Visit our libraries next week for a series of free workshops for everyone aged over 55.

Workshop topics include  gardening, yoga, estate planning, jewellery care, family history, antiques and more. Interested in writing for teenagers? Come along to a workshop with award-winning author Fleur Beale. Want to get into organic gardening? Come and listen to New Zealand Gardener of the Year, Sister Loyola. There’ll be lots of opportunities to ask questions, and if you’re an antiques enthusiast coming along to our Antiques Show and Tell session with Tinakori Antiques’ John Fyson, you can even bring along your family heirlooms and find out more about them!

Interested? Make sure to check out our Living Well Workshop Programme for a full schedule of speakers and topics.

You may have noticed the recent flurry of mainstream news articles about an online service called Twitter. Twitter is a microblogging service that allows its users to post very brief updates about what they’re currently doing, thinking, working on – or even just questions they’d like an answer to.

Celebrities and authors such as Stephen Fry and Neil Gaiman tweet, and there are even some fictional characters who have a Twitter presence – either officially or non-officially, as in the recent case where some of the characters from the popular television program Mad Men turned up on Twitter. Many news organisations also now provide breaking news via Twitter.

Wellington City Libraries has been on Twitter since November 2008. Twitter allows us to provide you with short bursts of information from our website, our blogs, and our databases. We also let you know what is going on, what new material is available and what special events are coming up in our libraries.

We’ve found that being on Twitter helps us to make our digital content more accessible by our customers, and it enables us to promote our library collections and services to our online community in a fast and simple way.

Twitter is also about conversation and community sharing of resources and advice – and we can foster this information sharing by Wellington Twitterers (for lack of a better word) via our own Twitter presence.

For example, via wcl_library (our account on Twitter), you can:

• Ask questions about an article, a book, DVD, CD, magazine or a topic you’re interested in.

• Ask questions about our services (e.g. opening times, storytimes)

• Ask questions about your library card (e.g. how to check your card, renew an item, reserve a title)

We also regularly search for tweets which include words like ‘library’ and ‘books’ in the Wellington area – we do this because we are keen to share book reviews with our followers and catch feedback about our libraries.

A good way to get our attention on Twitter is to mention us (@wcl_library) in a tweet and the best way (and most private way) is to send us a Direct Message on Twitter.

What’s good about using Twitter is that you can receive our updates in different ways: via our wcl_library account; via RSS feed; via your mobile phone or using a third party application on your iPhone.

So if you want to be in the know about exciting new books, DVDs, CDs and more, follow wcl_library on Twitter!

Baby Rock & Rhyme parents – it’s the school holidays and your children are well catered for with our September School Holiday Events, but what about you?

To cater for all of our Baby Rock & Rhyme parents over the school holidays, Wellington City libraries has joined the social networking website Ning and created a Baby Rock & Rhyme online community. (Ning is an online service that allows users to create their own public or private social networks – think of these as mini Facebooks, but on a much smaller scale.) If you’re a regular at our Baby Rock & Rhyme sessions during the school term, join our new Baby Rock & Rhyme online community and connect with other Baby Rock and Rhyme parents over the school holidays!

Please note, to safeguard your privacy, we’ve created this community as a private community – only other Baby Rock & Rhyme parents can join. Once you’re a member of the network, you can interact with other parents and exchange information via blogs, share videos and pictures, create events, start discussions, chat, create your own special interest groups and much more – but before you can log in and view the community you will need to step through a joining process so we can verify your details.

To learn more about this new social network and how to join, visit our News page!

To celebrate Bastille Day, we’re sharing with you Serge Gainsbourg’s reggae version of the Marseillaise which was hugely polemical at the time!

The Teen Blog team is looking for a group of 15-20 year olds to help design their next teen event.

You don’t need any specialist skills, just the desire to tell them what you think & share your ideas.

Interested? Then please, go to the Teen Blog and fill in your details.

Be part of the largest event taking place in the world this year to celebrate the International Year of Astronomy – celebrations are taking place worldwide from 2-5 April with 100 Hours of Astronomy – a 100 hour, round-the-clock, round-the-globe event. And it’s all starting here in Wellington! The Wellington Astronomical Society and Wellington City Libraries invite you to join in and look through telescopes, be part of live webcasts to the world and enjoy music performances.

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Wadestown Library now has a new dedicated space for the whole community where you can meet, hold events and find community information. To book the space or for more information please contact the Community Coordinator

The Community Space will be officially opened by Mayor Kerry Prendergast on Saturday 14 March at 12:15pm as part of the Wadestown Fair day.

The Wadestown Fair is a great day for the whole family. Check out some of these activities at the library on the day!

• 11:30am – Children’s Storytime in the library
• 12pm – Kids Dress-up competition. Come along dressed as your favourite storybook character. Join the fancy dress parade outside the library and be in to win prizes!

Interested in events at Wadestown Library? Check out our What’s on at Wadestown page.

Well known, and much acclaimed New Zealand writer Emily Perkins has won the fifth annual Believer Book Award for 2009 with Novel about my wife. The Believer Book Award winner is chosen by readers of The Believer magazine, from a short list of novels selected by the editors as representing the strongest works of fiction published in each year. Novel about my wife, although set in London, was completed in New Zealand when she moved from London to Auckland with her family. It can be described as a psychological thriller, ghost story or domestic drama and is her third novel, the others being, Leave before you go, published 1998 and New girl published in 2001.

Wadestown Library will be closed for refurbishment on Tuesday 3rd March and Wednesday 4th March. The library will re-open on Thursday 5th March at 10am. Items may be returned through the after-hours slot. These will be processed daily. If you have any queries while the library is closed please contact Cummings Park Library in Ngaio.

Thank you for your patience.

The Library is running a Waitangi Day quiz! Answer the questions and you could win an MP3 player. Enter it here, but be quick as it closes on Saturday.