Freegal is fab

I am a Freegal virgin no more. When I first learned of this, I was intrigued by the idea downloading free music. It made me think I could join the hip young things I know who don’t think twice about downloading music, videos and movies – but this was legal and legit and did I mention free?

Sitting on my couch one night recently with my laptop (Ok I was watching Britain’s Best Home Baker at the same time), I headed to Freegal via the link on the main library web page. First step was to supply my library card number and pin number (if you don’t have a pin or can’t remember it, pop in to your local library or call the main library phone number – 03 941 7923 and a friendly librarian sort that out for you).

Once I was logged in with my card, the entire Sony catalogue was opened up to me. Think vast and then add some more songs for good measure. Every genre you could think of was there, nicely listed down the left side of the page, from the latest hit to obscure Bolivian music, and you can also find an artist alphabetically. I like slightly obscure stuff, Appalachian Mountain Music for one, and there it was.  Not knowing which of my favourites were signed by Sony meant I had to trawl a bit, but by doing that I found some fascinating stuff.

There is a limit of three songs per person per week, so I guess if you wish to download a whole album, it might take a few weeks, but I quickly downloaded three odd companions, KD Lang’s stunning version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, the new duet by Pink and Nate from ‘Fun’ ‘ Just give me a reason’ , and an obscure American bluegrass song.

Roll around next week when I can download three more!

Have you given Freegal a go yet? What have you found and downloaded?

 

Alan Broadbent – unsung New Zealand hero

The All Music Guide has called New Zealand born jazz musician Alan Broadbent:

An unsung hero of acoustic piano.

Broadbent has played with, and composed and arranged music for, some the greats of the jazz world – Woody Herman, Chet Baker, Natalie Cole and Scott Hamilton among them.

He has visited New Zealand a number of times and on one occasion I was privileged enough to hear him at the Christchurch Town Hall. Judging by this one performance I could only call him a virtuoso. The complexity and grace of his improvisations left me quite stunned. He does indeed deserve to be much better known.

Fortunately the library can provide you with a chance to get to know our hero’s work through both CDs and via our streamed music resource Music Online. On The Jazz Music Library (part of Music Online) his albums cover genres from Bop to Smooth Jazz, Fusion and Contemporary, while our CDs are mostly of his own trio or collaborations with artists like Mel Torme and Michael Feinstein.

Try Ballad Impromptu composed by Alan Broadbent and played by The Alan Broadbent Trio from the Album Personal Standards

• This album (and over 8000 more jazz albums) is available online for free from anywhere with your library card number and PIN.
• Listen to free online music from Music Online and the Source.

 

Free legal music downloads with Freegal

Free legal music downloads with Freegal! No, I am not talking about random artists and songs that no one else has heard of (though there are many of those as well), I am talking top 40 artists such as Pink, Justine Timberlake, One Direction and Carrie Underwood.

If your interests are less mainstream, then Freegal offers over 100 genres from Euro-house to thrash metal which will no doubt give you something to sing along to or show off your best Dad Dancing moves! There are literally thousands of artists and hundreds of thousands of songs.

 How does it work?

• You get to download three songs a week with your library card number and PIN from home or in any library – though you will need a USB stick or the like if you do it in a library.
• All songs are DRM-free MP3s, and you can keep them for as long as you like. These MP3s will work with almost every portable device and can be transferred on to CD.
• Each song has a sample clip you can listen to before downloading and if the download is interrupted you can download it again (only twice)  from “recent downloads”.
• Please note  that downloads cannot be reversed under any circumstances, even if you cancel the download.
• The download counter resets itself at midnight on Sunday, Eastern Standard Time, which is Monday afternoon around 4pm  for us. So you can download another three songs. Unused downloads do not carry over into the next week.

Please note: If your library card is barred for any reason you will not be able to access Freegal.

If your music collection is in need of some fresh tunes then start here at Freegal – the free music download service from Christchurch City Libraries.

