20017 Man Booker Prize winner

The American short story writer George Saunders has won the Man Booker prize for his first full-length novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. The book is based on a real-life event – the death of Abraham Lincoln’s 11-year-old son Willie in 1862. Shattered by grief and imagining the boy trapped in the Bardo – a Tibetan Buddhist term for a kind of limbo – Lincoln paces the graveyard on the eve of the boy’s burial. The book intersperses historical accounts, both real and imagined, with monologues from a cast of ghosts watching over the boy in the after-life.

The other shortlisted titles for the 2017 award were
4321 by Paul Auster
History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
Elmet by Fiona Mozley
Autumn by Ali Smith

Learn a new skill or take up a new hobby for free from the comfort of your own home

Register for one of the 400+ free online courses available through Clare County Library and learn at your own pace and in your own time. The areas of study covered range from accounting, through DIY and pet and animal care to writing skills. Courses on offer include cake decorating, landscaping, how to write a business plan, early childhood development and internet marketing basics. Follow the Universal Class link from the library homepage www.clarelibrary.ie. All first time users must register with Universal Class using their library card number and PIN number.

Booker shortlist 2017

Books by two debut novelists Fiona Mozley and Emily Fridlund have been shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker prize. They join Ali Smith who has made the shortlist for the fourth time while Mohsin Hamid previously made the list in 2007 with The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Irish writer Mike McCormack and Sebastian Barry failed to be shortlisted.

The shortlist covers a wide range of subjects, from the struggle of a family trying to retain its self-sufficiency in rural England to a love story between two refugees seeking to flee an unnamed city in the throes of civil war.

The titles are:

4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster
History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
Elmet by Fiona Mozley
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Autumn by Ali Smith

The winner will be announced on October 17th. Visit http://themanbookerprize.com/ for more information.

25 greatest comedy films

The BBC have compiled a list of the 25 greatest comedy films based on recommendations from critics from around the world. The top 10 films are

1. Some like it hot
2. Dr Strangelove
3. Annie Hall
4. Groundhog day
5. Duck soup
6. Life of Brian
7. Airplane
8. Playtime
9. This is spinal tap
10. The general

To see the complete list and to read why these films deserved to make the list, see http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170820-the-25-greatest-comedies-of-all-time
These films and many more can be borrowed from Clare County Library.

Clare County Library Celebrating our National Heritage

Clare County Library is proud to once again take part in National Heritage Week, which in 2017 will run from August 19^th to 27^th. National Heritage Week is part of European Heritage Days, which is celebrated in over 40 countries across Europe. The Week is coordinated by The Heritage Council and its aim is to build awareness and education about our heritage thereby encouraging its conservation and preservation. Each year, during the last week of August, many national and hundreds of local community organisations participate by organising events throughout the country. Many of the events that take place during the week are free and the programme highlights the abundance of great work that is carried out in all communities in Ireland to preserve and promote our natural, built and cultural heritage. In 2017, the Heritage Council is inviting you to be active, have fun and get involved with our natural heritage

For its part in celebrating the week, Clare County Library will host a number of free events throughout the week. On Tuesday, 22^nd August staff from Fiontar & Scoil na Gaeilge, DCU will visit library branches in Ennis, Shannon and Sixmilebridge to provide information sessions on Meitheal Dúchas.ie and Meitheal Logainm.ie.

Meitheal Dúchas.ie is an opportunity to transcribe folklore material collected by schoolchildren for the National Folklore Collection in the 1930s in Ireland. It is one of the most successful crowdsourcing projects of its kind in the world. Discover more at www.duchas.ie/en/meitheal. Meitheal Logainm.ie encourages the recording and sharing of minor placenames. The public is asked to record minor placenames, such as field names, via a simple online form. Discover more at meitheal.logainm.ie/en.

The aim of the talks/workshops is to show the public how easy it is to access the information contained in these valuable cultural resources - via PCs in their local library or from the comfort of their own homes. The sessions also aim to show that these resources are available to everyone - no matter how limited your computer skills may be you can still get involved!

Also on Tuesday 22^nd August at 6pm, to coincide with Clare County Library's touring display based on the 1917 East Clare By-election, writer Kieran Sheedy will visit Shannon Library to give a talk on that topic. On June 7th 1917 Willie Redmond, the Member of Parliament for East Clare, was killed in the battle of the Messines Ridge and a contested election (the first in fifteen years) took place in the following month. The candidates were Patrick Lynch K.C., a native of Ennis (Home Rule Party) and Eamon De Valera (Sinn Fein), the Irish Volunteer Commandant at Boland’s Mills during the 1916 Rising who had been recently released from an English jail. The election campaign and its result became pivotal in the emergence of Sinn Fein as a National party and is equally as significant in Clare political history as the 1828 by-election, won by Daniel O’Connell. Kieran Sheedy held a number of posts in RTE Radio One, including Head of Documentaries, before concentrating on a career in writing. His historical works include Upon the Mercy of Government, The Tellicherry Five, Peerless Tom Malone, The Clare Elections, The Horse in County Clare (2 volumes), The United Irishmen in County Clare and The Clare Anthology (Ed.). The Library’s display continues to travel to various branches throughout the county. See www.clarelibrary.ie for details.

On Thursday 24th August, at 12 noon, Scariff Public Library will host a special lecture by Steve Dolan of the Irish Workhouse Centre in Portumna entitled The Workhouse System in Ireland. The topic of the lecture will be the workhouses system in Ireland, with a specific focus on Scariff, and the afternoon will also see the launch of a free booklet by the Irish Workhouse Centre staff.

