What was new and interactive in 2012?

That fact that 2012 has come and gone fills me with some horror. I was told that as you get older time speeds up, but this is ridiculous! I can remember when I was young  it seemed to take years just to get to the May school holidays; now I can’t even remember what happened in May. Actually, I am not sure what happened this morning…  What I am sure of, though,  is that we did have a bumper year at the library when it came to introducing new online resources at the Source! Here is but a sample:

TumbleBookCloud: e-books, chapter books, graphic novels, videos, and audio books for young adults;

BusyThings: colourful and quirky games and activities for ankle biters;

National Geographic Virtual Archive: digital archive of the world renowned magazine;

Auto Reference Repair Center: repair and maintenance information for those who drive;

Road to IELTS : General and Academic: a self-study preparation course to help candidates prepare for the globally recognized IELTS exam;

Mango: language learning online;

Sunday Times Digital Archive 1822-2006: fully searchable digital archive of the British Sunday Times newspaper.

There really is something for everyone at the Source! Have a peek and a play, as these resources are available in community libraries and from home 24/7 with your library card number and PIN.

 

Music makers

Delia plays her Dad’s homemade modular synthesizer at the Dance-O-Mat

The practice of building and hacking unique musical instruments has a long and fascinating history filled with wonderful characters and contraptions such as Harry Partch, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Reed Ghazala and New Zealand’s own Phil Dadson.

The inventive work of such pioneers can often seem beyond the range of normal human skills but building your own musical instruments and sound-making devices can actually be very achievable and rewarding. Thanks to the explosion of ”maker” culture fueled by the internet over the last decade or so, there is now a great range of resources and support available for would be instrument builders.

There are still relatively few books available on this subject but one really great one is Handmade Electronic Music: The Art Of Hardware Hacking by Nicolas Collins. This title was recommended to me by Dunedin artist and musician Pete Gorman who has built some fantastic instruments and sculptures based on Collins’ designs.

In a number of fun projects Collins covers lots of important beginners topics such as tools, soldering techniques and basic electronics. As well as detailing projects for building instruments from scratch Collins also provide a lot of helpful guidance for hacking or circuit-bending existing devices or instruments. Circuit-bending is an idea originally developed by Reed Ghazala and describes the process of creatively short-circuiting and modifying battery-powered instruments and toys to make them behave in new and surprising ways. This can be a fun and accessible way to get started with instrument building, hacking and electronics in general because you begin with something that already works.

If you have an interest in any form of DIY technology, Make magazine is great for all things geeky and homemade and often features musical projects encompassing everything from cigar box guitars to digital synthesizers. Even some of the non-musical projects  in Make would be inspiring reference points for instrument builders.

A large area of recent growth in the DIY musical instrument community has been analogue synthesizers. From simple projects such as Ray Wilson’s Sound Lab Mini Synth to room-sized, modular monsters, the synth DIY community is larger and more active than at anytime since the 1970′s. Some the best resources for synth DIY are online discussion forums such as the DIY forums at electro-music.com and muffwiggler.com. These sites can seem a bit arcane and intimidating on first glance but are generally very friendly and supportive of both noobs and experts alike. Ray Wilson’s  websites are a great place for beginner synth builders to start reading and learning. At  Music From Outer Space Wilson presents many well-documented open-source circuit designs and some good introductory reading about synthesis while at Solder Planet.com he provides lots of very useful online tools for helping with electronics and synth design.

 

Te Karaka: Cool stuff and keeping in touch with te reo

I have long been a fan of the official Ngāi Tahu magazine Te Karaka , but have only recently come across it online.

If you haven’t visited, you should! The articles are interesting, informative, and well written and full of gorgeous images. There is a blog which is a great read and a book review section, which being a bit of a book junkie I avidly devoured. I love the range of books that are featured, from adult to children’s material and based on the kōrero from the reviewers I picked out a couple I intend to get my hands on to take home to read to my tamariki.

The other highlight for me was that the reviews were written in Te Reo Māori and in English. Tau kē.