 

Reach for the stars

I’ve been doing a lot of navel gazing lately. You know the stuff – Who am I?, What am I doing with my life?, Why am I here?, etc, etc, etc. I guess it’s all to do with my age (isn’t it always) and the fact that I’ve come through a massive great earthquake and lived to tell the tale. One of the DIY self-help books I read recently made me pause for thought. It asked, “If money was no issue and you had all the time in the world, what would you do for work?”

Now, I’m a very happy and contented librarian but there is a small part of me that yearns to know more about astronomy. I visited the Mt John Observatory last year and was overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of space. If I had my time over, I’d conquer my irrational fear of physics and study the stars.

However, it’s never too late to learn and Christchurch City Libraries has many resources for those of us who want to explore new boundaries and expand our extragalactic knowledge.

It seems the more astronomers discover about space, the larger and more complex it becomes. No one believes there’s much chance of bumping into Vulcans or Klingons by traveling at warp speed to the next galaxy any more. Now we’re talking of globular clusters, cosmic strings, and quasars kiloparsecs away. The search for the meaning of life continues in a universe vast beyond measure.

Although poles apart in dimension, it seems to me that self-engrossed introspection and extraterrestrial investigation have a lot in common. Both ponder the mystery of time and existence. It’s only the scale that varies.

 

OverDrive – the next generation

OverDrive has launched an updated website. If you are not sure what OverDrive is, then let us call it a treasure chest of over 6,000 e-books and downloadable audiobooks, covering all known areas of human interest.

The changes to the website include:

• Grid and List  title views;
• An “Account” page where you can now view your Holds, Lists (Wish List,  Rated titles, and Recommendations for you), and change your lending period;
• A ribbon below each title to allow you to add or remove it from your Wish List;
• A format icon in the top-right corner of a cover image that will tell you if a title is available – if a title isn’t available, the icon will be greyed out.

There are a few other changes too that can be  discovered by having a play or reading through these instructions.

OverDrive has also introduced OverDrive Read, a new browser-based e-book reading experience. This is another alternative to current download practices as it allows users to just open up an e-book without having to install or activate extra software. You will though still need to check your browsers compatibility. If you want to continue to use an earlier edition of Internet Explorer, then you can install for free  the Google Chrome Frame Plugin or simply use the basic version of OverDrive Read. If you currently use a cable to connect and copy your title you will probably continue to use your current method and choose EPUB.

Our customer contact centre is prepared to assist customers with any technical issues.

To explore these changes further take a gander at this YouTube Video.

 

A life on Gorge River: New Zealand’s remotest family – New Zealand e-book month

Robert Long and his family – wife Catherine, and children Christan (17) and Robyn (14) – live in complete isolation, in a hut two days’ walk south of Haast in South Westland. Robert has lived there for nearly 30 years; Catherine for 20 and the kids all their lives. Their only contact with the outside world is a helicopter or plane once a month, and two trips a year to the ‘outside world’.

This is the story of how and why Robert – known locally as ‘Beansprout’ – came to live at Gorge River, and the family’s experiences there over the years, living self-sufficiently and forging close bonds with the natural environment. It is an inspiring tale of one man’s decision to ‘drop out’ of capitalist society and successfully establish a lifestyle most New Zealanders can’t even imagine, harking back to the days of the earliest pioneers.

You can read A life on Gorge River as an e-book from our Overdrive collection.

A life on Gorge River is also available as a paper book

 

Stop Press: two electronic updates for history buffs

We have two new exciting electronic additions just in time for ANZAC Day.

Papers Past allows access to digitised New Zealand newspapers and periodicals from 1839 to 1945. It now includes the Otago Daily Times digitised from 1901-1920 which means the WWI period is covered online by this  major New Zealand daily paper. A great source of information for researchers of family and social history.

