Library card magic with NoveList

In previous weeks, we have described how you can use your library card to get access via the internet to World Book encyclopedia online and other great e-resources. This week, we’ll tell you how to get to another useful e-resource called NoveList.

To get there, first go to the library catalogue website (http://nwls.spydus.com). Click on “Databases” in the top menu bar, and you will see a drop-down menu. Click on “NSW NET.” The first time you go into NSW.net from your computer, you may see a screen that says “Please select your library”. Click on the arrow next to this and from the drop down menu, select “North Western”. Click on “Go”. This gives you a list of e-resources you can access from home, beginning with ANZ Reference Centre. Click on the At Home “Connect” button and you will see a log in page. Type in your library card number and click “Login”. Then click on “NoveList”.

NoveList is all about fiction books and finding something good to read next. There is a search box at the top of the screen, where you can type the name of an author, book or series. Try typing “Tom Clancy” into this box, then click on Search. You’ll see a list of his books, with plot summaries and star ratings. Click on the “Author Read-alikes” tab at the top of the page. You will see two articles. Click on the first one by Joyce Saricks. You will see that she suggests Stephen Coonts and Dale Brown as other authors whose writing you might enjoy, if you like Tom Clancy.

Perhaps there is a kind of book that you particularly enjoy- for example; forensic detective stories set in the United States. Type “forensic detective United States” into the search box, select the radio button below the search box for “Describe a plot”, then click Search. This brings up a list of 23 books you might like to try. Not all of these will be available locally, as NoveList is an American database, but some of them will be.

Using the same kind of search, you can look for a book you’ve heard about, but can’t remember the title of. Perhaps you remember that it was a medieval mystery story, about a monk. Try typing in “Medieval mystery monk”, selecting “Describe a plot” and clicking Search. This yields a long list of similar books, one of which may be your mystery book. NoveList is a great tool for readers of all kinds of fiction, and a wonderful way to find some new authors to track down. We hope you enjoy exploring NoveList.

Next week, the Library will be closed for five days for our biannual stocktake, from Monday 4th May to Friday 8th May. This is necessary as every item in the library must be scanned; all 17,000 of them! We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause you. Items may be returned while we are closed via the book return chute. Please do not hesitate to contact us on 6817 8877 if you have any questions.

More Library card magic!

Here's another great e-resource you can access using your North Western Library card; the Literary Reference Centre.

Go to the library catalogue website ( http://nwls.spydus.com). Click on “Databases” in the top menu bar, and you will see a drop-down menu. Click on “NSW NET.” The first time you go into NSW.net from your computer, you may see a screen that says “Please select your library”. Click on the arrow next to this and from the drop down menu, select “North Western”. Click on “Go”. This gives you a list of e-resources you can access from home, beginning with ANZ Reference Centre. Click on the At Home “Connect” button and you will see a log in page. Type in your library card number and click “Login”.

Click on “Literary Reference Centre”. This is a great resource for anyone who loves English literature, or for students in Year 11 and 12. It combines information from over 1000 books, major literary encyclopedias and journals, and reference works. Literary Reference Centre (LRC) contains detailed information on the most studied authors and their works. You can type in the name of an author or book, or browse lists of authors or works.

For example, to search for Tim Winton, type in “Winton, Tim”. This will bring up a page of biography, and links to an interview with Tim Winton, plot summaries, some literary criticism, and reviews of his works.

Another feature of LRC is that it gives access to the full text of a lot of classic books. On the home page of LRC, click on “Browse works”. You should see a screen with the word “Select” beside a box, at the top of the page. Click the drop down arrow beside the box. Choose “Full-text classics” by highlighting it, and clicking “Go”.

This brings up a massive list of books that you can download and read. These have mostly been made available by Project Gutenberg, and are older classics (out of copyright or “public domain” works) which have been typed up by volunteers. You could also access these works from the Project Gutenberg home page http://www.gutenberg.org. If you haven’t come across Project Gutenberg before, you will be amazed at what is available.

In addition to providing links to the Gutenberg e-books, the Literary Reference Centre (LRC) provides links to literary criticism, plot summaries and biographies of the authors for each of these books. Using LRC, I downloaded a copy of “Cranford” by Elizabeth Gaskell. I could save it as either a web page (.html) or a plain text file (.txt).

I was also able to read about Elizabeth Gaskell’s life, and there were 11 articles which discussed the language, imagery, themes and ideas in “Cranford”. I learned that Elizabeth Gaskell began writing “Cranford” in 1851 when Charles Dickens invited her to send tales for his new weekly journal, “Household Words”. Dickens and Gaskell were so pleased with the first two “Cranford” stories, which depicted a community of genteel single women in a retired country village, that Gaskell went on to write fourteen more!

We hope you enjoy exploring the Literary Reference Centre.

How would it be if you were a boy raised by dogs?

