the-storyspace

what snoopy said...

2010-10-21T22:12:00.000+10:00

docs

2010-10-15T12:52:00.000+10:00

You and Robert Smith and the Lovecats
      echoes of then
     we told ourselves lies.

Six years with you and a backing track
     gone somewhere, somewhen
     future look in your eyes.

My friend Brenden used to have the most amazing footwear. He grew into the mid-80s swampie subculture with black Windsor Smith pointed shoes and delicious black
Dr Marten boots.
I've only ever seen Docs boots, and always loved their personality! but something sparked in me when I saw Jo's Docs heels. And then I found a Docs store in Townsville...

117 Charters Towers Road http://www.downesshoes.com.au/

For you, Brenden. I know this would make you smile.

#followalibrary @townsvillelib october 1

2010-09-28T23:36:00.000+10:00

Love your library? Love libraries? Follow a library on twitter on October 1 (that's Friday: three days away)

http://twitter.com/followalibrary/australia (which libraries are on?)

http://stephenslighthouse.com/2010/09/19/international-follow-a-library-day-on-twitter-followalibrary/ (Michael Stephens clip)http://www.followalibrary.blogspot.com/ (poster)

Join twitter and tweet on Friday about your favorite twittering library Use the hashtag #followalibrary in your tweet along with the library's twittername.
Tweeting libraries: encourage users to follow your news and tweets

Choose one or all:

@TownsvilleLib, @mosmanlibrary, @slqld, @nlagovau... just check out the list here: http://twitter.com/followalibrary/australia

NaNoWriMo

2010-09-28T23:02:00.002+10:00

Website will be live next week! Great widgets for participants, and posters for libraries to display to encourage writers http://www.nanowrimo.org/
I'll have to print a few out.
Also: NaNo Young Writers Program: http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/ with workbooks to get your creativity on.

You will write a few words, and then write some more

it's all greek to me

2010-09-22T00:24:00.001+10:00

Information Service Questions of the Day

Late this afternoon I received a phone call from a lady requesting books in other languages.
I began to explain to her that we have books in other languages in each of our branches (Community Languages collection), and was there a particular language she was interested in? She said that she was after books in Greek, and did we have a printed catalogue?
I had a sudden visual memory surge of timber draws with metal handles filled with hole punched index cards in the library of my childhood, but I moved on.
I asked if she had internet access at home so she could look at our online catalogue, but she did not.
I said that I would be happy to show her our catalogue when next she is in the library. ('I' being the collective Information Services team because I move across branches with no set routine, so I was suggesting that anyone on our team will be happy to show her).
It is then that she said that she would like the books for her elderly husband, and that she would like a printout to show him the titles as he is unable to come in.
I had searched on 'Greek' and collection: Community Languages by this time and found 7 titles.
Our Community Languages collection is sourced from SLQ.
I said that we could certainly print out a list of seven titles. As I mentioned our source, my customer asked if she could have a printout of their titles. I thought that might be a different thing entirely, especially in its entirety.
She wanted printouts to show her husband at home. She was particulary keen to see if the titles were in English as well as Greek because she does not speak Greek. She did not want to have to keep coming back asking if we had this title or that title.
After contacting Heather (assistant cataloguer who liaises with SLQ for commlang supplies) I got back to the customer with the relevant information in front of me. A quick search on SLQ's commlang collection found 1604 titles in modern Greek fiction and nonfiction.
I suggested she come in to the library so information services staff could show her the search, she could select a range and we could print out a list.
Of course not all of those from the search are available, but we can sift through to discover which of these we can request for our customer.
Generally our library service has a changeover of languages six monthly, but SLQ is open to requests as necessary.
Our customer was pleased and said that she would visit on Friday. She asked if I would be there. Unfortunately not, but I advised her who would be available that day and have sent that staff member details of our search today.
A bit of a heads up too, because we do not at the moment have printer access from that information services point. Our hard drive was just returned after a ritual cleansing, and the KM guy just said we would be able to find the printer name and add - unfortunately no.
I'd checked everything else with him when he was there. Spydus access, network access, email access, clone screening. Just not the printer *sigh*

Letting the customer know that we can provide her with access to a list of Greek books for her husband was a good result for her, and for us as enhancing the usage of our community language resources is one of our kpi targets. Needs to rise 15%.
Today I contributed to literacy satisfaction and percentages. Yay.

I recently worked with Heather to source nonfiction books in the Urdu language for a customer recently arrived from Pakistan. Our Customer Services team is working on providing a suite of information for our new members from Somalia.

