Who do YOU trust?

Trust. It's a simple little five letter word but there is so much to it both in everyday life and again on a much deeper level. Is trust believing everything you hear, everything you read? Do you need to see the evidence? Or is it a gut instinct? Maybe (if you are anything like me) it depends on the circumstances. You want to believe what people tell you, but sometimes you take that with the proverbial "grain of salt".

The reason for this discussion is the publication of the seventh annual Reader's Digest Most Trusted list. It makes interesting reading and in some respects ties into the whole concept of trust and needing to have people prove or provide evidence that they can be trusted. Because several of the most trusted people on this year's list are those that look for evidence and proof. They are the scientists and they rank as first, second and third most trusted Kiwi's in 2011.

New Zealand's most trusted man is Sir Ray Avery. You can find out more about him in his very popular biography Rebel with a Cause published in 2010. Ray Avery is an amazing person. He is the current New Zealander of the Year because of his clever work in the Third World using his scientific and business knowledge to provide cheap cataract operations, cheap and more effective incubators for babies and other creative scientific solutions. His childhood was very 'Angela's Ashes', brought up in an orphanage (his own mother had tried to sell him!), then running away and living on the streets. But Ray went on to become a scientist, a millionaire, a very successful businessman and now someone who literally does help to change the world. During the mid nineties Ray spent most of his time working in Eritrea and Nepal, setting up two world class intraocular lens laboratories. At that time the cost of an intraocular lenses was about US$300 but Ray managed to put the technology together to produce lenses for under US$10.00, making modern cataract surgery accessible to the poor throughout Africa and Asia.Today these laboratories produce over 10% of the world's supply of intraocular lenses. Today he encourages other talented people to get on board and tackle some of the really big problems confronting the poor in developing countries. From his garage in Mt Eden Auckland Ray manages a global network of experts to work on specific projects and somehow everyone finds themselves donating their time and knowledge for free and they are rewarded by making a difference" --Publisher description.

Number 2 on the list is Sir Peter Gluckman, the Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister. He is the author or co-author of several books held by Auckland Libraries including Mismatch - Why our lives no longer fit our bodies. He has also recently produced, at the request of the Prime Minister, a comprehensive piece of research into youth and looking at factors affecting the high rate of suicide amongst Kiwi teenagers and possible ways to prevent this.

Making it a trifecta for the scientists is number 3 on the list, current New Zealander of the Year, Sir Paul Callaghan. He is a physicist who is also author and editor of several titles on our shelves. Amongst the most intriguing is As far as we know : conversations about science, life and the universe As Far As We Know answers some of the oldest and most perplexing questions that have been posed about science - from what existed before the Big Bang to the rise of Homo sapiens. In their discussions, Kim Hill and Paul Callaghan consider some of the most momentous concepts of our time and in the process make science understandable, and, above all, entertaining and interesting. Reading this may go some way to also answering the question as to why we are ranking scientists so highly in the trustworthy stakes.

There are a fair smattering of entertainers, sportspeople, heroes and celebrities in the list. Politicians don't fare so well this year. The full list of the Top 100 people is on the Reader's Digest website (which contains lots of other interesting information). If you want to do your own research into whether you think the list is right (or wrong) then check out the biography section at your local library or one of our digital resources.

Leadership Week Poll

The Sir Peter Blake Leadership Week is coming up at the beginning of July.

Every year, Leadership Week highlights the value of great leadership and showcases the work done to develop New Zealand’s leadership capability.We'd like to know who your favourite New Zealand hero is.

We have a poll running on our website so go to This Poll Page and Vote now!

A weekend of reading

First off - apologies to anyone who tuned in for the Top 5 for Friday last week. I finally admitted defeat against the cold and flu bugs that have been circulating - actually I got told to go home.

Which had it's silver lining. Because apart from sleeping and relaxing, I actually managed to get in quite a bit of reading. So here is a quick overview.

Angels' Blood - A Guild Hunter novel by Nalini Singh.
I cannot believe I have left it this long to pick up a Nalini Singh novel and read it. Especially as so many people have told me I would like her and she is one of our most popular authors at the moment. (And not just us as her latest is near the top of the US Best Seller lists).

Angels' Blood is the first in the Guild Hunter series. It has all the best of the current fashion in genres - vampires, angels and vampire hunters - all crammed between it's covers. It has a kick-ass heroine who is the best at what she does, beautiful angels, even more beautiful and seductive vampires, a great back story, blood, sexual tension and more than a touch of romance. The characters are all well drawn and I hope to read more of their stories in the rest of the series. The suspense hits just the right note - prolonging the wait and amping up desire to turn the page. I am definitely a fan and can now understand the accollades that have come this author's way.

