Self-Injury Awareness Day - 1st March 2012

Self-Injury Awareness Day (SIAD) is an international event, which takes place every year on 1st March.

 
Why do people self-injure?

People self-injure to deal with their emotional distress. Self-injury/self-harm affects people of all ages, genders, sexualities, races and religions. The chances are that you know someone who self-injures, even if you don’t know about it. There are various ways in which people cope when they are in distress or upset, and self-injury is just one type of coping mechanism. Specific reasons behind an individual’s self-injury are varied.

Various information resources about self-injury can be found in the CCN Information Store. Please ask at the Enquiries or Issue desks for more information.

World Thinking Day

World Thinking Day is celebrated on 22 February each year, started by Girl Guides and Girl Scouts from around the world. Each year there is a different focus.

World Thinking Day theme for 2012 is Environment.

The poorest people in the world are the ones who will most feel the effects of environmental degradation and climate change. Therefore, please come to the CCN Information Store to think and read a variety of CCN information resources on environment...

Stayin' Alive with Vinnie Jones for National Heart Month

 

After having a bit of fun with paper hearts for National Libraries Day, we are now concentrating on the more serious topic of healthy hearts for National Heart Month.

We have lots of resources on display this week to help you get your heart in shape, including books and DVDs on managing cholesterol and keeping fit.  - best to act now before Vinnie Jones gets his hands on you!

How healthy is your heart?

Start Up Lounge resources

Have you been to the the Start Up Lounge?
If you are interested in starting up your own business, big or small, pop over and have a look at what they have to offer.

This week the Information Store has a display of books, DVDs and eBooks that can help on the path to your first million!

What sort of business would you start up?

Day 5 - Slightly scary library convert

Caution - clip contains swearing:

And a more gentle poem to finish the week:

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Going to the Library by Jessy Randall In the library there are pathways you follow to find out what you want to know -- imagine -- somewhere in all these books or on the face of the computer or in parentheses at the back of a magazine, there is the perfect sentence, the answer to your question, the words all around you like the tornado in the Wizard of Oz never go home Dorothy -- Dorothy, never land -- language can be your bed, the beautiful wonder of all possible poems.

We hope that we have given you renewed (pardon the pun) interest in the world of libraries. Keep borrowing!

Day 4 - Thrills at the library Christmas party

See what librarians get up to in their spare time:

And today's poem:

Because of Libraries We Can Say These Things

by Naomi Shihab Nye

She is holding the book close to her body,
carrying it home on the cracked sidewalk,
down the tangled hill.
If a dog runs at her again, she will use the book as a shield.

She looked hard among the long lines
of books to find this one.
When they start talking about money,
when the day contains such long and hot places,
she will go inside.
An orange bed is waiting.
Story without corners.
She will have two families.
They will eat at different hours.

She is carrying a book past the fire station
and the five and dime.

What this town has not given her
the book will provide; a sheep,
a wilderness of new solutions.
The book has already lived through its troubles.
The book has a calm cover, a straight spine.

When the step returns to itself,
as the best place for sitting,
and the old men up and down the street
are latching their clippers,

she will not be alone.
She will have a book to open
and open and open.
Her life starts here.

Day 3 - Newfandangled library technology

Struggling with ebooks? Spare a thought for this monk:

And if you are having similar problems with eBooks, come in and see us in the Information Store, they are really quite easy to open when you know how. We have 3,000+ just waiting for you to explore.

And today's poem, by Emily Dickinson:

IN A LIBRARY

A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is
To meet an antique book,
In just the dress his century wore;
A privilege, I think,

His venerable hand to take,
And warming in our own,
A passage back, or two, to make
To times when he was young.

His quaint opinions to inspect,
His knowledge to unfold
On what concerns our mutual mind,
The literature of old;

What interested scholars most,
What competitions ran
When Plato was a certainty.
And Sophocles a man;

When Sappho was a living girl,
And Beatrice wore
The gown that Dante deified.
Facts, centuries before,

He traverses familiar,
As one should come to town
And tell you all your dreams were true;
He lived where dreams were sown.

His presence is enchantment,
You beg him not to go;
Old volumes shake their vellum heads
And tantalize, just so.