Hey Dorothy, we are not in Maryborough anymore...

SLQ's LOTE collection languages: http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/file/0009/73638/SLQ_-_LOTE_collections_prefix_-_May2008.pdf

* I also had an enquiry from a gentleman about Indigenous resources. I showed him our collection and mentioned similar collections in the other branches. He was very impressed with the range and how it was organised.
This time a nice memory of Kerry, our Indigenous Resources librarian, came to me. She would have been happy that the collection suited the gentleman.
He had a very cute daughter who wanted chapter books and cookery books. I showed her the way and asked what she liked to cook. "Cakes!" We looked through a few and I read out some mouthwatering cake names. She laughed.
Another good day at the office.

townsville stories and townsville authors

2010-09-17T00:24:00.000+10:00

i am discovering more richly evocative townsville literature, thanks to library colleagues who have lived here for longer than I. and soon it will be time again for one title one townsville, which was such a success earlier this year with alex miller's journey to the stone country.

which book will be the one that all townsville reads?

i have most enjoyed estelle pinney's house on the hill because estelle portrayed the multiculturalism of townsville, and her characters covered the landscape well.
the story revolves mostly around a family of women, but the men are also strongly drawn, especially Nicos, the Greek cafe owner and Belle's sometimes lover.

a few weeks ago i smelled the luscious aroma of monsoon season that so beautifully conveys our northern summer mood. it was still autumn.

today i started kay donovan's bush oranges. kay writes the monsoon so beautifully.

For the first two months in Tully it rained every day, sheets of rain. Heavy, drenching rain you couldn't walk through.... The rainforest shaded the house and kept the inside cool and moist, even when the clouds cleared enough to let the tropical sun shine through. (Donovan, 2001, pp 38-39).

Set in the brooding, tempestuous climate of North Queensland from the 1920s to the 1990s... (from jacket blurb)

I love that NQ's climate is tempestuous and the landscape evocative. Not for us the ordinary adjectives like 'liveable' and 'friendly'.

Bush Oranges has multiple female narrators with many local landmarks making the cut: The Strand, Belgian Gardens, the Criterion Hotel, Magnetic Island and Tully. One of my grandmothers was born in Tully, and NQ remains her favourite place. She dreams about it from Brisbane.

With my cataloguing colleague, Anne, I plan to create a local authors/local stories page on the library website where we highlight some evocative Townsville literature from our collection. Although I have not yet read Thea Astley's The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow, I expect we will include that. Thea Astley taught school here and visited the city library here (not in its present location). And of course Janette Turner Hospital, who I understand taught at JCU some time ago.

This is going to be such fun.

be an information services librarian and make a difference

2010-09-05T23:18:00.001+10:00

Darwin's advertising: Reference librarian job description, closes 13 September
Actively participate as a team member and provide outstanding customer service.

Effectively manage reference services and ensure a consistent standard of service delivery across Darwin City Council Libraries.

Fraser Coast's advertising: Information services librarian job description, closes 12 September
The position is responsible for the management and coordination of all functions within the Information & Reference Services section of the Regional libraries. The position is responsible for the organisation, direction and promotion of five (5) discrete operational areas: 1. Reference and information research, 2. Local history, Heritage and Genealogy programs, 3. Community and staff education programs, 4. Statistical monitoring, 5. Cataloguing of specific collections

* and if you're a newgrad or student, participate in the LIS education project survey before 14 September.

#ALIAAccess 2010 Brisbane

2010-09-05T20:27:00.002+10:00

say hello to the future. it was good.
#ALIAAccess group on flickr

highlights:

meeting tweeps @jobeaz, @rachelwray, @newgradlib, and catching up with Jo and Robyn (fraser coast)
Dr Neil Carrington's leadership workshop
Helen Partridge's LIS education project
the massive twitter interaction during the conference (33%+ delegates tweeting) - realtime responses to discussion
north brisbane library visits - checking out design, spaces, information service models, community engagement, staffing, collection development and customer service
the interaction and community atmosphere of many sessions, especially #camp
the walk from Ibis, across the Victoria Bridge to the convention centre - Brisbane turned on beautiful weather

suggestion:

brilliant to have iPads on the perch to play with, but next time - perhaps loan out a few iPads and other devices to delegates in each stream, particularly to newbies so they can tweet intensively in sessions; get a real feel for it.
loan out flipcams so short films can be uploaded to the website (#camp, dinners, the lunch buzz, exhibits)

If delegates haven't used these devices preconference, then actually putting them out there will do more to encourage their use and the influence will spread.

congratulations:

committees did a fabulous job :) thnx

brisbane in september

2010-09-02T20:16:00.000+10:00

will post images from ALIA Access conference to my flickr later. Enjoyed tour of northern libraries, and have many ideas for my information services investigation project and for information services delivery.

more later.

novel writing software

2010-08-23T00:00:00.000+10:00

I started exploring novel writing software today, after seeing a review of Scrivener on Justine Larbalestier's site.
So Scrivener is for Macs, but on their site they list alternatives for Windows. I tried a couple that were freeware, others were 30 day downloads and others you have to buy.