The following day, Friday 25^th August, John Rattigan, curator of Clare County Museum, will visit Scariff Library at 2.30pm to give a presentation on some of the ancient objects found in east Clare that are housed in the Museum in Ennis. He will also bring the catalogue of objects from Clare that are in the National Museum so individuals can find out about archaeological items found in their parish/townland over the last 150 years. This is a free event hosted in conjunction with CABES.

To finish off the week, on Friday 25^th August at 6.30pm,  native of north Clare and author of The Fanore School Case, Joe Queally will visit the De Valera Public Library in Ennis to give a talk based on his book about "one of the most bizarre episodes in the history of Irish education". As Joe shows in this fascinating book, the conventional account does not tell the full story. Leaning on a wide range of sources, from court records to oral history, Queally reveals many new aspects to the case, the violent means used by his supporters to intimidate the new teachers who succeeded him, and the bitter divisions caused in the community by the results of the affair. This absorbing and exhaustively researched book brings together all the facts of the Fanore School Case. It balances previous accounts with the Catholic Church's version of events, derived from diocesan archives, which were made available for the first time to the author. A short documentary commissioned by RTE on the story will also be shown during the talk. Copies of the book will be on sale after the event. For more visit www.thefanoreschoolcase.ie.

All library events are free of charge and everyone is welcome so be sure to take this opportunity for the whole family to discover and enjoy your heritage and history. Details of all events can be found at www.clarelibrary.ie or by phoning 065-6821616/6846350. Information on nationwide events is available at www.heritageweek.ie.

Learn a new language today

Like to learn conversational skills in a new language for your holidays? Check out Mango Languages, the free online language learning resource through your local library at www.clarelibrary.ie.

Mango Languages is an online language-learning system that teaches actual conversation skills for over 70 languages from around the world. Each chapter aligns your learning to a set of conversational and grammar goals, with highly relevant culture notes sprinkled into each lesson. Intuitive popups help you tune your pronunciation with precision. Record your speech and compare it directly to audio from a native speaker to hear exactly how to tune in your accent. You can even download the mobile app by searching Mango Languages in your app store. Check it out and learn a new language today! To use the service you will need to create an account or profile on Mango. You will also require your library card number.

Get all the facts! – go online with Encyclopedia Britannica through Clare County Library

Clare County Library provides FREE access to the online version of Encyclopaedia Britannica. It contains hundreds of thousands of objective articles, biographies, videos, and images.

Britannica has thousands of expert contributors from around the world, including Nobel laureates and world leaders such as former President Bill Clinton and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It also has a staff of more than 100 editors.

Content is updated daily - at least 1,200 new and revised articles and media per month - to keep users informed and engaged.

Britannica Library gives you three sites in one:
Children,
Young adults,
Reference material for older students and adults.

Members can choose the age-appropriate level that works best for them and will find it easy to conduct research, complete homework assignments, and work on special projects either in the library or at home. Save your research in your own personal My Britannica account. Britannica Library works on any device - PC, laptop, tablet, or smart phone.

Log on with your library card number here: http://library.eb.co.uk/storelibrarycard?id=clarelibs&target=/levels/adult

New opening hours for Corofin Library

We are delighted to announce increased opening hours for our branch library in Corofin. The new opening hours, effective from the 3rd of July, are:
Wednesday: 10.00 - 1.00 & 5.00 - 8.00
Thursday: 10.00 - 1.00 & 5.00 - 8.00
Friday: 10.00 - 1.00 & 1.30 - 5.30

See Corofin Branch Library page for location and contact details.

World Refugee Day, June 20th

To mark World Refugee Day on June 20th, the UNHCR is partnering with libraries and bookshops across the country in encouraging people to read a book or watch a movie about refugees.

The 2017 campaign will run from 19 June to 3 July with libraries all over Ireland participating.

Using UNHCR’s specially selected book lists for children and adults, readers will have a wide selection of stories from around the world to choose from in the form of fact, fiction, autobiography and photography.

Popular titles include The Kite Runner, which documents the boyhood friendship of two friends in Afghanistan and Four Feet, Two Sandals, a picture book about two girls in a refugee camp.

World Refugee Day is an opportunity to salute the strength and courage of refugees; the solidarity of those countries, including Ireland, who assist refugees; and the contribution refugees make to countries around the world.

Libraries in County Clare will have a book display highlighting books that explore refugee related issues. Killaloe Library presents a showing of the film The Good Lie at 7.30 on Friday 23rd of June. The film tells the story of a group of Sudanese refugees as they struggle to acclimatise to their new life in Kansas City. Kilrush bookclub have chosen The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna as their book for their June meeting. A novel set in Nigeria, Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adicihe, has been chosen as the Clare FM Radio Bookclub read for June.

Summer Stars Reading Adventure for children

Clare County Library Service will run the Summer Stars Reading Adventure for children in all library branches during the summer from the 3rd of July to the end of August. Summer Stars is an exciting reading-based programme which is available free of charge to children across the country. We are very happy to work with teachers and families to encourage children to continue reading and also to participate in our range of storytelling and other fun activities during the summer.

Each child is invited to register for the adventure at their local library and enjoy reading many books as part of the adventure during the summer holidays. All participants will be given a Summer Stars Reading Card to record and track their own progress and a library reward stamp will be added to their reading card at the library after each book read. There will be rewards and incentives along the way. At the end of the adventure, all children who participate are invited to attend an award event at which they will be presented with their own Summer Stars certificate.

Children and families will also have access to fun reading activities on the Summer Stars website, www.summerstars.ie The site has lots of online activities as well as a range of animated ebooks. You will find a children’s books discussion board and interviews with well-known people about their favourite books. There are also helpful tips for reading and recommended titles by age group for children to read. The books can then be borrowed from your local library service, and it’s all free.

Further information is available from Clare County Library www.clarelibrary.ie or on www.librariesireland.ie