Stand Tall: Budgeting game from IHC

Illustrated characters from the Stand Tall game, with the game's title on an illustrated suburban background.

We’re huge fans of the new free budgeting game Stand Tall, created by our friends at IHC. Here is the game’s blurb from IHC’s website:

“Stand Tall is a free budgeting game that teaches you how to manage your money. Choose where to focus your finances and learn how to live independently. There are bills to pay, food and travel to budget for, plus loads of fun things to spend your money on. Get it right and your happiness will soar, but spend too much and you’ll have a financial headache!”

In the game, players get to:

  • Create their own avatar.
  • Learn about managing their money and wellbeing.
  • Navigate real life scenarios.
  • Create their own calendar to keep on track of everything.

Visit the IHC website to find out more and start playing today.

LinkedIn Learning courses on budgeting

While we’re talking about budgeting, we’d like to remind you that your Wellington City Libraries card gives you access to LinkedIn Learning. Below, you’ll find some of LinkedIn Learning’s free courses about managing your money.

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Deep Dive: New Year’s resolutions

a coffee on a table with the phrase "set goals not limits"

The year is almost over, which means you might be starting to think about New Year’s resolutions and goal setting. It can be difficult to know where to start, so we’ve compiled some helpful information from our eLibrary resources. Read on for peer reviewed studies, LinkedIn Learning courses and an overview of some of our helpful eResources.

Image of letters spelling SMART with the text - Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely.

Research based articles on goal setting

It appears that how you frame your goal has a huge effect on how successful you might be in achieving it. Health and medicine journal Lancet tackles this topic in their article Have a healthy new year: easy to say, hard to do, which approaches this topic from the perspective of doctors trying to design a successful health campaign. The journal states that “physicians need to know when to emphasise the positive consequences of making a change versus the negative consequences of not changing.” The article goes on to state that people can be motivated either by believing “negative things will happen to them if they continue to behave as they do”, but they can also be motivated by the “positive effects” that they expect from a change in their behaviour. The article suggests changing up the framing around messaging if an attempted approach isn’t working. For example, “familiar statements such as “smoking is bad for you” […] lose their emotional impact”, and so you might instead promote the positive effects of not smoking. This aligns with the findings of Public Library of Science‘s article on New Year’s resolutions, which found that participants had more success achieving their goals with a positive “approach-orientated” mindset, rather than a negative “avoidance-oriented” approach.

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Deep Dive: Bird of the Year

a collage of nz native bords

Aotearoa’s favourite election is back; it’s time for Forest & Bird’s Bird of the Year competition. This year the stakes have been raised, with Aotearoa being asked to determine our Bird of the Century! Visit their website to review the candidates and make your vote. Voting opens 9am today, Monday 30 October!

One amazing aspect of Bird of the Year is that it always garners mass online engagement. The New Zealand Journal of Psychology published a fascinating paper on this phenomenon, titled ‘lemme get uhhhhh froot’: Internet memes for consciousness-raising in Aotearoa’s Bird of the Year conservation campaign. Bird of the Year memes have become an annual pastime that truly seems to grip the nation. This paper explores how memes from past Bird of the Year campaigns are an example of combining humour and activism online. New Zealanders are encouraged to not just vote, but create campaigns for their bird of choice. As well as everyday New Zealanders, politicians and celebrities are also known to run campaigns for their favourite birds, with the especially passionate creating “dedicated social media accounts, sharing memes to support their candidate and oppose rivals.” In their research, they found that “memes mobilised humour and fear, cultural ideas about what it means to be a New Zealander, and information about how to conserve endangered species.”, while also critiquing themselves through self-referential humour that asks “questions about the potentials and pitfalls of online engagement.” This paper suggests that the “playful-serious nature of memes can provide a vehicle for speaking difficult truths in ironic ways.” The plight of our native birds certainly is a difficult truth, with “more than 80% of New Zealand’s native bird species are threatened or at risk and 23 species face an immediate high risk of extinction (Department of Conservation, n.d.a; Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, 2017).”

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Deep Dive: Artificial Intelligence

Welcome to a new blog series, called Deep Dive. In this series, we look at a trending topic and find interesting points of view from different library eResources. This week, we explore the topic of artificial intelligence.

A screen shot from ‘How to think about AI…and how to live with it’.