RoughDraft - no longer being developed
WriteWayPro - 30 day demo
Liquid Story Binder - looks incredible, and again available on 30 day demo
PageFour - at first this looked too simplistic to me, but I may need to persevere with it

And then I found I had OneNote on my pc. Has some good features.
The software should really be called 'novel organisation software'.
I'm trialling my character profiles on OneNote and PageFour.

robert frost philosophy

2010-08-21T20:55:00.000+10:00

riddle:
there are several paths to take which will lead you to several different destinations. if you don't try some or all of the paths, how will you know which is the correct destination for you?

answer:it is not the destination that is most important. it is the journey.

joe egg

2010-08-15T00:26:00.001+10:00

Curious. In about 1971 my cousin Susie played the part of Joe Egg in a Townsville theatre production of 'A Day in the Death of Joe Egg'. I only know this because I saw a faded newspaper clipping in a family album. Suse would have been about 10 at the time, living in Townsville in between Moresby and W.A. As far as I know this was her only production. Our cousin Wendy is the actress in the family (she was a brilliant Miss Hannigan!).

That news clipping is, until now, the only time I had ever heard of this play. I have never seen it in production, never heard of it anywhere else. I sought out the playscript out of curiousity some years ago, but that was it. Until today. Forty years after that Townsville production, Joe Egg is on again in Townsville, at The Civic Theatre.
http://www.townsville.qld.gov.au/recreation/theatres/civic/theatreseason
Maybe it's a Townsville theatre classic?

Have you seen Joe Egg performed? When and where?

my grandmother's waitui

2010-08-04T00:11:00.001+10:00

i'm writing a list poem in a workshop exercise and it has turned out to be about my grandmother. it's not as good as the one about my grandfather, but it is only yet a first draft.
my grandparents lived in maroochydore on the sunshine coast where a mcdonalds now stands. They actually had to sell their house in the seventies because mcs wanted their block, and their neighbours'. they moved to toowoomba to be closer to their sons* but their toowoomba house never had the character of maroochydore's waitui.

Waitui was the name of their house, and is a Fijian word meaning ocean or sea. they lived a block from alexandra headland and quite close to cotton tree. in better news, at least one of their previous homes in suva, fiji, is still standing and people still live in it.

my grandfather often greeted us and his sons with Bula Vinaka, which is a hearty hello in fijian. he was a bristol lad who served in the army over there before setting up shop in bulimba. my grandmother was born in suva but was neither fijian fijian or fijian indian. she was a scottish fijian.
*when they moved to toowoomba three of their four sons lived in that very chilly city. none of them do now. sensible lads. two of the sons were born in oz, two in fiji - suva and taveuni. they all have some great stories to tell about growing up in fiji.

goodbye culture portal, hello pandora

2010-07-17T21:45:00.002+10:00

The Culture Portal was a valuable Australian information resource. Was, I say, because it was closed on 1st July. I used it as a resource in my information service work and I was proud that the editor accepted wordbox for inclusion on Culture.gov.au from 2008.

But things change. The interesting moment for me, on finding the CP closed, was that it was then being archived by the National Library of Australia, and therefore available as a 'permanent static resource through PANDORA'.

PANDORA, Australia's Web Archive, is a collection of Australian online publications, established initially by the National Library of Australia in 1996, and now built in collaboration with nine other Australian libraries and cultural collecting organisations. The name, PANDORA, is an acronym that encapsulates our mission: Preserving and Accessing Networked Documentary Resources of Australia.
So, a search on PANDORA through Trove, throws up a list of websites that have also been archived and that included wordbox in their list of information resources. Oh what a tangled and pretty web.

http://trove.nla.gov.au/website/result?q=wordbox4writers
http://trove.nla.gov.au/website/result?q=wordbox

When I started wordbox four years ago it was like a garage band playing to its mates in the suburbs. I was between jobs, tinkering with code and web management, and keen to support young writers. I wanted it online for maximum market penetration; a one-stop information resource for teachers, parents and young people. Authors, librarians and organisations thought the 'box was okay too. So I now have a job, work in the webs, and wordbox is hanging out in all the cool places.

