Have you heard...

You can now download audio books from the comfort of your own home - how cool is that? Don't ask me about the detail though because although I attended a presentation about it I was rather distracted by the charming Gordon Griffin and didn't pay as much attention as I should have.

I can certainly recommend getting hold of some of Gordon's narrations as he is truly fabulous!

Love in the Library...

Looking for love, or just a good night out?

Why not try your hand at a spot of speed dating at the lovely Killay Library?

Life on film

I'd forgotten about this - they filmed it when they visited last year. "Catch the library bug" indeed.

Stars of page and screen

I was in Swansea central library this afternoon and just had to take a picture of the staff dressed up in "Hollywood Glamour" to promote the DVD service (it is Oscar night you know!)

A regular contributor to this blog has commented before that a "disproportionately high percentage of both male & female SCL staff members are extremely attractive" and I must say, I have to agree!

I've heard of copy cats...

... but not copy penguins. No doubt inspired by the tremendous singles nights at Swansea Central Library, at last a major player in the book trade has recognised the link between literature and love.
Penguin books have teamed up with online dating agency Match.com to help lonely literature lovers hook up. Read all about it here

Babs in the house

Esteemed author Barabara Erskine will be rocking up to Central Library tomorrow at 2pm to talk about her new book, The Warrior's Princess.

Looking for love?

Literary lonely hearts take note - there's love to be found at Swansea Central library on their regular singles night. I haven't been myself, but I understand it's very popular and growing in notoriety as the place to meet.
People are quite literally coming from miles around in the hope of finding love among the shelves, and we've even made the national press, as well as the redoubtable South Wales Evening Post.

If you're interested in finding romance at the next singles night, it's on Friday 11th July between 6pm and 8pm.

Collective nouns

I can't find one for librarians. Suggestions in use include "a catalogue of librarians", " a stack of librarians" and "a shush of librarians"..

No matter.

Anyway - all Swansea libraries staff will be coming together next week for the 4th annual staff conference - the one day a year when we can all get together for training and development. This year the keynote speaker is none other than Sergio Dogliani of the Tower Hamlets Ideas Stores. In the tradition of Italians bringing excellent innovation to South Wales, we are hoping for a good day.

Recommended reading...

Look!

Recommended reading for delegates at the recent Internet Librarian International Conference 2007 was (I kid you not), this blog!!

Here's the proof - http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/conferences/ili-2007/masterclass/

That's the trouble with this blinking internerd thing - do I see a penny in royalties or conference fees?
I do not.
Am I bestowed with great honours by that organisation - what's it called, CLIP?
I am not.

Still the professional recognition, the pride, the warm rosy glow that someone somewhere reads this stuff.........

Summertime...and the living is easy

What terrible weather we've been having this summer. Luckily, Swansea hasn't been afflicted with floods or other such plagues so we are able to enjoy the boost in library visits during the bad weather.

Loads of stuff going on for kids as usual, including the Summer reading challenge, which this year has an environmental theme.

Open for business

All quiet on the blog recently as we have been busy getting the new St Thomas library open for business.

The library opened to the public for the first time on Friday evening for a preview event and it was packed. Loads of local people, tonnes of kids and all the local dignitaries turned up. Balloons were given away, crisps were eaten, and some people even borrowed books!

Staff were resplendant in their purple polo shirts, and the library bug even turned up. The library opened properly on Saturday morning with a jazz band parade - which you can read about here

I will be badgering my colleagues for some photos...

Swans in the library !!!

Clydach library played host yesterday to a couple of footballers from local team Swansea City FC and around a hundred children who came to meet their idols. It was all part of the ongoing national campaign to promote libraries and encourage new customers to join.

The local paper didn't disappoint with it's ability to insert a book related pun into every article about libraries and for that I am grateful.

Sadly Cyril the swan was not amongst the swans attending, but it was nice of the Queen to let us have any at all.

Innovation

Working on the cutting edge again next week at the intriguingly named "Library Innovation training". Apparantly we will strive to learn about retail best practice and how it can be applied in public libraries.

I'm always interested in this type of thing, having transferred from the "dark side" myself. Will be reporting on my return.

Youth of today

It's all binge drinking, ecstacy, ASBOS, Parental advisory and pimping your ride.

Or is it?

It seems not, at least going by the 60 or so attendees at last night's art exhibition in County Hall.
There they were, genuine teenagers, complete with Slipknot hoodies and striped tights celebrating their own contibution to a programe of art and creative writing which has taken place in libraries across Swansea over the last year.

They have made masks, painted tiles, written poems and stories, illustrated books and painted huge panels which look like the work of Pablo Picasso's Aboriginal ancestor.

It's what I love about libraries - the versatility, the contribution to the cultural life of the community, the element of surprise and, of course, the keeping of teenagers off the streets.

And - it was literature related, which is the main thing. So many libraries these days seem to consider just about anything to get teenagers through the doors - no matter how divorced from the service they're actually about.

No bugs in evidence (wrong demographic), but there was a fine cake.

Bug Hunting

The Library Bug was spotted down at Swansea' Winter wonderland (or is it Waterfront Winterland?) last week as part of a promotion for the BBC's RaW campaign. The campaign aims to get families working together to improve their literacy skills (RaW = Reading and Writing), with the emphasis on fun.

Part of this is the "Got Kids - Get Reading" promotion, to encourage people to improve their skills by reading with their children.

Lots of fun was had by all, with storytimes, face painting, circus entertainers and more - some intrepid members of library staff even took to the ice rink to hand out stickers and bugs to children and their parents.

Fame at last

It seems our friends at Aunty Beeb were in attendance at the Big Read bash and have very kindly granted it the status of "News". How exciting!

Pictures and everything here

Swansea Big Read - winner

Well, the winner was announced last night at a big bash at the Dylan Thomas Centre, attended by so many cultural luminaries that I literally couldn't even begin to list them all!

The prize went to Catrin Collier for her novel Swansea Girls, and I have to say it couldn't have happened to a nicer lady. I have actually read Swansea Girls and must say I quite enjoyed it, although the desciption of the Pier Ballroom of the 50's bore little resemblance to the Cinderella's of my youth.....

Reading of the night has been unanimoulsy recognised as "Harry and the bucketful of dinosaurs" read by a leading light of the Swansea cultural scene with nary a slip of the tongue, even though there's hard dinosaur names and everything!!

Music and dancing went on late into the night, so there may well be some sore heads in library land this morning.

For science fiction fans

Sadly, the most excellent Steve Andrews will not be visiting Killay library this evening to talk about his book "101 must-read science fiction novels" in the Bloomsbury Good Reading guide series. We hope to see him soon, but in the meantime find out more here