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Archive for November, 2011
23
Nov
2011
Children’s book festival success!
Last weekend Newcastle Libraries hosted the Northern Children’s Book Festival Gala Weekend at Benfield School, and we’re pleased to report that the event was a resounding success! The whole weekend was jam packed full of celebrated children’s authors – from Cathy Cassidy to Craig Bradley and Steve Hartley to Joe Craig – who delighted visitors with stories, crafts, experiments and jokes before signing books and chatting to fans. The region’s library authorities were on hand to provide top quality craft activities including make your own monster paws (grrrrr!) whilst high class interactive entertainment came from Seven Stories, Piccolo Music and Luna Tricks.
Emma (aged eight, pictured above) who visited the festival on Saturday said, ‘I enjoyed the Northern Children’s Book Festival because I got to meet lots of different authors and they signed my books. The authors were really funny; Steven Butler told us lots of funny stories about his childhood and told me how he based his troll character on his mum, how cheeky! When Korky Paul signed my book he drew me a picture of Winnie the witch, I felt really special.’
It seems that everyone involved thoroughly enjoyed the weekend. The authors were impressed with both the staff and the venue, with Jeremy Strong commenting that his sessions were ‘great fun’ and Korky Paul describing it as a ‘fabulous, exhilarating and wonderful book festival’. Our thousands of visitors were also keen to let us know what a fantastic experience they’d had and many were keen to come back again next year.
Thanks to everyone who gave their time, effort, talents and hard work to put on this fabulous, colourful, surprising, enlightening and ultimately enormously fun weekend!
18
Nov
2011
How to access specialist books and collections
Inspire North East is a scheme that allows individuals access to libraries they would not normally be admitted to, such as specialist or university libraries. Any holder of a full membership at Newcastle Libraries (where proof of address was shown) may apply for an Inspire passport. The process only takes a few minutes – just speak to a member of staff to sign up.
The Find it! website lists special collections held by libraries participating in the Inspire scheme.
You could also try the Copac website which brings together the catalogues of British research libraries, including some universities, and makes them accessible via one search engine. Visit Copac.
16
Nov
2011
Staff blog: when the past meets the future
Luke Burton blogs about the recent work he has been involved in below. We recently followed him for the day on Twitter too. If you missed out view the tweets here. Over to Luke…
It’s been nine months since we launched our ebooks service, offering fiction and non-fiction titles to download for free. So far we’ve had over 6000 downloads by nearly 1000 people. As well as buying titles from our supplier we added titles from our in-house publishers, Tyne Bridge Publishing.
Recently I was at a conference in Manchester where staff from Derby Libraries said they had been adding titles from their local history collection to their ebooks site so that people could borrow titles that would normally be too rare or valuable to lend. Immediately I thought this was an idea we could steal, I mean, that people in Newcastle would find interesting… so we set up a team to look at what titles we could add to our website and how we would go about digitising them.
As a result of our first meeting we decided to add some titles from our heritage collection about the early history of Newcastle as well as some titles from our in-house publishers which are out of print and cannot be bought anymore. In order to give this new digital collection a big launch (as well as giving us plenty of time to work on them!) we have decided to time its release to begin with Local History Month in May 2012.
Over the next couple of months we will be making a small number of titles available to download so people can get an idea of what we will be adding and so we can see how popular they are. At the moment there are three Tyne Bridge Publishing titles available for customers to download:
‘Beneath This Green and Pleasant Land’ by John Graham, a warm and often hard-hitting account of life as a North East miner and one of our most popular titles.
‘Bygone Walker’ and ‘Bygone Byker’ both pictorial histories, using old photographs to portray that past which has given each area such a distinctive character.
The more difficult part is going to be adding rare, valuable or old items from our heritage collection which we are looking to do soon. To begin with these will probably include early pamphlets on the history of Newcastle dating from the seventeenth century. We will also be adding some more Tyne Bridge titles soon.
