Reading more important than ever in the e-world

The internet has changed the way we gather information and the access we have to information. Now, from a computer in Gilgandra, I can hear from someone in Tehran about what is happening in Iran after the elections, see exhibits in the world’s leading museums, find the information I might need for an assignment, or discuss a complex issue with a community of interested people from around the world. But guess what skills all of this depends on? The ability to read, to understand what I have read, and in turn, to be able to express my own views clearly and unambiguously. Reading and being able to express oneself clearly are skills that are of ever-increasing importance in our world, just as they always have been.

So, what can we do to help children acquire these skills? Children need a language rich environment, right from birth. They need to be read to, sung to, talked to and played with, from the day they are born. This will give them the language building blocks they need to help them learn to read when they get to school. These building blocks are: knowledge of lots of words (vocabulary), familiarity with the idea that letters represent sounds (the alphabet), an ability to identify sounds (phonological awareness), an understanding of the idea that you read a page from left to right, top to bottom, and, most importantly, an understanding that reading is a fun thing to do! By reading to our little ones and showing how much we love reading ourselves, we are giving them that precious gift- literacy.

GREAT Day last Wednesday was a big step in the right direction. It was so much fun for everyone involved, and it was truly inspiring to see so many people of all ages celebrating the joy and importance of reading. Congratulations to the organisers of GREAT day. Thanks to them, Gilgandra is becoming a great place for reading!

What a GREAT Day!

Today, hundreds of children in Gilgandra took part in GREAT Day- Gilgandra Reads Everything Around Town Day. It is always a wonderful day, which celebrates the joy and importance of reading. There is a special emphasis on how vital it is to children’s development to read to them, sing to them, talk to them and play with them, right from birth.

This year, the theme was "The GREAT Adventures of Little Red Riding Hood". There were lots of fun activities at different locations around town, and the day culminated in a fantastic interactive performance of Little Red Riding Hood at the High School Hall. The kids were each allocated to a particular character ie Granny, the Wolf, the Woodcutter and Little Red. Each character would then lead their group of kids in a their theme song or chant at special spots in the performance. It was so much fun, and looked quite spectacular in a hall full of people wearing red (to show how well 'read' they are, of course!) The actors who led the performance were wonderful- you could tell how much fun they were having!

Congratulations to all the organisers of GREAT Day, on a job very well done.

To mark GREAT Day, here is a little collection of quotes about reading.

“Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book.” Author Unknown

You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.” Paul Sweeney

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.” Oscar Wilde

“People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.” Logan Pearsall Smith, Trivia, 1917

“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.” Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” Harper Lee

Happy GREAT Day!

National Simultaneous storytime and e-security week

It has been an exciting week at the Library. National Simultaneous Storytime was held on Wednesday 27th May at 11am. About 60 children and their parents and carers came to hear “Pete the Sheep” by Jackie French and Bruce Whatley. Ian McCutcheon was our special guest reader, and we want to thank him for sharing this fun story with the children.

Next week, from 5- 12 June, is National E-security Awareness Week. The aim of this week is to inform everyone about the simple steps they can take to protect themselves, their families and their businesses online. The Australian government website http://www.staysmartonline.gov.au/ states that there are five key things we can do to improve our e-security. They are: 1.Get a better, stronger password and change it at least twice a year. 2.Get security software, and update and patch it regularly. 3.Stop and think before you click on links or attachments from unknown sources. 4.Information is valuable. Be careful about what you give away about yourself and others online. 5.Log on to http://www.staysmartonline.gov.au/ for further information and to sign up for the email alert service.

The Smallest room, Spydus and Simultaneous Storytime!

It’s all happening at the Library this week! The builders have started work on the new project at the Library. A disabled toilet including baby change facilities will be constructed in the space where the existing toilets are, thanks to Federal Infrastructure funding. However, this means that the Library won’t have any toilet facilities until the project is completed. The nearest public toilets are in Hunter Park, or behind Target, in the carpark.

Our computer software upgrade took place last week, and we’re gradually finding our way with the new version of our library management program, Spydus. For our customers, the biggest change is to the catalogue website. The website has a new look, but it is still under construction. Please bear with us while the links and information are completed. For customers who have already set up a PIN number at the Library, so that they can reserve books from home; the place to login is the Log In box on the top left hand corner of the page.

And finally, this is Library and Information Week, and to celebrate, we’re participating in National Simultaneous Storytime. On Wednesday 27 May at 11am, we will join organisations from Broome to Hobart, reading the picture book “Pete the sheep” to more than a quarter of a million Australian children. Our special guest reader is Mr Ian McCutcheon, who, along with his wife, Dianne, has done some great work with youth in Gilgandra over many years. Mr McCutcheon is also a farmer and grazier, and may have to forget his knowledge of the wool industry and suspend his disbelief considerably to read this story to our children!

“Pete the sheep” was written by Jackie French and illustrated by Bruce Whatley. It tells the story of Shaun, a new shearer in town, who has a sheep sheep instead of a sheep dog- Pete. Pete wears an Akubra and the sheep really like him. Instead of the conventional short back and sides, Shaun creates some wonderful new “dos” for the sheep he shears. Eventually, even the sheep dogs get in on the act!

So you can see that we are looking forward to a fun week at the Library. Hope you are enjoying whatever you are reading this week, as much as we enjoy “Pete the sheep”. As the book’s author, Jackie French, said recently: “Just think, at a certain moment hundreds of thousands of people all over Australia are going to be saying 'Baa! Baa!' How can life ever be the same?”

