Hardcore users of Wanstead library might be well aware of this, but it’s worth sharing anyway. Holders of Redbridge Library cards can, with the cunning use of their card number and PIN, get access to a quite amazing array of online reference books through the Redbridge website – including the full Oxford English Dictionary and Oxford Reference Online. This is as well as being able to search the borough’s own library catalogue. Access is available at www.redbridge.gov.uk/libraries.
There’s also access to the Dictionary of National Biography, so there is now no reason not to know that Sir Charles Tilston Bright, responsible for laying the first cable across the Atlantic AND for proposing that units of electrical measurement (eg volt) should be derived from the names of scientists, was born in Wanstead.
Wansteadium hopes, as a result of this posting, for an immediate improvement in the general standard of bus stop small-talk.