The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

November ’99 LIBRARY NEWS New Books & How They Get Here Did you ever wonder what it takes for the Library to add books to the collection? Each year there are many thousands of books published in Canada, the U.S and the U.K. Of these we purchase an average of15,000 hardcover books each year. Librarians scan a multitude of review sources such as Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and New York Times Book Review as well as publishers* catalogues looking for the best, the most interesting and the ones you have been asking for. Once a title is selected, the information goes to our Acquisitions clerk who sends the order to the publisher or book jobber (a kind of amazon.com for libraries) and enters a record of it into our computer system. Every day she receives several boxes of new books. They are unpacked and the packing slips matched against our original order record. The book*s status is changed; the invoice is processed and sent to Municipal Hall for payment. The book then moves to the Cataloguing Department. Here books are given their official record in the catalogue including author, title, publisher, date, subject and call number. Cataloguers search other libraries on the Web to locate a good record and transport it electronically to our database. The book moves on to Processing at this point. Here it is given its labels and the jacket is laminated so it will last. Finally, it is activated in the catalogue and it is ready for you to check out. In spite of all the improvements of computers, it is a time- consuming process but after all it IS what we are here for. REFERENCE SE In today’s competitive career market, it is important to get a head start. For the most part, there is a deficiency of career-search resources. The just-released, S'** edition of the Canadian Directory of Search Firms will be useful for many a Job seeker. The directory is a list of firms engaged in the business of locating career-level candidates for employer clients. The search firms are listed alphabetically, occupationally and geographically. This reference also contains a “who’s who” contact index. From time to time, we get reference questions referring to the possible satirical allusions contained in nursery rhymes. It has been thought by many scholars that this literary form was a means by which common people could dissent without punishment. However, there remains a diverse body of interpretive controversy around this expression. A classic rhyme is Humpty Dumpty; there has always been debate about who or what the “Dumpty” figure hinted at; was it Richard Ill’s disfigurement, or was it Charles I’s decapitation which left him incapable of being put together again, or was it the hulking cannon of St. Mary’s at the Wall Church in Colchester of 1648, during the English Civil War, that fell shattered to the ground when the top of the tower was blown off Is Ring around the Rosie about the bubonic plague, or was this rhyme invented too late? Was Georgy Porgy a satire on the scandalous King George the I? Does The Old Woman... in the Shoe refer to Parliament of the British Empire tending to her many “colonial children;” or King Georges II& III, who began the fashion of wearing white and powdered wigs? Is Mary’ Mary Quite Contrary a Protestant condemnation of the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots? In Three Blind Mice, could the “farmer’s wife” be Queen Mary I of England? Does London Bridge stir the imagination back to dark and terrible rites of time’s past; or is it simply the telling of yet another “Lions’ Gate Bridge” story ? This topic and many other reflective enquiries can be sought through the Internet as well as reference books such as The Oxford Dictionary Of Nursery Rhymes. Remember, the Internet is not Just a source for e-mail, games and gossip, it presently possesses potential for self-education so long as users caution themselves with the biases of different web sites. WEST VANCOUVER MEMORIAL LIBRARY 1950 Marine Drive, West Vancouver, BC,V7V 1J8 Tel: (604) 925-7400 Library Hours: (604) 925-7401 Fax: (604) 925-59.53 Modem Acc.: 925-7409 URL: www.wvml.jcslacs.bc.ca/slan/ ADULT SERVICES IN THE GALLERY... “Far & Near”... paintings by artists Anne Lagasse and Marguerite Mahy, will be on display November 1 - 28,1999. Anne studied at the Victoria College of Art and at the B.C. School of Art Therapy. She has travelled widely and within the Elderhostel programme has shared art experiences with other senior Canadians. Marguerite focuses on watercolour painting and has studied in Mexico and France, She is a member of the West Vancouver Sketch Club and the Federation of Canadian Artists. Her artwork can be found in many private collections. Reception, artists in attendance, November 1, 7:30 - 8:30 p.m. Most paintings are for sale. INTERNET SESSION ... ELECTRONIC DATABASES ON THE WEB - Learn how to type into exciting new databases including Canadian Businesses and current affairs, Electronic Library, Ebsco Host and much more. Monday, November 8 7:00 - 8:30 p.m. in the Peters Room Please pre-register by calling 925-7402. ^‘LIONS’ GATE” AUTHOR VISIT Donald Luxton, the author of this new history of our favourite bridge, will give a slide show presentation: Thursday, November 25, 7:00 p.m. in the Peters Room. Please call 925-7402 to register!