College Library News

The winners of the Aventis Prizes for Science Books were announced last night in a webcast ceremony at The Royal Society’s headquarters in central London. The Aventis Prize celebrates the best books in popular science for both adults and children.

The 2005 General Prize winner for grown-up science books is: Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another by Philip Ball (William Heinemann) ISBN 0099457865 (£9.99) *IN THE LIBRARY*

The other five books on the General Prize shortlist were:
- The Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins (Weidenfeld & Nicholson) ISBN 0297825038 (£25.00) *IN THE LIBRARY*
- Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older by Douwe Draaisma (Cambridge University Press) ISBN 0521834244 (£19.99) *IN THE LIBRARY*
- Matters of Substance: Drugs – and why everyone’s a user by Griffith Edwards (Penguin, Allen Lane) ISBN 0713996897 (£18.99)
- The Earth: An Intimate History by Richard Fortey (HarperCollins) ISBN 0006551378 (£9.99) *IN THE LIBRARY*
- The Human Mind by Robert Winston (Bantam Press/ Transworld Publishers) ISBN 0553816195 (£7.99)

The 2005 Junior Prize winner for science books aimed at under-14s and picked by under 14s, is: What Makes Me, Me? by Robert Winston (Dorling Kindersley) ISBN 140530359X (£9.99). Winston also had a book in the General category.

The other five books on the Junior Prize shortlist were:
- Kingfisher Knowledge: Endangered Planet by David Burnie (Kingfisher) ISBN 0753409623 (Rec. Price £7.99)
- Mysteries and Marvels of Science by Phillip Clarke, Laura Howell & Sarah Khan (Usborne) ISBN 0746062494 (£12.99)
- Leap Through Time: Earthquake by Nicholas Harris (Orpheus) ISBN 1901323803 (£4.99)
- Night Sky Atlas by Robin Scagell (Dorling Kindersley) ISBN 1405303093 (£12.99)
- Kingfisher Knowledge: Microscopic Life by Richard Walker (Kingfisher) ISBN 0753409232 (£7.99).

The Guardian’s Books web pages, already up with the news as usual, headlines its article: ‘Outsider scoops Aventis Prize’. So, presumably, an unexpected winner. Of the General Prize, that is - the Junior Prize, as usual, gets only a small mention towards the end.

Last year’s winners were, for the General Prize, A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (Doubleday/Transworld) ISBN 0552997048 (£8.99) and, for the Junior Prize, Really Rotten Experiments by Nick Arnold & Tony De Saulles (Scholastic Children’s Books) ISBN 0439977355 (£4.99). The Aventis Prize site includes a list of all previous winners since the award’s inception as the ‘Science Book Prizes’ in 1988.

The rumours are true! Royalty, namely The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh, will be visiting the University on Wednesday 8 June as confirmed in The Cambridge Evening News this afternoon. Recently, we have seen alleged security and police personnel looking around our very own College, so the Royals could be planning to drop in on us! If a library is on their itinerary, it will be no doubt be the glorious new Education Faculty Library - not us

Just in case you didn’t know (I didn’t until today…!), the opening hours for this term have been way extended - especially at weekends.
Thanks to our student helpers, our hours this term (Easter Term 2005, ie. Apr-Jul 2005) are:
- Monday -Friday: 9-22
- Saturday - Sunday: 10-22
Pretty good, huh? So, if you need somewhere quiet to work/revise, come visit us.

The editor of the New Statesman, Peter Wilby, has resigned his post. The Guardian was one of the first with the news in this article on its website. Mr Wilby has released a brief statement which includes the following:

“Peter Wilby has resigned as New Statesman editor after seven years in the chair. His successor is John Kampfner, the magazine’s political editor […] I have had seven exciting and wonderful years, working with brilliant staff. Geoffrey Robinson, the chairman, gave me as much in dependence as any editor could wish for. John Kampfner has been an excellent political editor, and I know he will also be a fine editor. I wish him and the New Statesman every success in the future.”

It is reported that John Kampfner will be the new editor of the New Statesman, or ‘The Staggers’ as it is affectionately known. Britain’s best known left-wing weekly, in its heydays was edited by such literary big names as Martin Amis, and was well known for its literary reviews now no longer so prominent.
Just six months ago the magazine’s deputy editor, Christine Odone, resigned after reports of ‘heated rows’ with Wilby. Both Odone and Wilby denied this reason, Wilby claiming: “…she felt that the time was right to leave to work on the religious series and spend more time with her baby”.
The New Statesman has a small weekly average sale of around 23,000 (ABC July-December 2004). Its larger ‘rival’, the right-wing The Spectator, has a weekly sale of 66,000.
By the way, one of those copies is purchased by the library - we get both the New Statesman and The Spectator, as well as other high quality ‘general weeklies’ such as The Economist and The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) plus, of course the TES and the THES. We also get The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph on weekdays.
Addendum [Mon 16 May]: article by Christine Odone in The Guardian: “Why Wilby was pushed”.