Auckland Libraries blog

​With approximately 20,000 visitors per day to our website, it's important that we deliver a digital experience that meets the growing needs of library customers.  We've put insights from customers at the heart of our website. Using your feedback, we've created a simplified and intuitive web experience that makes it easy to access the library catalogue, eBooks and magazines, major databases and heritage resources, as well as find out what’s happening at your community library. We encourage you to take a look around our new website and tell us what you think using the feedback options at the bottom of each page. Visit our new website now and find out more about our vision for the site .

Dr Majid Daneshgar from the University of Otago is the winner of this year's Auckland Library Heritage Trust scholarship 2016/17.  Dr Majid Daneshgar This is a scholarship awarded annually by the Trust to fund research into collections held in the Sir George Grey Special Collections at Auckland Libraries. Dr Daneshgar is preparing a catalogue of Middle Eastern manuscripts in Auckland Libraries. These include Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Turkish works collected by Sir George Grey and Henry Shaw. Dr Daneshgar reads in Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Ottoman Turk, and Malay (Jawi), and is in the process of completing a census of Middle Eastern and Islamic manuscripts in New Zealand. Libraries and archives that Dr Daneshgar has worked through in search of materials include the Turnbull Library, the Sir George Grey Special Collections at Auckland Central City Library, the Heritage Collection in Dunedin Public Library, and Special Collections at Otago University. A 19th centur...

The Library Connect team is the virtual team providing customer service to those who access library services without coming into a physical library.  The need for the service was highlighted when 70% of customer research participants stated their preference for managing enquiries remotely. The Library Connect team are Alison (pictured above), Meenu, Abi, Epi, and Jo. Their collective 100 years of library experience enable them to answer a huge range of enquiries every day.  They bring a wealth of library knowledge and experience from across the region. Each week they answer around 1000 calls and 400 emails. Their recent enquiries include: finding book titles using only descriptions of the cover and the plot of a book; introducing customers to the vast range of magazines available free from RBDigital eMagazines; talking customers through registering for Lynda.com to provide them with the opportunity to study from home; helping customers become confident users ...

We’ve listened to your feedback and we’re making improvements to Central City Library. Between early June and September Central Library is undergoing a refurbishment. This includes include installing new carpet, painting the walls and also changing the lighting for new environmentally friendly and brighter LED lighting. While this work is taking place we’re also taking the opportunity to make some further changes to the library to improve visitors experience when visiting. Level 2 works - 8 June to 3 July approx. Level 2 is now open and Sir George Grey Special Collections and the Central Research Centre are open. During the refurbishment, the newspaper room on Level 2 is closed. This will move to Level 1. Some papers may not be available during this time. Level 1 works - 4 July to 4 August This floor is entirely closed during these works to deliver new and improved study, computer and reading areas. The Citizens Advice Bureau will be offering a service from elsewher...

I couldn't help noticing how many people taking part in the Great Summer Read seem to get through their To Be Read lists at such a fast clip compared to me. I'm talking about you, person whose book which had been on her list "forever" was The girl on the train , not even two years old! Why I've had Vanity Fair on my list for 15 years! And wasn't it nice to see that someone logged Vanity Fair for this challenge? I wonder how long their "forever" had been! How long had my choice, The Grand Babylon Hotel by Arnold Bennett, an English author who celebrates his 150th this year, been on my TBR list? I'm not actually sure, but when I encountered it last year in the basement of the Central City Library, a quaint little volume marked on the inside back cover with a pre-smiley-face-era smiley face (no circle! a nose!) by an early, contented reader whom posterity can only know as "L", I didn't waste the opportunity. Reader, I took it o...

Of all the challenges, this is the one that most has me wondering what the top choice will end up being. Roald Dahl is the most popular choice for now, with The Twits , The Witches , The BFG and Matilda , in that order. (If the thought just occurred to you that Hey, I could watch The BFG for Challenge number 8, "Watch a movie based on a book", may I say that yes, you could, but it does have a bit of a wait list as all new releases do. But do you know of the two other Roald Dahl adaptations which are firmly up there among the movies no child -- and few adults -- should miss: the hilarious Matilda , directed by and starring Danny DeVito, and the whimsical stop-motion James and the Giant Peach , with the wonderful Pete Postlethwaite and, please quote me, "See Miriam Margolyes and Joanna Lumley as Aunts Spiker and Sponge and die".) Enid Blyton is in next place, a generation older but having such a long career and being so prolific that it hardly matters, and let...

In the pre-broadcast entertainment era, reading out loud was an amusement as habitual as going for a coach ride - for the social strata who had leisure time and literacy skills of course. In even older times, pre-medieval, there are records of people commenting with surprise on seeing someone read silently, it was so unusual. Kafka used to read his stories aloud and laugh until the tears ran. Try reading a short story to someone your own age, or older, including much older. A friend, your auntie, your cat (yes, someone gloriously reported having done this)! Think ghost stories around the fire and try something chilling. The Lottery by Shirley Jackson is a time-honoured read-aloud, with its deceptively normal opening, gradual building of apprehension, culminating in a terrible reveal. Plus, plenty to talk about afterwards, as everyone wants to know what it means. Shirley Jackson claimed she herself didn't know. Or get yourself a collection of the haunting horror stories o...