Lovely to see them grow up isn't it :)

some people will love it

2010-07-02T01:55:00.004+10:00

I've been reviewing for various publications for a few years now - mostly young people's literature. I worked in that area of libraries so had open access to the latest. Most of it good. I sought out reviewing opportunities and tried to choose something that I might not usually have chosen to read.
Thus Ben Julien's Runes saga trilogy. I would say that I don't usually read fantasy, but there are always exceptions. I reviewed two and went out and bought the third.
And Suzy Zail's The Tattooed Flower - Zail's memoir of her father, his life shaped by his Holocaust experiences.
I've enjoyed the challenges of writing to various house styles, especially with API which had a strict academic style which included use of footnotes.
Usually I read fiction. Those who never read may dismiss fiction as frivolous, but I find it inherently representational of cultural practices with a strong dose of inquisitiveness and confrontation. You can learn a lot about a culture, and cultural attitudes, by reading the fiction.
In my latest stories to read I have learned a little more about depression, media intrusion (see Loathing Lola for more on this), disability attitudes, bullying and resilience.
I chose Australia Dances from M/C because it is completely outside my comfort zone. Nonfiction, and about dancing. I respect the form, it's not as if I'm reviewing a rugby league biography! I danced as a child - ballet and jazz ballet - but I hardly think doing the 'scarecrow dance' will have prepared me for this book. So I will read it with a fresh perspective.
Librarians, teachers and parents, and readers in general are the people who read reviews to find out what's worth buying. It's important to me to write a real review and not some gushing adjectival dump of praise. If the reviewer doesn't like the book they ought to say so, but constructively. Similarly, if the book's good, articulate why and how. It may be the tipping point in the customer's decision.
I was disappointed with Steven Herrick's Slice, so I'm going to have to justify that opinion. Because some people will love it. Was expectation a factor? Yes. I think his verse novels are beyond brilliant. This was his first YA prose novel, second prose novel overall. But it was more than it not being a verse novel. I'll explore all the issues in my review for CMISFF*

* update 3/6 - in writing the review I realised the strength of Slice is the strong father-son dynamic. The title and blurb do the book no favours.

Read Rob Rimmer's balanced review of Slice on M/C.

I chose Shark Girl because it's a verse novel from an author I hadn't read before, and The Worst Thing She Ever Did because I knew nothing about the plot and was incredibly curious. What did she do?? Both great books, and I'm very pleased I've read them.

There are some common desirables in a review which I use to best illuminate the quality of the story - mentions of viewpoint, intended audience, character and plot development, setting, stylistic devices, authenticity, comparisions to other similar tales (if these exist), points of difference, and presentation (particulary for picture storybooks and nonfiction).

But, inject your own personality into the review too. Just don't let it overshadow the review - like this grandfather about Lewis' The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe:

“I bought these books to have something nice to read to my grandkids. I had to stop, however, because the books are nothing more than advertisements for “Turkish Delight,” a candy popular in the U.K."

Is there a particular reviewer you follow? Or a brilliant review you've read? Share it here.

in brisbane june 19-22

2010-06-22T19:01:00.000+10:00

Kurilpa Bridge
Ron Mueck exhibition at GoMA
Chapel Hill
Leading Library Teams workshop at the Mercure Hotel
Airtrain

... and I put the finishing touches to my Brisbane poem on the plane on the way home. now i have to send it out in the world.

not before time

2010-06-14T08:00:00.001+10:00

i've finally organised myself to add photos to my flickr space.

slice

2010-06-11T17:00:00.005+10:00

this cover could only have been more perfect if steven herrick's new YA novel was a verse novel, because here I blogged about verse novels in summer watermelon moments, and of course mentioned steven herrick.

but, read anyway. it's steven herrick.

oscar

2010-06-06T15:30:00.011+10:00

Life is too important to be taken seriously -- Oscar Wilde

one year in townsville

2010-06-05T15:35:00.011+10:00

i arrived back in townsville to live a year ago today.
things i like about townsville -
* the sultry wet season (and the resulting literature)
* the tropical palms and gardens
* cycle/walking tracks everywhere
* the sunny winter
* view from the strand
* choice of restaurants from a variety of cultures, especially thai
* fresh made sushi from cherry blossom
* calm looming mountains and the colours of Castle Hill
* so many events, plays, festivals...
* the university
* three libraries
* the incredible people i work with
* our place

you will live in townsville indefinitely (at least until you forget how ghastly packing and unpacking is)

what do you love about your town?