You can stay in touch with Ngāi Tahu and Te Karaka online:

• Like Te Karaka and Ngāi Tahu on Facebook
• Follow Te Karaka and Ngāi Tahu on Twitter

Have you come across any unexpected taonga (treasures) online lately?

Aurelia

Kaitakawaenga, Maori Services

 

“It’s nice to believe in Flying Saucers” according to the Picture Post!

Flying saucers? I found this comment in the December 17th, 1955,  issue of  Picture Post, an iconic British newspaper published between 1938 and 1957. This particular issue includes a report that a “Saturnian space ship which landed in America had seven decks and was manned by a mixed planetary crew”! The reporter felt that our belief in flying saucers stemmed from the need for grown ups to have their own fairy tales in “unromantic” times…

The Picture Post Historical Archive is a fascinating read: from Florence White setting up the National Spinsters Association in 1938, to Mrs Hudson’s advertisements for a miracle cure for ”superfluous hair”.  It does also cover the more serious issues of the time including:

• history and culture – the everyday lives of all levels of society in the mid-20th century are chronicled;
• politics – the paper was liberal and staunchly anti-fascist, revealing much about prevailing political attitudes of the time.

You can access this at your local community library or at home with your library card number and PIN. Have a flick through this and many other  historical newspapers in the Source!

 

The Plateau of the Puzzled

You can bet your bottom dollar that Vincent van Gogh never had to resort to the self-help section of a local library to kickstart his creative spark. But I find that after the low of the lurching and the relative high of the house move, I have hit the Plateau of the Puzzled. This is a high, arid wasteland in which, as far as the eye can see, no flicker of a new idea exists.

Whatever has happened to my creative spark?

Unlike Vincent, I have ransacked the 153s  in my local library for books with titles like Kickstart your creativity  (a Kiwi book – great fun and well worth a look). And I can tell you with authority that the basic message is this: creativity, like genius, is 99% hard work and 1% the clever stuff that you were born with.

I know this is true, as I once seriously improved my drawing skills by following Danny Gregory‘s “draw every day” programme in his excellent book The creative license. And in a wildly “synchronicitous” single day last week I stumbled on two articles that consolidated his message.

The first article, in Frankie (one of my favourite mags – always bursting with new ideas from the trendily geeky) tells of a young artist who, for an entire month, drew everything that she was about to eat and then used the drawings to wallpaper her kitchen. Of course her drawing improved a whole heap but, more importantly, so did her figure!

On the same day and at the complete opposite end of the magazine spectrum, in The Oldie (June 2011), there was an interview with an artist who did a nude drawing of his wife every morning for 63 years. I bet there were days when she wished she had married an engineer.

So there it is then, no matter what your creative desire: Just Do It! But how about you, what do you do when you are creatively all plateaued out?

 

Popular magazines: quick reads on cold winter nights.

With the Central Library currently out-of-bounds, we do not have the same access to magazines that we once had. I have found a way around this though – and you don’t even have to leave the warmth of home. Popular magazines is an electronic resource that contains the full-text of over 1,000 magazines covering current events, sports, science, health and more. From this resource you can explore a variety of interests from:

• Redecorating your home;
• Keeping up with the latest news;
• Researching investment opportunities;
• Reading the latest celebrity gossip;
• Finding exercise and dieting information;
• Upgrading your computer.

Time, National Geographic, Newsweek and Fortune, to Vanity Fair, Men’s Health and Sports Illustrated are just some of the titles covered! View the full title list here [XML]

Popular magazines and many other useful electronic resources can be found in the Source. Access this from home with your library card number and PIN, or at our open community libraries.

 

Say Hello to magazines

If you stand in the magazine section of your local library, you get to see your whole life flash before your very eyes without going to all the bother of getting wet and drowning.

All the enthusiasms of the past are on display, like Parenting and Burda mags for me. Hard to believe I once made a garment from Burda. Nowadays just understanding the pattern and refolding it to fit would probably stave off Alzheimers for a few years to come.

In these post-you-know-what days, mags are flying off the shelves. Which just goes to show that they have not suffered the predicted drop in popularity with the advent of internet. In fact, linking to mags on internet is the new symbiotic triumph. Have a look at Marion’s blog to find out how to get the best out of our on-line resources.

