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!