the benjamin andrew footpath library now in brisbane

2010-05-31T20:34:00.001+10:00

http://footpathlibrary.org/index.html

I first heard about the Footpath Library earlier this year so was excited to hear that it had now branched out to Brisbane. Immediately after I sent an email to colleagues about it two came up to me to say what a wonderful idea and if it ever branches out to Townsville they'll be there to help. I had mentioned the TBAFL to another colleague a while ago when she had discussed her idea of setting up a bookclub for homeless people. We have very caring library staff.

So the TBAFL is in Brisbane now, as well as Melbourne and Sydney, with Bernadette Franzoni on the management team. Bernadette has been a young people's librarian and worked on the Summer Reading Club project, so many would know her.

Fiona Crawford, TBAFL Communications Manager, has let me know that in Brisbane TBAFL installs and stocks bookshelves in hostels and community organisations. They have enough volunteers at the moment but Fiona said that they would always appreciate if people wanted to run book drives. Book donation guidelines are on the website.
Knitters alert - The TBAFL will also happily accept knitted scarves and beanies.

Can you support the TBAFL's work with donations of books or knits?
Check here for a simple knitted beanie pattern: http://www.knitting-and.com/knitting/patterns/hats/footyhat.htm

And, stay warm. It's cold outside.

M/C

2010-05-31T20:20:00.003+10:00

I've signed on as a reviewer at M/C through QUT Creative Industries - Sue Bond is the words editor. Sue reviews for The Courier Mail, among many other publications, and it was she who put me onto API years ago. My review links will be posted on this entry: Reviews.
Still writing for CMIS Fiction Focus too, because Alison and Jean are awesome!

826 valencia pirates!

2010-05-31T09:45:00.001+10:00

I am seriously impressed with Dave Eggers' pirate shopfront for writing workshops and tutoring for young people: http://www.826valencia.org/ via @cmisevalff via @GuardianBooks

http://www.fightingwords.ie/index.php - Sean Love & Roddy Doyle's Fighting Words in Dublin

Katie Waldegrave's First Story in London and Oxford.

in Australia - westside Fremantle Children's Literature Centre Inc, and eastside The Edge.

writing real lives

2010-05-28T17:01:00.094+10:00

can historians write literary narrative? can writers write history if they're not historians? do you have to know your real subject to write about them? what methods are used to capture the real life on the page?

three queensland writers opened up to their audience last night at thuringowa library to reveal the essence of creative nonfiction and their work within the genre.

Bob James spoke about his oral history project for his masters' at James Cook University on the Gugu Badhun people. Over a three year period he conducted many interviews, attended many camps, and took many photographs to produce a historical work with the voices of the people involved faithfully recorded.

Deborah Carlyon spoke about her journey to realisation of her book Mama Kuma: One woman, two cultures - an exploration of her Papua New Guinean grandmother's tribal life. This book was awarded the Queensland Premiers Literary Awards (2001) for an Emerging Queensland Author. Deborah interviewed her grandmother while she was still living, and then interviewed family members from their PNG village, as well as researching in libraries and archives to establish facts and dates to satisfy a western audience's demand.
She noted that the PNG villagers were not so concerned with pinpointing dates and ages.
She had asked 'how old was Mama Kuma when that happened?' and received the response, 'she didn't have breasts then, she was still a girl'.

Dr Lindsay Simpson spoke about her path to nonfiction writing. She has written about famous and infamous people, some she has met, others she has not. Coming from a journalistic background and working as a court reporter, Dr Simpson developed a love for finding out more. she said that a newspaper feature was not big enough - she needed to move into books.
she has interviewed prisoners in jail, researched, learned to dive when she was writing about a diver, and has co-written with other authors. Dr Simpson is currently Head of Journalism at James Cook University.

An inspiring evening, organised by the fabulous Lifelong Learning Team at CityLibraries Townsville.

free rice

2010-05-24T23:18:00.000+10:00

Have you played Free Rice lately?

in the punk salon

2010-05-24T09:03:00.004+10:00

now there's an in-your-face label ; not library 2.0 or contemporary practices.