Memoirs of meth addiction

This week the Library will be upgrading the computer software we use to manage our loans and records- “Spydus”. We will have limited access to some of the features of Spydus during the upgrade, so we ask all borrowers to make sure they bring their library cards with them this week.

The Library recently purchased two books, one by David Sheff and one by his son Nic Sheff. “Beautiful Boy: a father’s journey through his son’s addiction” is David Sheff’s chronicle of Nic’s descent into crystal meth addiction. Before meth, Nic was an accomplished athlete, top student and award winning journalist. After meth, he was a trembling wreck who stole money from his eight year old brother and lived on the streets. David writes of his son’s journey, from the first subtle warning signs, through attempts at rehab, to the way past addiction. Armistead Maupin has said of this story “Beautiful Boy is so beautifully written that it will come as a welcome balm to millions of parents and loved ones who thought they were making this journey alone."

After Nic Sheff’s recovery a book editor contacted him and asked if he was interested in writing a memoir about his experience, one that might inspire other young people struggling with addiction. The result is the book “Tweak: growing up on methamphetamine”. Reyhan Harmanci, staff writer at the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote of this book “Man, the kids are not "alright." But then wholesome childhoods and healthy living were never the stuff of memoir.... Nic Sheff's Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines seldom pulls punches. [He does] an admirable job of telling his story clearly and avoids heavy-handed exposition, and the effect is often moving. The trajectory of drug addiction is nothing new, but Sheff's lucid, simple prose makes the heartbreaking journey seem fresh. More than once, adults praise him for his candor - he lies frequently in his constant quest for more money and more drugs, but he also comes clean (so to speak) many times in the process. It's one of his most appealing aspects, and it's a necessary quality to autobiographical writing. One senses that he's not holding much back. [He] is a writer with a big future ahead of him.”

Both “Beautiful boy” and “Tweak” are available from the Library.

New books at Gil

The Library stocktake is now complete, a source of great relief for the people who work there. We would like to thank Gilgandra residents for their patience while the Library was closed. The good news is that we only need to stocktake every 2 years, so this won’t happen again until 2011. The stocktake triggered a stock rotation, so a lot of our books have been sent on to other branches of North Western Library. Over coming weeks, the other libraries will commence their stocktake, and our shelves will gradually fill again, as their books are sent on to us.

This week, we received a new book for older teenagers by Paul Jennings. Jennings books are well known and very popular, but he has previously written mainly for younger readers, with book series such as “Rascal the dragon”, “Wicked!” and “Deadly!” “The nest” is his first venture into “young adult” writing. On his blog , Jennings writes that it took him 4 years to write this book.

“It’s about a 16 year old boy who gets unwanted images flashing through his mind and questions about his past haunt him as he searches for clues within himself and his own writing”.

Another new arrival at the Library is “Choir Man” by Jonathon Welch. Jonathon Welch is known to most of us as the Founding Musical Director of the Choir of Hard Knocks. He is also a well known opera singer and conductor. This is the story of his personal life; his childhood in suburban Melbourne where he showed theatrical tendencies, his family story, the story of his wonderful opera and theatre career, and his involvement in the Choir of Hard Knocks. It should be a good read.

On Jonathon Welch’s website Jimmy Barnes is quoted as saying "Jonathon is not only compassionate, warm and friendly but is also extremely brave. Not because he has worked with people who are in need but because of the demons of his own that he shows to the world — his own frailty, his own fears and his own dreams. I think this is what makes him a special person. When I look at him, I see someone who is like me and someone who I'd like to be."

We hope you are enjoying whatever you are reading this week!

Treasure indeed!

The World Digital Library (http://www.wdl.org/en/) was launched on 21 April, 2009. It is an international digital library operated by UNESCO and the United States Library of Congress. The digital library is made up of images of objects, manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, and photographs from around the world. So far the collection is relatively small (1,170 items), but the items are truly wonderful. They include an audio recording of a 101-year-old former American slave, Fountain Hughes, recorded in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1949. Only 26 audio-recorded interviews of ex-slaves are known to exist, and now we can hear this interview from any internet connection.
We can also examine the Waldseemüller map, or “Map of the entire world”, the earliest map to mention America by name. This is the only known copy of this particular world map. The World Digital Library includes some of the world's first films from the Lumiere brothers. Auguste and Louis Lumière are credited with the development of the Cinématographe in 1895. The Cinématographe was a light, portable device that brought the camera (weighing just over seven kilograms) out of doors. The Lumières sent crews around the world to record a wide array of scenes and images. These films were shown to audiences which were amazed to see moving action projected on an inert screen. The short films available on the World Digital Library date from 1896, and include processions at Lourdes and Seville, and bullfighting scenes.
We hope you enjoy exploring the World Digital Library. Dr. James H. Billington, from the US Library of Congress, has said that “These are really great treasures, not merely miscellaneous things about a country or culture.” As yet, there is not much Australian content in the World Digital Library, but we understand that the project leaders are looking for an Australian partner, and content will grow with time.

As we mentioned last week, Gilgandra Shire Library will be closed from Monday to Friday this week, for our biannual stocktake. We will be taking every item down from the shelf and scanning it, to help us to maintain the accuracy of our records. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause you, and thank you for your patience.