The Wolf in the Wardrobe - Susan Brocker
I have read, enjoyed and reviewed Susan Brocker's children's fiction before. She is a Kiwi author who focusses a great deal of her writing on animal stories such as Restless Spirit and Saving Sam. I knew she was really a woman after my heart when she turned up to a recent National Library author talk wearing jockey silks in the colour of Phar Lap. For that alone I will continue to read everything she writes.

I find this difficult to admit, but I probably enjoyed her latest Wolf in the Wardrobe more than Susan's other titles, even those with a focus on horses. Finn is involved in a car accident riding home from his paper round. He follows the trail of blood left by the dog hit by the car, only to find that the huge injured animal is a wolf, escaped from a circus, which Finn is determined she will not be returned to. The setting, feelings and banter between the characters is very real from his separated parents, his friends at school more interested in rugby, and his grandmother who is suffering from Alzheimers and mistakes the wolf for her family pet growing up. Add in the villain (Cackles the Clown) and a race against time and you have a page turning action story which never lets up, while still managing to pass on a message about wildlife and families.

So that's how I spent my weekend, angels, vampires and wolves. Not a bad way to go.

Happy snapper or professional photographer?

It's Auckland Festival of Photography 3-26 June. I am in awe of the work of some photographers. They can tell a whole story in just one image. I would love to be able to have that ability, or at the very the least the time to practice and find out if I had a smidgen of talent.

So instead I make do with snapping away with my digital (what an asset from the days where you had to develop photos to see what sort of mess you had made of the image) in the vague hope that one of the many clicks will look okay.

Which of course all leads me into what the library has in the way of resources for the budding, aspiring, novice or even professional photographer and for all those that like to analyse the images.

Discover the Digital Library's heritage images and photography eResources.

Auckland Art Gallery collection The Auckland Art Gallery Collection includes access to over 15,000 works of art, 9000 of which have attached images. Key information is....

Footprints Footprints contains more than 2500 historical photographs, cartoons, drawings, posters, watercolours and ephemera.....

Heritage Images Online Heritage Images Online contains over 40,000 images from our significant photograph collections: Winkelmann, Firth, Richardson, Radcliffe, Young,....

Herman Schmidt online exhibition This exhibition is an online version of selected items from the Herman Schmidt exhibition.....

Local History Online Local History Online is a combined collection of local history indexes to community newspapers, oral histories, and heritage images from the....

Manukau's Journey - a Manukau timeline Manukau's Journey is a selection of significant and representative events from the history of Howick, Manukau, Manurewa-Papakura and Franklin wards....

Matapihi Matapihi is a National Digital Forum initiative hosted by the National Library that allows you search the digital collections across....

Photographers database The photographers database is an index to photographers who have worked in New Zealand from the 1840s to the present day.....

Picture Post Historical Archive The Picture Post was an iconic British newspaper published between 1938 and 1957. It can be credited with defining the style of photojournalism that....

Point of View: Scenic New Zealand The photographs in Point of View: Scenic New Zealand show small rural towns and large cities, street scenes, gardens, buildings and beaches....

Sir George Grey website View rare books, medieval manuscripts, Shakespeare's First Folio and other highlights of the Sir George Grey Collection.....

The last Digital resource you can search is our Local History website

Or if you want to turn the pages of a real book, check out our Photography section on the non-fiction shelves (both children's and adults). The Call Number (which is the number on the spine of our non-fiction books) for photography is 770 to 779. There's plenty here from collections from Time and National Geographic to how-to's for the novices (like me). And how to play with your digital images to make them look good when you are back at home.

In the meantime, check out the Festival of Photography website to see if there is something happening near you.

New Digital Resources

Our Web guru Jo Lo reports that three new eResources have been added to the Digital Library: the Encyclopedia of Popular Music, New York Times (1851–2007) and Picture Post Historical Archive.

The New York Times (1851-2007)This database offers full-page images and article images from the New York Times dating back to 1851. You’ll find digital reproductions of every page from every issue, cover to cover, in downloadable PDF files. It’s perfect for students of modern US history who want to see stories and images of the events as they occurred, from one of America's most well-known newspapers.
The Encyclopedia of Popular MusicThis is a searchable online encyclopaedia covering popular music of all genres and periods from 1900 to the present day, including jazz, country, folk, rap, reggae, techno, musicals and world music.The encyclopaedia is also cross-searchable from the Oxford Music Online eResource.
Picture Post Historical ArchiveThe Picture Post Historical Archive comprises the complete archive of the Picture Post from its first issue in 1938 to its last in 1957, all digitised from originals in full colour. A great resource for those interested in images of daily life of pre- and post-war Britain, from the newspaper that helped define modern photo-journalism.