You're Fired!!!

Well, not really, obviously but it can’t have escaped the notice of any of us that these are dark days for jobseekers and more and more people are asking for our help in finding employment. So we at Treasure Hunt Towers have put together a collection of links and useful information that we hope will be useful for our readers. Go to the Westminster Library Gateway and you will notice a box labelled Back to work – we can help. At the top is a guide to where to find jobs ads – both in print and online. One top tip is to recommend people to check each local council website every week as very few public sector jobs make it into the Guardian or Voice any more. (go to the Westminster Council homepage and you’ll find a link at the bottom to Jobs and Vacancies). We’ve given a link to the libraries careers advice sessions (very handy for printing out for a reader) and to the local advice services.

As well as the Back to Work, it’s also worth pointing readers (and yourselves) towards the Education section. Scroll down to the Adult & further education for links to the local adult education colleges (including Westminster Adult Education Service) plus the online version of Floodlight, which lists part-time course all over London. And for anyone who wants a complete change of career there are links to colleges running access courses and to universities in the higher education. Have a look – who knows, you may discover a hitherto suppressed desire to make a career in Golf Management or Fish Farming!

Summer School

If there’s one thing we at Treasure Hunt Towers hate, it’s spending money. And if there’s one thing we like doing, it’s getting educated. So how to combine our two hobbies without actually getting out of our chairs? (another thing we hate doing!) . As usual it’s the Gateway to the rescue! First up is Computers & the Internet where I can scroll down to Learning Resources and then learn just about anything I want toinvolving ICT. The biggie here is obviously IVY (or the Ivy Learning Management System as it’s officially known). You need to register for this – you should have instructions at your enquiry desk, or if you're not a library staff member, just ask next time you visit – but once you have a login, there is a whole wealth of ICT and business courses available to you. If you want to browse before registering, just click on the About Ivy link on the Gateway page and see what’s there – a full range of Microsoft offices, all in easy bitesized chunks so you don’t actually have to learn Access in one go plus an excellent range of business courses from health and safety, employment law, interview techniques and even body language.

Once you’ve exhausted everything Ivy has to offer, there’s plenty more available back on the Gateway. Fancy learning a new language? Go to the Languages page of the Gateway and you’ll find I Love Languages as a key link. Going to Zanzibar this Summer? Well, you’ll want to have a bit of basic Swahili so clink on Languages and then By Language and the helpful Swahili links will give you some basic lessons. Taking a trip to Qo’nos and worried about not being able to ask way to the bathroom? Check out the Klingon language resources and memorise the useful phrase ‘nuqDaq 'oH puchpa''e' ?

Perhaps you fancy something a little more creative than learning how to talk to fictional characters? How about something a little crafty? Try HintsandThings which you’ll find in the Homes & Gardens section of the Gateway. Check out the Workshop and you’ll find guides to cross-stitch, making paper clay (papier mache we called it when I were a lass), economical gifts and much more. It’s an excellent site and you can get lost browsing in it – the Kitchen is excellent for brushing up on your culinary skills.