-fiction area has undergone the least change. All we’ve done here is spin the shelves 90 degrees and add more display shelving. The effect is great though. It opens the whole room up making it easy to see children anywhere in the library. So should your little one wonder out from the pre-school area we’ll be able to locate them with ease. It also makes it easy for us to see when children are struggling to find things. This way we can be more on the ball offering help. The biographies, which were at the start of the non-fiction area, are now placed at the end.
Lastly instead of dominating the centre of the room the audiovisual collections are now arranged to the right as you enter. Here again we’ve tried to arrange them so that finding things is more intuitive. Each shelving unit holds a different AV collection; spoken word, DVDs, videos (now free for a 2 week issue), CD ROMs and music CDs as you get closer to the end of the room.
We’re quite proud of the way the children’s library looks now and we’ve already had a lot of positive feedback. We encourage you to bring your kids in and have a look. Tell us what you think or just sit back and relax.
From an early age, Jin Xing was a talented dancer and, at the age of nine, was encouraged to join the People’s Liberation Army Dance Corps. There, Jin received both dance and military training, reaching the rank of Colonel. As a young boy, Jin always felt ‘different’ from the other trainees. Uncomfortable with his gender, he spent most of his time with the girls and dreamed of becoming a prima ballerina. He felt like a woman trapped in a man’s body. At the age of nineteen, Jin received an arts scholarship to study modern dance in New York and it was there that he discovered that is was possible to change sex.
Shanghai Tango is the compelling story of Jin’s journey to womanhood and how he braved pioneering surgery in Communist China and achieved his dream of becoming a World renowned dancer. A good read.
Library week is coming up next month (10th – 16th August) so in the lead up are a few competitions for people of all ages to enter into. The first is a graphic novel competition. Dylan Horrocks has started a graphic novel off for us and it's up to you the public to finish it. The second is a make your own video competition. You have 4 weeks to enter so have a go and see what you can come up with.
If you’re a fan of graphic novels and you are a handy illustrator and designer then this is the competition for you! Dylan Horrocks, well known New Zealand comic artist and writer, has created the first 4 frames of a graphic novel and it is up to you to carry on the story and be in with a chance to win yourself a prize.
The competition runs for 4 weeks, from Monday 20th July and will close on Friday 14th August.
Each week you can read the frames already published on the site, decide what you think should happen next and illustrate the next 4 frames
Upload your images to the Library Week website.
A winner will be chosen weekly and their strip will be made a permanent part of the story
There are two age categories for this competition, 13 – 18 yrs and 19 yrs
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Nothing says escapism to me like a five year old plying dress up. I'm not five but you get the general idea.
The centrepiece of this new and improved area is the revamped pre-school area, which now takes up the centre of the room. It has been arranged to try and provide an area where children can browse the picture books and play on the toys with couches nearby for their parents to relax on. The parenting collection, which was hidden, with the audiovisual collections is now on the side of this area 
Moving on from junior fiction we come to the new teen area tucked comfortable into the corner. We’ve added a couple of couches here as well rearranging the area to make it more user friendly. Teens can now grab a comic and chill on one of the couches. The playstation is now gone so they no longer have to worry about younger kids invading their space..JPG)
Lastly instead of dominating the centre of the room the audiovisual collections are now arranged to the right as you enter. Here again we’ve tried to arrange them so that finding things is more intuitive. Each shelving unit holds a different AV collection; spoken word, DVDs, videos (now free for a 2 week issue), CD ROMs and music CDs as you get closer to the end of the room.