For a brief introduction to AI, you might like to check out this cover story from New Scientist, ‘How to think about AI…and how to live with it’. In this story, the magazine explores questions such as “how does Chat GPT work?”, “how will generative AI transform the world?” and “could AI ever become conscious?”. This article also explores chatbots churning out misinformation, scientists wondering if they can give AI a sense of ‘feeling’ by connecting them to a robot ‘body’, and ways that AI is already assisting in medical breakthroughs. There’s also a story about a journalist who asked ChatGPT to help suggest a recipe, only to be told to use roast potatoes as a garnish, a nonsensical but delicious idea. Those wanting a brief overview of the topic of AI might also enjoy the eResource Opposing Viewpoints In Context (Gale), which provides helpful summaries on a range of topics, including AI.

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Te Wiki o te Reo Māori 2023

For Te Wiki o te Reo Māori, Wellington City Libraries are hosting a week of fun events for the whole whānau! Here is our schedule below; events are repeated throughout the week at different library branches so make sure to scroll through the whole list to see what’s happening at your favourite branches. You can also find the list through our online event calendar here.

It’s also a perfect time of year to check out our Te Reo Kete – these are bound to be popular this month so get in quick! You might also like to check out our curated list of eBooks from Te Ao Māori on Libby here.

Nohinohi Reorua Special11 September, 10:30-11am (Tawa Library)

An extra special session of Nohinohi Reorua is happening this month. Come down to Tawa Library as we kickstart Te Wiki o te Reo Māori with another session of our bilingual storytime in te reo Māori and English. Recommended for children aged 2 – 4 years with their caregivers.

Nohinohi Reorua Special Bilingual Storytime – 12 September, 10:30 – 11am (Johnsonville Library)

An extra special session of Nohinohi Reorua is happening this month.  Come down to Waitohi Library as we kickstart Te Wiki o te Reo Māori with another session of our bilingual storytime in te reo Māori and English. Recommended for children aged 2 – 6 years with their caregivers.

Stories of Te Reo – Record Yours! – 12 September, 3-5pm (Te Awe Library)

As part of Te Wiki o te Reo Māori we are inviting you to record your journey, memories and actions to ensure the survival of te reo Māori as a unique part of our national identity. Find out more about the national Stories of Te Reo project.

Come to the library on Tuesday 12 September from 3-5pm to record your stories. Allow approx. 25 minutes for your recording session.

These recordings will be uploaded to the Reo Māori website above!

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The Library is open: LGBTQIA+ Read for Pride

via GIPHY

The library is now open (for Wellington Pride 2023).

We know that reading is fundamental for many Wellingtonians, and so this Pride season we’re highlighting two gems from our LGBTQIA+ eBook collection, both publications from Aotearoa!

From Saturday the 4th to Saturday the 18th of March, we will be offering unlimited free downloads of anthology collections Out Here : An Anthology of Takatapui and LGBTQIA+ Writers from Aotearoa and 30 Queer Lives : Conversations with LGBTQIA+ New Zealanders. Both eBooks are available through Libby, and are free to borrow with your Wellington City Libraries card.

Our celebrations don’t stop there! Make sure to check out the events we’re running for Pride, including: Pōneke Poets: Open Mic (Out in the City), Karori Rainbow Youth Night, Johnsonville Rainbow Youth Night and Youth Movie Night for Pride!. As an extra treat, we’ve also included a video from our YouTube channel featuring New Zealand Poet Laureate (and co-editor of Out here), Chris Tse!

Out here : an anthology of takatapui and LGBTQIA+ writers from Aotearoa
“A remarkable anthology of queer New Zealand voices. We became teenagers in the nineties when New Zealand felt a lot less cool about queerness and gender felt much more rigid. We knew instinctively that hiding was the safest strategy. But how to find your community if you’re hidden? Aotearoa is a land of extraordinary queer writers, many of whom have contributed to our rich literary history. But you wouldn’t know it. Decades of erasure and homophobia have rendered some of our most powerful writing invisible. Out Here will change that. This landmark book brings together and celebrates queer New Zealand writers from across the gender and LGBTQIA+ spectrum with a generous selection of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and much, much more. (Adapted from catalogue)”

30 queer lives : conversations with LGBTQIA+ / McEvoy, Matt
“Soldiers, politicians, Olympians, doctors, musicians, academics, businesspeople, farmers, writers and fa‘afafine . . . the thirty LGBTQIA+ New Zealanders in this book are remarkable individuals. They each speak with candour and honesty about their challenges and successes, and together they show how LGBTQIA+ people strengthen the rich culture of Aotearoa. From the famous — Grant Robertson, Gareth Farr, Chlöe Swarbrick — to the less well known, these stories encourage empathy and understanding, challenge stereotypes, and offer courage and hope.” (Catalogue)