Advantages: Free books, try new authors
Disadvantages: You can't keep the stock, funding cuts, library fines

...recordings they were on vinyl, complete with those skull and crossbones “home taping is killing music” logos. This is a good way to try music by a new to you band or singer. For those of us over 30, it’s also very useful if you’re reluctant to replace your old vinyl with CDs. Islington has to wait 3 months after a CD is released to lend it out, but that is no problem for me as I often want older stuff anyway. Charges in my libraries range from 50p-90p for 3 or 4 weeks (Islington lends for 2 weeks at 50p but offers a free renewal). • Videos and DVDs – Libraries are often cheaper than video shops and have a far more diverse range of material available, including arty and foreign language films. Students who would like to see film adaptations of a book they are studying should try the public library. As the loan period is often just for a night... Read review

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Advantages: Huge variety of stock
Disadvantages: Fines on overdue items

...Having worked in a library I can tell you all about the great services available! Firstly you'll need to obtain a library card. These are free but you need to able to provide two forms of ID, one of which must hvae a photograph of you on it. Most libraries not only stock books but have videos, CD's, DVD's, computer games, and talking books on both tape and CD. The books are all free to take out and are issued for 3 weeks at a time. You can then renew them either online, over the phone or at a library in person. They can be renewed up to 3 times without being brought back to the library. After the third time you must either return the books or they must be seen by a library staff member before they can be reissued to you. Cd's DVD's etc are hireable at a small charge and are issued on a weekly basis. They usually cost... Read review

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Advantages: can now read opinions at the library
Disadvantages: none

...opinions on the books you have read. Copied from here? When you have read a book you can collect a sticker pad and write your opinion about the book and the author. You then stick this on the allowed area by the subject area of the book you read. This is such a brilliant idea as not everyone knows this site or can get to it when in the library! This did not just apply to books but to DVDs, videos and even the music tapes you can now borrow from the library. Lets hope a lot of other places copy this.... Read review

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Advantages: reasonable prices with a real airline, free food and drink, reliable and on-time
Disadvantages: no direct flight to Prague

...I first flew DAT (Delta Air Transport) when I went to Prague with my boyfriend in late December. I originally booked with Sabena but was then told that Sabena had gone out of business, so as you can imagine we were a wee bit dubious when we booked on a DAT flight. DAT is based in Brussels and their slogan is DAT - reconnecting Brussels and that is exactly what they do. (Read below for a list of destinations.) The reason I chose to fly on DAT was because they were a lot cheaper than other airlines at that time of year, costing only £130. The flight stopped in Brussels and we were to connect to another DAT flight that would take us to Prague. All went very well indeed. The planes had lovely wide leather seats with lots of leg room. We were given drinks, sandwiches and chocolates to eat and the service was extremely professional... Read review

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Advantages: Sounds better than tape, good editing, easy to use
Disadvantages: sounds like a minidisc

...feature i find especially useful when tightening up the cue points of studio masters. Other features include fade in/out, music scan, auto spacing and the option to produce automatic track markers when recording a source with 3 second gaps between the music. The controls are well laid out with a big remote control for track naming etc, and the sound quality is excellent in relation to how much money you spend. The data compression required for minidisc recording still produces a characteristic brittle kind of sound around the upper mid range but it is far better than many recorders i have listened to, even more expensive ones. If you have a small studio and can't afford a DAT machine or even if you just want to replace your cassette deck then you can't go far wrong with one of these as long as you don't expect a 100% dead on accurate... Read review

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Advantages: Good points. Obscenely easy way to rebuild a corrupted server.
Disadvantages: Bad points. Limited hardware and software support. Make sure your operating system can read all partitions.

...Those of us who have had to spend a late Friday afternoon rebuilding a really important server, longing to get to the pub, will no doubt be yearning for something where we can just press one button and get the machine back up and running and doing all the things it was supposed to do before it went base over apex. Until recently disaster recovery has been a lengthy, time-consuming process of locating operating system (OS) disks, application disks, backup tapes, and configuration details. The new Hewlett Packard SureStore DAT40e could be an answer to those prayers, for its much-touted industry first, one-button disaster recovery (OBDR), a clever system which fools your server into thinking the tape back up drive is really a bootable CD-ROM drive. Booting from a tape drive is not new. In fact, most dedicated UNIX workstations... Read review

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Advantages: High quality tape that does not suffer from degradation
Disadvantages: Hard to get hold of.

...***NOTE! This has been called a camcorder by mistake on ciao! It is actually a camcorder tape!*** When it comes to camcorders, a camera is only as good as its tape. Im quite lucky because I own a good make of Camera. A Sony One. However, I also match the quality of camera with a quality tape. A Sony one! Why? Well, Sony Tapes are obviously engineered to perform best in a Sony Camera. For this reason, I bought a 3 pack at the airport on my honeymoon. The price was £7.95 so about £2.64 per tape. For my £2.64, I am getting 90 whole minutes of sheer quality recordable tape that does not grain or lose quality with usage. No stretching or deformity. Just excellent recording and playback time after time. With a 90 minute tape such as this, you are getting an optimum tape quality. 60 minute tapes are too short in recording time... Read review

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Advantages: Small, lightweight, efficient, reliable. does what it says
Disadvantages: Tape, small capacity, price, slow, storage/usage issues

...The Sony DGD120P is the second incarnation of the DDS tape format used for computer backup in the 1990s. Back in the days when company data took up a few gigabytes of disk space, the DDS2 cartridge provided a relatively cheap and efficient way to backup and restore data easily. ~~~ Appearance ~~~ Looking not unlike a modern Mini-DV casette, the DGD120P measures 72mm x 52mm x 10mm in black plastic with a small window showing the tape spooled inside. Unlike a video casette, the tape contained within cannot be easily accessed by prying fingers and the wheels used for spooling the tape are inaccessible until the cartridge is inserted into a drive. On the spine of the cartridge is a small white switch allowing the user to write-protect the tape and preserve a copy of the data contained thereupon. Each cartridge is also supplied... Read review

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Advantages: Great Place to Work or Study
Disadvantages: Can be hard to prove you need to be there

...They say, write what you know and since I'm at the British Library at least twice I week, here goes! What follows isn't meant to be comprehensive; more of a taster. WEBSITE Before visiting the BL, it's well worth a visit to its website at www.bl.uk. Here you can search the library catalogues, see what events and exhibitions are on, check the hours of opening for the bit you need, check the online shop for BL publications and even apply to adopt a book in need of conservation. The website is easy to navigate. As a part-time bibliographer I use the main book catalogue (www.blpc.bl.uk) almost daily and it has not failed me yet. Maintenance times to the catalogue are announced well in advance. See the website also for information about pre-ordering materials. This is a service I have yet to use but others have said it works. The main... Read review

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Advantages: Good facilities
Disadvantages: Mean staff

...There are quite a few reviews of libraries in general on here, and nobody can say that free books aren't a good thing, but I thought I would review my local library since I am not happy with them at the moment. Haha. --Disclaimer-- Since it's in writers' corner, I'm trusting you'll take into the account that I'm simply writing a rant and I don't expect anyone to know where Lichfied is ;) -------------------- Firstly, I love books. I usually like to buy them though because that means if I like them a lot, I can keep them to read again. Also, it takes me a while to read things so, adding this to the fact that I'm incredibly disorganised, I've racked up about £5 in fines on my library card over the past few years. I usually get my books from charity shops. For one thing, they're usually only about 50p each, and for another, it... Read review

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