Bun Fun

It is day 4 of Discovery Week and there is a full day of activities planned. At 10.30am, Liam McArthur MSP shall open the brand new reference room which was fitted out with money we got for being totally brilliant. (Honestly) and then there will be a coffee morning straight afterwards in the MacGillivray room.

The staff have been slaving all weekend to prepare a selection of delicious, incomparable home bakes and will be serving them from a little hatch off the main room.

Tonight the Bruck Show, shall be broadcast *LIVE* from the foyer of the library with the help of a special Library staff guest presenter. We expect scenes similar to this.

The library book sale is still on as are the various competitions, the Archive World Traill and our i-pod shuffle prize draw.

You only get one sale, so make it count... You might never get this moment again.

It is the second day of Discovery week today and the library book sale has begun in the Marwick room.

Eager faces were pressed against the glass first thing this morning and, unfortunately, one staff member was crushed by the rabid tidalwave of book-fanciers who surged through the foyer like a tsunami.

The Marwick room is currently a writhing sea of books and book-lovers. Come join us if you enjoy books, photos (photographic prints from the archive are also for sale.) or crowd surfing. It's like a JLS concert down there... Right guys?

Judgement Day

The Fereday projects have arrived here a little earlier than usual as one of our staff members is acting as a judge this year. Her judgement shall be thorough, fair, considered, whimsical, knowledgeable, punctilious, logical and free from guile. Locked in a room without daylight, distraction or sustenance for as long as it takes (her choice), she will not emerge until justice has been done.

Our initial impression is that a lot of hard work has gone into a great variety of topics. Some of the students obviously have some fancy computer knowledge as this year's entries are noticeably snazzy.

Yaabba dabbba doooooooooooooooooooooo!

The above phrase and the above photo (which has already been posted, but is possibly the greatest photo of all time) are the only way to truly express the beginning of the Orkney Library and Archive DISCOVERY WEEK.

We have books, sweets, library merchandise, free dvd and cd lends for a year and an i-pod shuffle as prizes for the various quizzes, trails and scavenger hunts that will be taking place and, at the very least, you will get a cup of tea or coffee as they are complimentary all week. Free tea, what's better than that?

Lionel leaping for joy beside a pole, that's what.

It's the Final Countdown! Doo roo doo doo, Doo roo doo doo doo.

There are only hours left until the first day of the rest of your life i.e. the first day of Orkney Library & Archive's Discovery Week 2010. Tomorrow is also World Book Day so those few non-Orcadians who read this blog (thanks guys) can celebrate by reading or dressing up as a book.

Downstairs in the library, sale books are being humphed, displays titivated and home-bake recipes pondered. But what is happening in the archives?

Lions... aeroplanes... skyscrapers... huskies & igloos... revolution... petitions...war....ritual charcoal and nudity related humiliation at the hands of South Sea islanders.... Our Archive Discovery World Traill has all these great things and more.

There are two levels to the Traill; Explorer and Traveller. The winner of the Traveller's prize draw will win this brilliant book. The triumphant Explorer will take home not only this awesome tome, but a book of Great Explorer themed pop up board games that is so amazing, we will not post an image of it for fear that it will BLOW YOUR MINDS.

Discovery week starts tomorrow with the Traill, Book amnesty, photo quizzes, children's stories and craft with Britt Harcus at 4.00pm and Tom Muir's storytelling from 5.30 - 6.30pm in the MacGillivray Room on the first floor.

Our manager shall be hanging the Discovery Week banners outside this afternoon in a death-defying, fathers for justice-style crawl along the front of the building. Come along to laugh/cheer/boo, whatever comes naturally.

Orkney at the Oscars

Today in 1953, the Oscars were broadcast on television for the first time. 11 years earlier, the best actress award had been won by Greer Garson for the film Mrs Miniver. Garson had also played Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice in 1940.

Although she is probably best known for giving the longest Oscars acceptance speech EVER (some stories say an hour, although it was apparently only 5 minutes), with a name like Garson, she obviously has some interest for Orkney family historians.

Early biographies had suggested an Irish heritage but Greer Garson was born in London to George Garson, a commercial clerk whose father, Peter Garson, had been born and brought up in Kirkness, Sandwick. Peter married Jean Firth of Kirkwall and St. Ola parish in 1860 and the couple had two children in Orkney before moving to London and having George.


