One of the high points of your week in remote Australia is when the weekly mail plane arrives. And one of the pleasures is when your library books have made it out 1000kms from the library.
Alice Springs Library in the Northern Territory has a remote lending service to those in remote areas. Alice Springs truly is the capital of Central Australia. It’s postcode is 0870. But for remote communities in the bottom of half of the Territory from the Queensland border in the east to the Western Australian border in the west and including parts of South Australia and Western Australia all use the post code 0872. Historically it has always looked after the needs of those areas (well since the white fellas like me came here).
When in town you sign up at the library. You complete some check lists on genres and favourite authors to assist the librarians in selecting your books every six weeks or so when you send your books back in. With each delivery of books there is a little sheet to complete if you wish to further assist the librarians. You can of course ask for specific titles as well. With my last delivery there was even lists of authors..if you like author X you will also like the authors A B & C.
There is even a reply paid form to send the books back at no charge to yourself.
It is a wonderful service.
The picture shows the books that arrived last week. Here’s the title list:
Yes there is an Asterix and Obelix cartoon book in there.
When I signed up several years ago they gave me the genre list to tick. In the list they gave me there was topic “Asterix” with a tick box next to it. How strange I thought. But how did they know? I love Asterix books so I ticked the box.
A few days later and a thousand kilometres away I received a phone call. “We inadvertently gave you the children’s checklist”. So the adult checklist was faxed out. Not much difference, just a choice of more genres.
But there was no Asterix and Obelix selection on the adult list.
How rude. What an omission from the literary classics
I had to write it in “Asterix and Obelix”, draw in a check box and tick it.
And over the last three years every second delivery of books or so I receive an Asterix and Obelix book.
Ain’t their service great.
27th October: you can see the selection list here
