We at Book Village have been loving the Gauteng Provincial Online Library during lockdown, but it really does have some odd quirks!

Unlike in a traditional library, digital books cannot be stolen, lost or overdue, but it seems that they can disappear from the library when the licence expires, which can be confusing!  So you might be able to put a hold on the third book in the wonderful Cicero Trilogy – Dictator because the library once owned it, but you might never receive it unless the librarian decides to repurchase the licence.  The other two books of the trilogy don’t seem to have ever been owned by the library, but you can make a recommendation for the library to buy them through the OverDrive website. So we’ve been busy recommending the purchase of obvious missing library books to the Gauteng Online Library.

Over the past few years we have worked in school libraries stocked entirely with donated books, and the best of these libraries all have some common features:  entire shelves of Enid Blyton books, several copies of each Roald Dahl book, the middle book of, say, His Dark Materials Trilogy and, in the best libraries, extremely tatty and loved copies of some of the Horrid Henry books, Diary of a Wimpy Kid and if the kids are really lucky, the odd Harry Potter book and some new teen fiction. The non-fiction is usually a dismal collection of 1950s biology textbooks and random books about writing batch files for MS-DOS or the Natural History of Guam.

Book Village Digital Library

The Book Village digital library was bought from OverDrive as a curated collection of children’s books and generally only shares the best aspects of a traditional library.  When having noticed a few quirks and gaps in the digital library, we asked them how they put the collection together. 

They replied stating that they consulted with librarians in South African Schools and focused on popular South African authors and titles, as well as titles popular in schools internationally.  They maintain the library by adding more copies of in-demand titles, as well as new releases and requests.  

The Book Village library is indeed a wonderful collection of books and we think there will be books for every child to love.  But we are quite sure that the kids would happily swop Anna Karenina for the 13 Storey Treehouse and The Lives of the Necromancers for anything by Philip Pullman.  

We are always looking for new book recommendations and so if you have any ideas please email them to sarah@bookvillage.co.za.