Why not visit our eBooks site, download some of the titles and tell us what you think! Visit the Digital Collection.
Luke Burton
Information and Digital Team
16
Nov
2011
Steven Butler tells us what stinks!
Steven Butler visited City Library to talk about ‘The Wrong Pong’, the book chosen as this year’s Big Juice Read. Stephen chatted about all things smelly to one of our young volunteers at City Library before he went to meet his audience of eager young trolls. You can listen to their conversation below.
10
Nov
2011
Children’s author of the month: Anne Fine
Anne Fine writes books that stick with you. Both ‘Bill’s New Frock’ and ‘The Flour Babies’ are written from a boys perspective, but boys who have been thrust into femanine realms. One boy lives a day in a dress and another has to look after a baby, albeit one made of flour. This gender mix alongside witty storytelling make Fine’s books unforgettable and often cringeworthy, but in a good way, a really good way!
9
Nov
2011
Hope it snows in time for the Winter Book Festival!
The Newcastle Winter Book Festival brings together venues across the city to celebrate arts and literature. Exciting and entertaining speakers at this year’s festival include: David Almond, MC Beaton, Liz Lochhead, Ann Cleeves, Hugh Cornwell and Tam Dalyell.
Explore the golden age of detection at a talk on Agatha Christie or hear about the influence of painter John Martin on the work of Romantic poets. There are also helpful sessions for aspiring authors and playwrights.
The Winter Book Festival takes place from 24 – 27 November at venues across Newcastle.
3
Nov
2011
Free legal advice at City Library
To celebrate National Pro Bono Week, solicitors and students from Northumbria University’s award winning Student Law Office will be providing free legal advice at Newcastle City Library. Members of the public can drop in to receive free advice on a range of legal issues including consumer disputes, housing, employment, family, criminal injuries and business matters.
Monday 7 November 2011
Drop in between 9am – 5pm
If you require more information about the event, please do not hesitate to contact Paul McKeown on 0191 243 7527.
2
Nov
2011
Dream a little dream at the Northern Children’s Book Festival
The Gala Weekend festival finale will be held over two days for the first time ever! Children can get creative in the many arts and crafts sessions taking place and storytellers and other performers will be dropping in throughout the weekend.
This year’s Northern Children’s Book Festival is based around the theme ‘Dream a Little Dream’ which captures the creativity and imagination involved in reading. Everyone likes to read before bed and the dreams we have are heavily influenced by the stories we read in our favourite books. ‘Dream a Little Dream’ sums up the unicorns, magic carpets, castles and witches we’ve all discovered in the land of nod.
Gala Weekend
10am – 4pm
19 – 20 November
Benfield School, Newcastle upon Tyne
Find out more about the Gala Weekend.
The Northern Children’s Book Festival brings together 12 local authorities in the North East and is also partnership between all the library services in the region.
1
Nov
2011
The Human Library – don’t judge a book by its cover
Imagine a library where the books are people. You enter, you browse, you choose a book, you borrow a person, and you have a conversation. This is a Human Library…
The books in the Human Library come from all walks of life, including people whose life experiences have been misunderstood or misinterpreted in popular media and culture. The Human Library aims to challenge these stereotypes and to confront stigma, prejudice and discrimination in all forms.
Newcastle City Library
Tuesday 1 November, 11am – 3pm
Thursday 3 November, 3pm – 7pm
Gateshead Central Library
Friday 4 November, 11am – 3pm
Sage Gateshead
Saturday 5 November, 11am – 3pm
The Human Library will be mobile, travelling between venues across Newcastle and Gateshead. Anyone can join in, just come along and pick up your library card, chose a book and strike up a conversation…
Part of Wunderbar Festival 31 Oct – 6 Nov. More information on Wunderbar Festival.
Human Library is a co-presentation between Wunderbar and New Writing North. Presented in association with Newcastle City Library, Gateshead Central Library and BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking at The Sage Gateshead.