I think it was Oprah who once said in her namesake mag: if  surfing the net is like speed dating and  diving into a book is like a full-blown relationship, then reading a magazine is the equivalent of having a really good fling (without, might I add, any of the expense of having to invest in new undies).

While you are down in the mag hood, treat yourself to a little magazine therapy. Connect with the person you are soon to be (The Oldie for me), the person you’d like to be now (Red) and the person you very narrowly missed becoming (Shambhala Sun) and wonder afresh at who it could possibly be that regularly indulges in flings with Scale Military Models International!

 

Reading it here and now

I have a number of favourite blogs and one of the best is Bookman Beattie.  He is the go-to man for news and views about the New Zealand publishing world and lots of interesting literary news from around the world. He is a fan of the New Yorker and gets a paper copy delivered. He recorded the cover (and the article) of the latest issue with some relish on his blog.

Deciding I had to read that article right now I went to our new catalogue. Typing in a search for New Yorker and clicking on the Full Text available link  gave me the option to select the issue I wanted from Ebscohost, and there it was – 2 May 2011. Scanning through the digitised content I soon came to the article Holy Matrimony! What a laugh. I think the writer must have dredged up every obscure fact and story in the wedding hysteria.

Our new catalogue has many other great features – keep lists of what you have read and what you plan to read, comment on books you have read and so on.  The other part of the equation is the link to our great suite of online resources The Source which gives library card holders access to a fantastic range of online information and resources.

 

From achy-breaky to arty-farty

A couple of ladies from Wellington made the headlines last week, by offering a free workshop to help Christchurch folk turn their smashed and broken china into jewellery.  It looked lovely, and hundreds of people took advantage of the offer.

If you didn’t get to the workshop, or if you fancy yourself a bit of an arty-farty person, here’s some other suggestions of things you could do with your earthquake ‘debris’:

(warning: highly technical craft language below)

• build a mosaic thingummy for your house or garden, with all that broken dinnerware.  We have some truly outstanding books on mosaic-ing just about anything you can get to stand still for long enough.
• make a hanging mobile or windchime, or other sculpture, by gathering up ‘found items’ and having at them with number 8 fencing wire and pliers (just make sure you’re only gathering your own stuff!).
• bead a necklace or bracelet, using techniques in our wirecraft, beading and jewellery books, and incorporating (you guessed it) something precious to you.
• take a wander through your neighbourhood and take some photos (of happy or sad things, it’s up to you).  Then get the photos printed and journal or scrapbook them.
• host a knitting or quilting group – grab some friends, dig out those UFOs* that fell out of the wardrobe during the big shake, and sit down together with coffee and cake.
• if your friends don’t craft, or you’d like some more professional help, check out our community information directory CINCH, for heaps of listings of local groups that offer all sorts of great opportunities to learn, make and do.
• If all of this just sounds like too much work, or you are more realistic about your ability to finish (or even start) craft projects, why not take the opportunity to venture out and find some hidden treasures at your local craft shop or farmers’ market?  That way, you are supporting others’ addictive craft habits, and local business, and you get to meet new people and buy stuff all at the same time!

(*UFOs = unfinished objects.  Don’t tell me you don’t have them.  I know you do).

 

Picture Post: a visually stunning record of the twentieth century

Have you seen  The Picture Post Historical Archive? It’s a full digital reproduction of  an iconic British newspaper published between 1938 and 1957.  It’s a valuable record of those years in all sorts of areas:

• History and culture: the everyday lives of all levels of society in the mid-20th century;
• Politics: The paper was liberal and staunchly anti-fascist, revealing much about  attitudes of the times;
• Media/journalism: A pioneer of photojournalism;
• Art & photography: Famous photographers worked for the publication including Bill Brandt.

The Picture Post Historical Archive will appeal to anyone studying, teaching or with an interest in twentieth century history. It’s also visually stunning – I challenge you not to fall in love with it!

You can access  many other useful premium websites from home with your library card number and PIN, or at our open community libraries.