Flash Read to A-maze city’s book lovers

Acomb Library book sale April 2014

To launch this year’s Summer Reading Challenge, people across the city are being invited to join in a flash read and show their support for children’s reading!

This reading equivalent of a flash mob, aims to inspire more children and their parents to take a few minutes to share the pleasures of a good book, which is a key component of this year’s Summer Reading Challenge.

The flash read will take place on Friday 11 July at 11am when Explore is urging everyone to stop what they’re doing for a few minutes, pick up a good book and read. It only needs to take a few minutes but it will be a city-wide, fun event to remind everyone of the pleasures of reading. To spread the word, readers are invited to take a reading selfie and tweet it at #yorkflashread, or simply tell us what or where they are reading and join in.

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This years Big City Read – The Orpheus Descent by Tom Harper

The Orpheus Descent will be available free from all libraries from Thursday 10 July. Look out for copies when out and about across the city.

Visit your local library today to get your Big City Read brochure which details all of the activities and events happening across the City over the summer

coverI have never written down the answers to the deepest mysteries, nor will I  ever…

The philosopher Plato wrote these words more than two thousand years ago, following a perilous voyage to Italy — an experience about which he never spoke again, but from which he emerged the greatest thinker in all of human history.

Today, twelve golden tablets sit in museums around the world, each created by unknown hands and buried in ancient times, and each providing the dead with the route to the afterlife. Archaeologist Lily Barnes, working on a dig in southern Italy, has just found another. But the thirteenth tablet is different. This tablet names the location to the mouth of hell itself. And then Lily vanishes.

Has she walked out on her job, her marriage, and her life — or has something more sinister happened? Her husband, Jonah, is desperate to find her. But no one can help him: not the police; not the secretive foundation that sponsored her dig; not even a circle of university friends who seem to know more than they’re saying. All Jonah has is belief, and a determination to do whatever it takes to get Lily back.

But like Plato before him, Jonah will discover the journey ahead is mysterious and dark and fraught with danger. And not everyone who travels to the hidden place where Lily has gone can return.

NB. While the York central library is closed for refurbishment (until the Autumn) books can be returned to a “drop box” located in the foyer of the Council HQ at West Offices or to any other library.

 

Acomb Explore Library now open 7 days a week

Online research facilities at York Libraries

Research on line
Students, independent researchers and small businesses can now access many of the world’s best academic papers across science, technology, medicine and other disciplines through York’s Libraries and Explore centres.

This is the result of a unique collaboration between librarians and publishers, who have made their journal content available for free to UK libraries under a new initiative, Access to Research.

Access to Research will provide licensed online access to over 1.5 million journal articles and conference proceedings through library terminals. With 8,400 journals included in the initiative at the moment, this will make content in the fields of Health and Biological Sciences (20%), Social Sciences (18%) and Engineering (14%) available to the public for the first time. Users will also be able to read a wide variety of articles in the fields of Art and Architecture, Business, Environmental Science, History, Journalism, Languages, Politics, Film, Philosophy and Religion, Mathematics and Physics.
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Today is “world book day”

 

Children and young people across York are being urged to join the celebrations for World Book Day (Thursday 6 March).

rowntree_library

World Book Day is a worldwide celebration of books and reading, marked in over 100 countries all over the world. This year marks the 17th World Book Day and nurseries, toddler groups, children’s centres and schools across the city are getting involved, with a variety of activities such as guest story tellers and book-themed dressing-up.

Youngsters travelling on First York’s number six route (Tang Hall to Clifton) will be able to get involved by reading books which will be available on the buses on World Book Day. The books have been kindly loaned by City of York Council’s Explore Library Learning Centres.

And, visitors to City of York Council’s West Offices will be able to drop in to the main foyer where a ‘comfy’ reading area will be available for families and children and members of the council’s Early Years team will be on hand to read stories.

Visit the World Book Day website (http://www.worldbookday.com/) to find out more about encouraging children to read.

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