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Teen Blog

Reading, Wellington, and whatever else – teenblog@wcl.govt.nz

Tag: Like totally Web 2.0

Prepare yourself for the games

The 74th Hunger Games are nearly upon us (attendance is mandatory). In the intervening two (!) weeks, you can familiarise yourself with the politics of Panem: visit the official government webpage. It has really cool landscape navigation (fancy scrolling right instead of down!). You can become a citizen (District 4’s population could do with a boost). Or find out if the trackerjackers are particularly bad this season, or keep up to date with Capitol news. Plus more.

(You can also pre-purchase tickets to the film – the first showing as at one minute past midnight on Thursday the 22nd of March.)

Like this? Like that!

If you’re looking for readalike suggestions (or a way to waste much time), then try this. It’s a very cool home-made (by someone very clever) visual book-recommender thingy, based on Amazon’s large database of items. It uses the information Amazon gathers about customer purchases to create links (myriads of links!) between your favourite titles, and other similar ones.

For example, here’s The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan using the gizmo. If you are using a mouse with a scroll button, scrolling will zoom in and out, revealing a really large web of possibilities. Another example: Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green.

Very cool.

(found via mediabistro.com)

Cool Library Tools

If you’re not happy unless you have your technology all fully customised, and tools are your best friend, then you’ll be interested in this page here, which tells you all the Wellington City Libraries Web 2.0 gadgets you can use. The page features such gems as:

  1. a browser search add-on (you can search the library catalogue from the comfort of the search bar in the top right corner of your browser)
  2. the library lookup link (which allows you to check to see if the library’s got a copy of the book you’re looking at on amazon, or wherever)
  3. a GoodReads custom booklink (again, you can check easily to see if the book on your To Read shelf is available at the library)
  4. and much more.

I sometimes think libraries are like the human brain: we only take advantage of about 5% of their capacity. Here’s your opportunity to put the library through its paces.

The Hunger Games Motion Poster

The moving poster for The Hunger Games movie has just been released, and it looks pretty cool:

Read More

Overdrive: Newish Digital Audiobooks

What’s newish for young adults in Overdrive (WCL’s digital audiobook collection)? Well, there’s Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (to go with The Hunger Games), and also The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephenie Meyer.

There are some (new) classics too: The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, 1984 by George Orwell, and Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (and much more), all of which feature on our semifamous classic novels in haiku booklist here.

Haven’t used Overdrive before? Have a look at the Quick Start Guide which tells you what you need to do to get going. There’s also a Guided Tour.

So, browse Overdrive for Young Adult titles here, download them onto your MP3 player and go running, or something.

In fact, here’s the QR code for the YA on the Overdrive catalogue, so if you have one of those fancy phones this will save you a few seconds: just take its picture and hey presto you’re searching through the titles just like that.

QR Code for Overdrive YA Fiction