eBooks are here!

Great news for our borrowers - you can now access eBooks through our catalogue!

South Australian libraries have joined forces to purchase a collection of eBooks and Audiobooks via a provider called Overdrive. Logging in with your library card you can download books onto your eBook reader, tablet PC, iPad or smartphone (or music player, in the case of Audiobooks). You can borrow them for up to 21 days and they are automatically returned from your device, so you won’t get any late fees.

And the best part? It’s all free.

To get started, just go to our website or catalogue and look for the eBooks link. Browse or search for a title you’re interested in, click Borrow, and transfer it to your device to get reading.

Please note that due to a rights management issue with Amazon we can’t currently offer this service to Kindle users in Australia.

For more information on the world of eBooks, see this brochure from the Public Libraries SA website.

PCs still unavailable

Just to update you on our PC issues from earlier this week, they are unfortunately still not available. Our IT department are working hard to get our PCs up and running as soon as possible, but continuing issues have meant that work will need to continue into next week.

All we know at the moment is that the PCs are unavailable until further notice – but we will let you know as soon as we know more. We look forward to providing PC access soon, and once again we apologise for the inconvenience.

PC issues

There was a misprint in this week’s Messenger newspaper which said our public PCs are back up today, but unfortunately they are still out of action.

 We are now experiencing a few complications with our PC booking system so we are unsure when our PCs will be available again – but we’ll let you know as soon as we have more information. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Our PCs are unavailable

 …but it’s for a good reason! 

The Modbury Digital Hub is taking shape in a big way, with some important renovations scheduled for this week. You may have read about this in our previous blog post. 

Our Training Room is looking a bit bare at the moment

By Friday you will see some brand new computer desks in the Library, along with new carpet in the Training Room. We’re also eagerly awaiting the arrival of our Apple Macs over the next week!

We need to allow some time to get the desks installed and PCs reconnected, so our PCs will be unavailable from Wednesday 6 March until Wednesday 13 March.

In the meantime we recommend visiting Hive 12-Twenty Five or Salisbury, Campbelltown or Port Adelaide Enfield libraries to use a PC.

Pets + books = ?

A few weeks ago we had a visit from a customer wanting to talk about something she had borrowed. Unfortunately her mischievous cat had gotten to the book when she wasn’t looking, and some of the corners had been chewed.

The title in question? “You can train your cat” by Gregory Popovich.

Books chewed by customers’ dogs are also reasonably common, and in one case we even had a book brought back in pieces after it was destroyed by a sulphur-crested cockatoo!

If you’d like your pet to be better behaved - whether it’s a dog, cat, bird, rat or rabbit – we have a great selection of pet training books that may help out.

Weird book titles

Sometimes we come across books with titles so strange or oddly specific it’s incredible that someone actually wrote a book about it! Here are some notable examples you can find on our catalogue…

The Manga guide to Calculus 

Ductigami: The art of the tape

Giraffes? Giraffes!

I told you I was sick : a grave book of curious epitaphs

Whose bottom is this?

Wood nymph seeks centaur: a mythological dating guide

And that’s just the beginning – you can find many more in Abe Books’ Weird Book Room.

What’s the weirdest book title you’ve seen?

Calvin & Hobbes search engine

For fans of the popular Calvin & Hobbes comic strip, there is now a search engine that enables you to find your favourite  C&H cartoons. Just when you thought you’d seen everything on the Internet!

It works really well – you just need to enter any words from the text, or even a description of the panels. We tried “library” and got lots of results, including these two cute comics.

If you’re looking for more Calvin & Hobbes, we have the complete collection on our catalogue. Put one on hold today!

School holiday activities

Christmas may be over for another year, but that doesn’t mean we’re finished with our School Holiday Program yet!

We’ve been having a great time with lots of themed Storytime sessions and crafts, and are off to a great start with our Summer Reading Club. Grab a reading log or book review form next time you visit us and be in the running for some great prizes.

And of course, we’ve still got our regular activities happening each week. Our popular Baby Bounce and Toddler Time sessions are on every Thursday, while older children can grab a Trail from the Ask Here Desk and follow the clues throughout the Library to get a prize at the end.

Escape from the heat and come visit us in the nice cool Library! For more details, take a look at our School Holiday Program here.

Fun with words and language

The other day I discovered a book called Eunoia, by Canadian poet Christopher Bök. According to Wikipedia this 2001 publication is an ‘anthology of univocalics’ – it’s unusual not because of the content, but because of how it’s written. Bök experimented with the English language by using certain rules to create a very interesting piece of writing.

First of all, there are five chapters – one for each vowel. Each chapter only uses words containing that vowel, while the letter Y is only used in one section in the extended edition of the book. And the title itself? Eunoia is a little-used word referring to ‘a state of normal mental health’ and is the shortest English word to contain all five vowels.

Click the links to find out more, and if you’re a bit of a ‘verbivore’ like many of our staff maybe you’ll also  enjoy some of the entertaining language and vocabulary titles on our catalogue!

When is the Library open over Christmas?

The festive season is upon us, and our holiday opening hours have changed this year. Here are the details of when we will be open:

Friday 21 December – 9:00am to 12 noon – note the earlier opening time!
Saturday 22 December – 10:00am to 5:00pm
Sunday 23 December – 1:00 to 5:00pm
Monday 24 December – 10:00am to 4:00pm
Tuesday 25 December to Tuesday 1 January 2013 – CLOSED

We will reopen on Wednesday 2 January and resume normal opening hours fom then on.

You don’t need to worry about anything on your library record – all items checked out before this period will have an extended loan time, and holds will be suspended so you don’t miss out. If you need to return anything when we’re closed, the chutes on the Eastern wall of the Library next to the carpark will be open 24/7.

The staff of the City of Tea Tree Gully Library would like to wish all our patrons a very happy and safe holiday season!