Library Volunteer work: Summer 2009

Sligo Libraries, in conjunction with the Sligo Volunteer Centre, has a number of volunteer vacancies available for interested candidates. The two types of posts are (a) library branch volunteer and (b) library processing volunteer. Sligo Libraries would be looking for people interested in our service that have good interpersonal skills, are punctual and reliable and show a sense of accuracy and attention to detail. Successful volunteers would work for 3 hours per week gaining a valuable insight into the workings of the Library service from both a customer service level and an administration/processing point of view.
If interested please contact Sligo Libraries at 071 9111850 for more information and to obtain the relevant application form. Thank you.

"Man gone down" by Michael Thomas wins the 2009 IMPAC Award

“We never know his name. But the African-American protagonist of Michael Thomas’ masterful debut, Man Gone Down, will stay with readers for a long time. He lingers because this extraordinary novel comes to us from a writer of enthralling voice and startling insight. Tuned urgently to the way we live now, the winner of the International Dublin IMPAC Prize 2009 is a novel brilliant in its scope and energy, and deeply moving in its human warmth.”

Uniquely, the IMPAC DUBLIN receives its nominations from public libraries around the globe. Man Gone Down was nominated by The National Library Service of Barbados, Bridgetown, which described it as “A vibrant, well written first novel, an exploration of identity, inter-racial relationships and societal values through the eye of a black male.”

Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas
A beautifully written, insightful, and devastating first novel, Man Gone Down is about a young black father of three in a biracial marriage trying to claim a piece of the American Dream he has bargained on since youth. On the eve of the unnamed narrator's thirty-fifth birthday, he finds himself broke, estranged from his white Boston Brahmin wife and three children, and living in the bedroom of a friend's six-year-old child. He has four days to come up with the money to keep his family afloat, four days to try to make some sense of his life.

Encyclopaedia Britannica Competition Winners!

Congratulations to Mr Stephen Nealon who has won a Brittannica World Atlas and Ms. Katie McGoldrick (pictured with Library staff) who has won a Brittannica Visual Dictionary!

The competition was split into two categories, (a)Childrens' and (b)Teens and Adults. All answers could be found on the relevant Encyclopaedia Britannica version, by just clicking the link and filling in your library card number to get started. Sligo Library Service were delighted to recieve such a large amount of entrants for this competiton; both on the official printed entry form and by email. We went through the process of rechecking all answer forms and then selected the two overall winners by a random draw.
If you want to avail of free access to the on-line edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica all you need is your library card. Log onto the library website www.sligolibrary.ie, go to online resources, click on the Britannica Icon, carefully enter your barcode number and log on!

Robinson's "Home" wins the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction

Marilynne Robinson has won the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction for her novel Home. Fi Glover, chair of judges, called Home, ‘a kind, wise, enriching novel, exquisitely crafted. We were unanimously agreed – it is a profound work of art.’ She continued to state that 'This year's Orange Prize winner has a luminous quality to it that has drawn all of the judges to a unanimous decision. The profound nature of the writing stood out, as has the ability of writer to draw the reader into a world of hope expectation, misunderstanding, love and kindness.' The other judges were Sarah Churchwell, Kira Cochrane, Martha Lane Fox and Bidisha. This is the fourteenth year of the Orange Prize, which was established in 1996 to ‘celebrate and promote’ fiction written by women.

About the Title;
Hundreds of thousands of readers were enthralled and delighted by the luminous, tender voice of John Ames in Gilead, Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Now comes HOME, a deeply affecting novel that takes place in the same period and same Iowa town of Gilead. This is Jack's story. Jack ? prodigal son of the Boughton family, godson and namesake of John Ames, gone twenty years ? has come home looking for refuge and to try to make peace with a past littered with trouble and pain. A bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold down a job, Jack is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Boughton's most beloved child. His sister Glory has also returned to Gilead, fleeing her own mistakes, to care for their dying father. Brilliant, loveable, wayward, Jack forges an intense new bond with Glory and engages painfully with his father and his father's old friend John Ames.