We love Corduroy!

This week, the Library has received a copy of “Corduroy Mansions” by Alexander McCall Smith. You may remember that we wrote about this book late last year, because McCall Smith was publishing this book in daily bites on the Telegraph UK website. People could read all of the chapters to date, or listen to Andrew Sachs, best known as Manuel in Fawlty Towers , reading the latest chapter. Readers could also make plot suggestions to McCall Smith, and he responded to these suggestions on the website. One of the people who posted a plot suggestion called this online novel ”Dickens for the digital age”.

“Corduroy Mansions” was published in this manner in 100 instalments, over 20 weeks from September 2008 to February 2009, and now the hard back copy of the book has been published. I’ve been reading it over the weekend, and have thoroughly enjoyed it so far. It has all the delightful whimsy and wry observation that people enjoy so much in McCall Smith’s writing. My favourite bit so far is the airport sniffer dog, Freddie, who is retrenched in an affirmative action move when they discover that all of the sniffer dogs are male! The collaborative method of writing this book seems to have been a successful experiment.

McCall Smith posted an online letter to his many readers when the series finished. He said
“We are now coming to the end of this novel. This is a sad moment for me, as I have enjoyed the writing of this greatly. And I have also very much enjoyed the comments that you have made – you will see, I hope, that I have taken many of them to heart and tried to embody them in the plot as I developed it. Thank you so much for your support and suggestions.”

Telegraph Media won a media award for this project. The judges called it a “cross-media literary first. " The serial attracted 90,000 readers a week!

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

New books- "The Secret of Play" & "Sustainable Gardens"

The Library regularly receives new books. This week we have received “The Secret of Play: how to raise bright, healthy, caring children from birth to age 12.” by Ann Pleshette Murphy. Drawing on the latest research on brain development, social-emotional growth, and learning, “The Secret of Play” lays out a blueprint for play, from the first months of life through to the pre-teen years. “The Secret of Play” provides information about the value of play at each age and stage. It aims to show readers which ideas, toys, and games are developmentally appropriate.

Published by Dorling Kindersley (DK), it has their trademark book design; clear, concise and colourful. This is the kind of book you’ll enjoy dipping into and browsing, and it is positive and inspirational. DK have a video of the author talking about "The Secret of Play" on their website.

We have also received “Sustainable Gardens” by Rob Cross and Roger Spencer, published by CSIRO Publishing. The authors are botanists from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, and this book is like a textbook on how to develop sustainable gardens. Did you know that Australians have the sixth largest individual Ecological Footprint (6.6 gha/person), three times the global average of 2.2 gha/person.

The book says this high figure can be attributed to the fact that we live in large houses with few occupants, use a large number of goods and services and travel long distances, depending heavily on fossil fuels (52% of the footprint) for our energy needs.

“Sustainable Gardens” looks at our consumption of resources and the effect this has on our environment. It shows how we can use sustainable gardening to bring a balance between humans and the environment we depend on. The chapter on designing low impact gardens is useful and interesting. It examines all kinds of materials used in landscaping and weighs up which ones are best in terms of protecting the environment. To find out more, you can listen to a recent interview of the authors of this book by Greg Muller, ABC radio Bush Telegraph reporter, at the website .
We hope you enjoy whatever you are reading this week.

"Still Alice" and "A letter to Sophie"

The library regularly receives new books. This week, we received “Still Alice” by Lisa Genova. This novel is the story of Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children, who is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer's disease. Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away.

The author, Lisa Genova, has an interesting background. She holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience and has done research on the molecular etiology of depression, Parkinson's Disease, drug addiction, and memory loss following stroke. She is an online columnist for the National Alzheimer’s Association in the US. She also spends a considerable amount of time acting on stage in Boston and in local independent films. Lisa Genova has said about her novel "I received lots of email from people who thanked me for writing the book…For someone with Alzheimer's or a caregiver of a loved one with this, to tell me that I got it right, that it’s uncanny how true it all was, that they saw themselves all over the book, well that's the highest compliment I can get."

Another recent arrival is “A letter to Sophie: from her mum and dad’s private diaries” by Carolyn Martin, Ron Delizio and Sally Collings. This book is a day-by-day account of what Sophie Delizio and her family experienced as a result of her two terrible accidents; first when a car crashed into her Sydney childcare centre in 2003, leaving Sophie with horrific burns, and again in 2006 when she was hit by a car on a pedestrian crossing, resulting in broken ribs, punctured lungs, a broken jaw and collarbone, brain injuries and spinal fractures. In the preface to this book, Sophie’s mother, Carolyn Martin, says “We have written this book to give an insight into the roller coaster of emotions experienced by both patients and their families, to put a very real face on a picture that for many is hard to imagine, and to say thanks again to the teams that helped to get us in and out of the front doors of two hospitals.” You can listen to a moving interview Sophie’s parents did with ABC Radio 666 Canberra breakfast presenter Ross Solly via the ABC website.

Finding family history- some handy sites for beginners

There is an increasing expectation that family history resources will be available free online. There are some useful free sites to begin from; mainly indexes, with the full records available either from pay for view sites or by physically searching microfilm and other hard copy resources. I have only just begun to learn what is available free online, so I thought I'd pass it on here, on case there are some other beginners out there! Lots of other people know a lot more about this than I do- so please forgive me if I'm stating the bleeding obvious!



When searching for people born in NSW, a good place to begin is with the Historical Indexes of the NSW Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages. Here you can check the indexes to find the most basic details, and also the registration number you need to be able to request a copy of a certificate. The online index to marriage records covers 1788-1958, births records cover 1788-1908, and death records cover 1788-1978.


Another useful site is the online index of the NSW State Records Authority. Here you can do a simple keyname search. I searched a name from my family and found that State Records have a record of an assisted immigrant of that name arriving in 1853, aged 8, with his family on a ship called the Talavera. The dates seem about right, so the next step would be for me to further investigate by looking at the actual record which is on a microfilm reel that I could view at one of the two records centres in Sydney, at The Rocks and at Kingswood.


Some, but not all, of these types of records are also available at the 40 designated NSW State Records community access points. These are mostly public libraries, which State Records have made repositories of the Archives Resources Kit; a collection of books and microfilms of records valued at about $20,000. Our nearest community access point is Macquarie Regional Library in Dubbo. I would jot down the details of the microfilm reel number from the State Records website, and then check the Macquarie Regional Library website to see whether they hold this reel. To do this, go to http://www.mrl.nsw.gov.au/ and in the search box at the top of the page, type in “Archives Resources Kit”. This takes me to a listing of the State Records items which can be viewed in Dubbo Library.



Alternatively, if I was certain this record would be useful to me, I could order a photocopy of it on the State Records website. This costs $25 for the first record, although up to 9 extra records can be added to the same order for $6 each.

So you can see that an internet search can start you off on a fascinating journey to find your family history. This is just a tiny taste of the experience, but people tell me it is highly addictive.

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.