Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Noticed anything different in the library this week?  You may have seen the shiny new interface for the catalogue!  Oooooo.....

[caption id="attachment_27" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Eclipse.net Interface, from www.microlib.co.uk"][/caption]

It's lovely to use, much less clunky than the old one, which would take forever to load Searchstar and take forever to even attempt advanced searches.  It's all so much easier now! Clicking on the newspaper opens the news in ebook form, so you can flick through the pages and find out what's going on. 

The one down side of the new interface is the lack of hamster.  Yes folks, Cesario no longer has a home on our front page.  I've emailed the good folks at MLS, but alas, as yet I have no solution.   I shall persevere!

The Carnegie Shadowing group, the Book Ninjas, are doing well.  We'll miss our Monday meeting as it's a bank holiday, but hopefully they'll keep reading.  I'm ending the week by eating a whole packet of foam bananas.  It has to be done, it's for charity you know...

The Carnegie Shortlist 2010

The list has been published, and what a list it is! 

[caption id="attachment_20" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Shortlisted titles"][/caption]

 I'm very glad I don't have to judge this award, as they'll have some very difficult decisions ahead of them!  Though I haven't read all of the books on the list yet, those I have have been utterly wonderful. 

The Graveyard Book 

One of the most lovely, life affirming stories I've ever read, even though most of its characters are dead! This book tells the story of Bod (short for Nobody) who is raised by the inhabitants of a graveyard after his parents are brutally murdered.  Under the watchful eyes of his mysterious guardian, Silas, he grows up with a strange education from several hundred years of history.  But the threat to his life didn't end with his parents' death, and the man who killed them has never stopped looking for him...  

The Ask and The Answer 

This is a book I find difficult to write about without shrieking such 'OMG, nonono YES!  Woooo! OMG!' etc.  Utterly gripping, heart breaking, gut wrenching novel from a writer who had the power to involve you so utterly that it can be impossible to step back and appreciate just how good it is until you've finished, had several cups of tea, and rested for a couple of days.  The pacing of this novel and its prequel, The Knife of Never Letting Go, is stunning, sending the story rattling forward with such momentum that it is nigh on impossible to find a place to pause. 

My concern with TAATA's nomination is that I'm not sure it stands alone.  The members of our Shadowing group who are tackling TAATA have also requested to read TKONLG (which reminds me, I was supposed to bring in my copy for a Year 11 boy - shoot), partly because I've been raving about it, and partly to make sure that they appreciate it fully.  In hindsight, I should have asked at least one of them to go for it without reading the first in the trilogy, to test its stand-aloney-ability.  

If you'd like to follow the progress of our Shadowing group, you can find us here.  Please vote on our poll!  We're going to be entering our group page into a competition at the beginning of June, the prize of which is tickets to the awards' ceremony for all the group, which would be a fine prize indeed!

Staff Shortages Force Closure

Hi folks, I'm afraid we're having to close for half an hour at 3.30 today. Miss A's off to scrutinise the prospective Heads and Mrs C isn't back from far away abroad yet! We'll open back up at 4pm for anyone who still needs it.

Sorry!

The Carnegie Shortlist is coming!

This Friday, the Carnegie shortlist will be announced, and the race will be on to read the nominated books and review them all before the winner is announced on the 24th of June.

The KS3 Reading Group will be taking on the task of shadowing the awards, following a very similar process to the one taken by the judges.  Before the winner is announced, this group will come together as Shadowing judges and announce their own winner, based on their readings and opinions on the shortlisted titles.  They'll be recording their progress on their Wiki page and cross-posting to the Carnegie Shadowing site if you'd like to shadow the Shadowers*.

Last year, the judges and Shadowers disagreed on their final choices.  The Shadowers chose Patrick Ness's The Knife of Never Letting Go as their favourite, while the judges chose Siobhan Dowd's Bog Child as the final winner. 

We'd love to hear what you think of the process, and whether the judges or the Shadowers should be the final decision makers.  Should a prize like this be awarded by the books' target audience?

If you'd be interested in joining them, please see Miss Adkins in the library as soon as possible! 

*Which I imagine is much like watching the Watchmen.

Disaster has struck!

After many months of faithful service, I am sorry to have to announce the death of a beloved friend: our kettle.  Having worked hard for months, merrily boiling away and helping to make tea for staff and Writing Groups, the kettle marked its demise by gushing water all over the place and making a rather disturbing crackling sound.

This may not seem like a particularly tragic occurence, but pplease, never take for granted the essential nature of tea, particularly for librarians.  Many of us have been treated in specialist clinics for addiction when its got out of hand, and to suddenly be left tea-less is nothing less than a disaster.  Never mind earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes.  Tea deprivation is the worst. Every year, three librarians die from lack of tea.  And yes, we do still have Cecil the coffee machine, but Cecil cannot make tea!

Update: We have been saved. There is now a kettle.  Phew!  *wipes brow*

Blog Welcome

Hi blog readers, welcome to the blog for the RPS Library!  Here you can keep track of what's going on, who's been in and what we're planning for the future.  Stay tuned!