A recent arrival at the Library is the book “Dog boy” by Eva Hornung. This story begins in a deserted Moscow apartment building where four-year-old Romochka waits for Uncle to come home. Outside the snow is falling, but after a few days hunger drives Romochka outside. Overlooked by passers-by, he follows a street dog to her lair in a deserted basement at the edge of the city. There he joins four puppies suckling at their mother's teats. And so begins Romochka's life as a dog. (The Daily Telegraph Big Book Club)

This book was selected recently for the Daily Telegraph Big Book Club, and it has met with good reviews. Mary Phillip reviewed “Dog Boy” for the Brisbane newspaper, the Courier-Mail, on March 13, 2009, and this is part of what she had to say: “Romochka is the hero of this book – and what a hero. Barely able to speak, absolutely illiterate, unskilled in the intuitive ways of dogs, he nevertheless masters his environment. He manages to survive in both worlds, veering towards one or the other as circumstances demand. His love for his adopted family is immense, and he grows strong on their loyalty.

When humans intervene in Romochka's life it is hard not to view them with a critical eye. So immersed was I in the underworld of feral dogs and subways that I resented this intrusion, believing that humans would wreck the balance that these dogs had constructed to survive.
Vivid and visceral in its depiction of street life, this can be a confronting book, but it is so creatively imagined that readers will be rewarded.”

Christopher Bantick interviewed Hornung for the Courier-Mail (March 14, 2009) and quotes her as saying the following: “I've always been interested in outsiders. I am one in some ways myself. I'd been writing a few stories, really to see the limitation of my own imagination. By using the consciousness of a creature, you are making a loud statement about stepping outside the novel. I'd read a news story a while ago about a boy living with animals and I wanted to speculate as to what this may mean.”

The Library will be receiving most of the books featured in the Daily Telegraph Big Book Club from now on, and we hope our readers enjoy the books in this selection

We decided to have a change of colours and layout- what do you think?

Your library card may be the smartest card in your wallet!

Did you know that your library card gives you free access to World Book online encyclopedia? Did you know that as a library member you can set up your membership so that you can search the catalogue from home and reserve books online? Did you know that you can read back issues of the Sydney Morning Herald online?

The website you need is nwls.spydus.com. This is the catalogue homepage of North Western Library, of which Gilgandra Shire Library is a branch. Here you can search the catalogue to see what we have. If you create a PIN for your card at the Library (see Library staff) you can also log in and reserve books, and check when your books are due. But the website has many more features. Click on “Databases” in the top menu bar, and you will see a drop-down menu of fantastic e-resources. Click on “World Book” and you will see the front page of World Book Encyclopedia online. In the box below “Service provided by North Western Library”, type in your library card number and click “Go”. Now you can access all the features of World Book encyclopedia from any internet connection.

Another great resource in the Database drop-down menu is NSW.net. (TIP: If you can’t get the menu to drop down after going back to the catalogue home page, try clicking the refresh button, or “go” button and refresh button in older versions of Internet Explorer.) The first time you go into NSW.net from your computer, you may see a screen that says “Please select your library”. Click on the arrow next to this and from the drop down menu, select “North Western”. Click on “Go”. This gives you a list of e-resources you can access from home, beginning with ANZ ReferenceCentre. Click on the At Home “Connect” button and you will see a log in page. Type in your library card number and click “Login”.

Try clicking on Australia NZ Reference Centre and MasterFile PREMIER. Click on the “Publications” tab at the top of the screen. This should bring up an alphabetical list of all the publications that are included in this database. Scroll down the page and click on the blue link for “The Age (Melbourne)”. You’ll see a list of issues available on the database, going back to September 1999. Click on “Apr 2009” and a list of this month’s issues appear. Click on Apr 4, 2009 and you will see that the database includes 184 articles from that issue of The Age. It doesn’t include advertising, so unfortunately you can’t check classifieds, such as Birth and Death notices. You can read a summary of each article by clicking on the blue title, or the whole article, by clicking on “HTML full text”.

To browse through issues of the Sydney Morning Herald, go back to the list of publications and in the search box next to “Browse”, type in “Sydney Morning Herald”. Click on “Browse”. Click on the blue title “Sydney Morning Herald, The”. This takes you to a page of issues going back to September 1999. You can search for a particular subject by clicking on “Search within this publication” on the menu bar. This will bring up a search box with JN “Sydney Morning Herald, The”. After those words, type the subject you’re interested in. Type in “Gilgandra”. There are 59 results. Click on “Next” at the top of the page, and where it says “After 56 years, it’s a close call in broadcasting in the bush”, click on “HTML Full text”. This brings up an article from the Sydney Morning Herald on 12 January, 2007 by Max Presnell about Bob Foran. You can print it out, email it or save it, if you wish.

This is just a taste of the resources that are available from the Library catalogue home page. Happy browsing!