If you look at the distribution of the Garson name in Britain, then this Orcadian link is not terribly astonishing.

Born Eileen, Greer was Garson's mother's maiden name. If you are bored today, Orkney Library and Archive invite you to work out your own 40s film-star names. Don't write in, it's just for fun...

Information taken from the Sib Folk News #10, June 1999.

Where is the love, Part 2

We have just had a fire drill. In the snow. With no jackets on.

This is not the most inopportune fire drill that I have attended,however, as one interrupted a Higher EXAM in school and another took place at a showing of Lord of the Rings in a cinema that seated over 300 people.

It all went very smoothly though, so customers can relax in the knowledge that Orkney Library and Archive will not let them burn to a crisp whilst they select books, read emails, research family history and bounce babies.

School's out for-weather

We were closed due to bad weather at 2.30pm yesterday. Unbelievably exciting, even though we are closed to the public this week anyway and were having a perfectly pleasant time sorting out stock and preparing displays. We even sat in and had lunch together and cups of tea to avoid braving the weather which was, again, very nice.

There is nothing better than sitting on your couch when you thought that you would be at work, however.

Although finding a forgotten tenner in your pocket and a stashed bar of Dairy Milk in the back of the cupboard are admirable rivals. Or realising half way through an episode of eastenders that it is an hour long. Yes!

Time to build snowmen!

The Library and Archive has been closed due to the extreme weather conditions from 2.30pm today. So now you have no excuse for not building a snowman.

I may be some time...

We feel like we're working in a snow globe today, which is not unpleasant, but going out to buy lunch will be a bit of an experience. I'll just pretend that I'm Captain Scott, it'll be fine. He did die though...

There are still piles of papers, books and boxes everywhere but it's ALL PERFECTLY UNDER CONTROL.

My old work's a dustbin

Do you know that horrifying stage in the middle of tidying up, when everything's lying on top of everything else and you wonder why you bothered starting?

Welcome to middle-of-closure-week archives!

On the plus side, no customers means that we can choose our own lunch-breaks and swap Loose Women for This Morning.

Marie celeste

No email working and no customers, as we are closed. It is a sad, lonely day for the archives... almost as sad as Eastenders *LIVE* (did he fall or jump by the way?)...

We are getting an awful lot done, however, so the absence of our beautiful customers is almost worth the pain. Shelves are being built, archives are being moved and thrilling preparations for Discovery Week are taking shape.

Apples and Pears

Tonight's television is possibly the most exciting event that could ever have been conceived: Eastenders LIVE!

Today in the library we shall be celebrating this truly momentous day by falling over, swearing and flicking our eyes at the CCTV cameras in a flustery panic.

In recognition of the fact that Soap Operas were originally intended as vehicles for soap commercials, we have posted a frankly quite disturbing advert from an 1890 edition of The Orcadian.

After tonight's show, you will probably feel quite downbeat and think that nothing else will match the visceral thrill that you have just experienced. Then, however, you shall remember that the library are hosting a live broadcast of Radio Orkney's the Bruck Show on Monday the 8th of March as part of Discovery Week. Phew.

Snow place like home

Let us hope that we are not greeted by similar scenes tomorrow. Look here.

These photographs were taken in the 1950s by Sandy Wylie, former Kirkwall Grammar School technician and local inventor.

W is for wasted youth

Naming capital cities. Times tables. The past participle. Burning peanuts and then weighing them. Naming cloud formations. Holding a netball for 3 seconds only, whilst travelling no more than 1 1/2 steps. Working out how many square tiles to put around an oval pool. Swimming whilst wearing pjamas.

All of the above are 'skills' that teachers assured us we would be using every day of our lives. However, apart from basic literacy and numeracy, the one school days task that a librarian or archivist uses more than any other is putting things into alphabetical order.

How completely unexpected. Of all the tedious exercises that we were given to complete, the lists of words that were provided every day from primaries 4-7 to alphabetise seemed like the biggest waste of time. Burning stuff was part of our leisure activities anyway and one day we just might own an oval pool. If retired and left with absolutely nothing else to do, joining a netball team might be an option and pub quizzes could account for the rest; but shuffling words around endlessly was the dark horse.