Find My Past AU has created the ‘Findmypast Anzac Memory Bank’ to honour the men and women who represented their country at war. This bank will contain personal accounts, diaries, expert articles, and photographs from ALL wars. The Anzac Memory Bank will commemorate not only the lost lives but also the brave men and women who made it home safely again. The memory bank will launch on the 1st of April and apparently there is already lots of New Zealand content. If you want to you can add to the memory bank by sharing your thoughts, stories and photos with Find My Past.

Christchurch City Libraries subscribes to a range of electronic resources at the Source including many to help in your family history searches. Take some time to have a play… you would be amazed how much there is to learn and see.

 

The other Anzacs – New Zealand e-book month

By the end of The Great War, forty-five Australian and New Zealand nurses had died on overseas service and over two hundred had been decorated. These were women who left for war on an adventure, but were soon confronted with remarkable challenges for which their civilian lives could never have prepared them.

They were there for the horrors of Gallipoli and they were there for the savagery the Western Front. Within twelve hours of the slaughter at Anzac Cove they had over 500 horrifically injured patients to tend on one crammed hospital ship, and scores of deaths on each of the harrowing days that followed. Every night was a nightmare.Their strength and humanity were remarkable.

Using diaries and letters, Peter Rees takes us into the hospital camps, and the wards and the tent surgeries on the edge of some of the most horrific battlefronts of human history. But he also allows the friendships and loves of these courageous and compassionate women to enrich their experiences, and ours. This is a very human story from a different era, when women had not long begun their quest for equality and won the vote. They were on the frontline of social change as well as war, and the hurdles they had to overcome and the price they paid, personally and professionally, make them a unique group in Anzac history.

You can read The other Anzacs  as an e-book from our Overdrive collection.

The other Anzacs is also available as a paper book

 

The Denniston Rose – New Zealand e-book month

The bleak coal-mining settlement of Denniston, isolated high on a plateau above New Zealand’s West Coast, is a place that makes or breaks those who live there. At the time of this novel – the1880s – the only way to reach the makeshift collection of huts, tents and saloons is to climb aboard an empty coal-wagon to be hauled 2000 feet up the terrifyingly steep Incline – the cable-haulage system that brings the coal down to the railway line. All sorts arrive here to work the mines and bring down the coal: ex-goldminers down on their luck; others running from the law or from a woman or worse. They work alongside recruited English miners, solid and skilled, who scorn these disorganised misfits and want them off the Hill.

Into this chaotic community come five-year-old Rose and her mother, riding up the Incline, at night, during a storm. No one knows what has driven them there, but most agree the mother must be desperate to choose Denniston; worse, to choose that drunkard, Jimmy Cork, as bedfellow. The mother has her reasons and her plans, which she tells no one. The indomitable Rose is left to fend for herself, struggling to secure a place in this tough and often aggressive community. The Denniston Rose is about isolation and survival. It is the story of a spirited child, who, in appalling conditions, remains a survivor.

You can read The Denniston Rose  as an e-book from our Overdrive collection.

The Denniston Rose is also available as a paper book

 

The crime of Huey Dunstan – New Zealand e-book month

A young man stands in the dock accused of murder. A brutal murder, apparently motiveless. When Professor Chesney, a psychologist specialising in trauma, is called as an expert witness, he is at first baffled. This young man, Huey Dunstan, was a bubbly, smiling child not so long ago. What brought him to bludgeon an old man to death? Why does he seem determined at all cost to incriminate himself?

As Ches delves into Huey’s past, with the sensitive insight that perhaps only a blind man could have, a psychological mystery unravels. And the jury is asked to consider an unthinkable defence. Inspired by an actual criminal case, The Crime of Huey Dunstan takes us beyond questions of guilt and innocence to thought-provoking ideas on justice and humanity. An emotionally engaging, beautifully written novel from one of New Zealand’s most revered writers.

You can read The crime of Huey Dunstan  as an e-book from our Overdrive collection.

The crime of Huey Dunstan is also available as a paper book