Feel empowered to try new things

you're a libpunk!

let's not follow the old ways just because we think we don't have time to think about better ways.
libpunk-it-up and 'increase social capital' (Kathryn Greenhill)

don't dismiss twitter because you think it's inane. find out how your library can use it positively. @townsvillelib started off small, but we responded to tweets from people in townsville with information (about the weather, about sushi bars, about cultural highlights, about how to use twitter). incite published @nealthorley's article* about our twitter/web 2.0 use and ABC aired a story about social media use with input from @warrencheetham** after information exchange on twitter. we now also tweet about events and collections, and have a growing list of followers.

* Information delivery and web 2.0 - 31 (4), p. 18 (ALIA members' access, or through databases)
** read more on Warren's blog

Paul Hagon's LP. Michael Stephens, Helene Blowers, all LP. and Comrade Harps.

and again: what Kathryn said:

Librarians using non-proprietary products and groupings not based on institutional alliances to practice their craft and communicate their practice. Open, collaborative enterprises based not on making money, but often on increasing social capital or extending knowledge

more here: Informing Thoughts, Library Attack, Sarah Glassmeyer,

your challenge for the month (if you're not already LP): libpunk-it-up a little more

and tell me about it. What makes you libpunk?

image source : DMUSA store - red mcmarten tartan

townsville!

2010-05-22T00:29:00.003+10:00

miniature roses in my back garden

the Saint on Castle Hill, viewed from Queen's Gardens
- replaced a question mark
- created by Uni pranksters nearly fifty years ago
- I like it, like I like Arthur Stace's Eternity

and 'image' that was all around Maryborough
[The Legend of the Saint, on Q150 digital stories]

tranquil tropical gardens

the sorted books project

2010-05-21T22:06:00.000+10:00

http://tiny.cc/qsmwm

and from the black books i'm reading this month - place these titles beside each other:

one foot wrong / rebel

and i've always shelved two particular autobiographies together on my shelf:

paula yates / is that it?

your sorted book titles?

edward scissorhands was an editor

2010-05-14T07:00:00.001+10:00

Cut here

Townsville’s literary scene is shaping up well. Workshops and events all over the calendar – and this is one you won’t want to miss. Shelley Kenigsberg will be at Thuringowa Central library on Saturday 29 May with her workshop The Kindest Cut: Editing for Writers. Fiction and non-fiction writers at any stage of development should book in now through QWC because your work’s going to come out looking shapelier. More balanced.

I have the impression from Shelley’s work that a good editor is like an author’s inner Edward Scissorhands. The Ed. works with the author to shape, to cut, to build, to capture a rhythm, to ensure the emergence of the true work. They realize a vision together – and that’s a win for readers because they don’t have to chew through a tangle of redundant words, images and characters to get to the meat.

Every word its place. In Shelley’s workshop writers will examine elements such as writing style and word choice, voice, viewpoint, dialogue, beginnings, ends and middles, flow, balance and structure. Shelley freelances, and is also owner of SK Publishing and coordinator of the Macleay College Diploma in Book Editing and Publishing. She has developed and presented courses for editors globally. She even edits in paradise!

Some of us have a few squiggles and a bit of knowledge in our repertoire to handle copy editing – fixing grammar, spelling and semantics errors. Structural editing? It can make a book fly! And readers certainly notice if the editing hasn’t been much chop. Shelley quotes Le Guin quoting Chekhov when she advocates cutting out your first three pages to find where your story really begins. I’m still editing my 22ish line poem about Brisbane after fabulous structural editing advice from Julie Beveridge. Editing’s a journey.

If you’re ready to take that journey, book through QWC for the Townsville workshop.

Develop your passion - check out the Society of Editors and pop The Style Manual in your pocket.

And don’t be shy. If you go to Shelley’s workshop – tell me how amazing your work is post-edit.

For this post I'm guest blogging for QWC - check out the Empty Page Blog

writers in townsville

2010-05-13T01:18:00.001+10:00

this month in townsville - Alex Miller (Journey to the Stone Country) and Narelle Oliver (Fox and Fine Feathers).

Townsville recently joined a small Australian list of cities running the One Book One City concept with Alex Miller's JTTSC for One Book One Townsville. Alex hosted a book discussion at Riverway and a writers' workshop in Flinders Street library - both well attended.Salisbury runs OBOC. Brisbane used to until the great Malouf v. Sparrow debate and it split into a writing competition called One Book Many Brisbanes where the resulting book has short stories featuring Brisbane.
So now Townsville joins this list. Where else in Australia is this done? The US has a website to list all the OBOC sites/books. In May One Book One Twitter is on.
What will Townsville read next?

And Narelle Oliver is in town this week for the Books North literature festival. Narelle grew up in and around Toowoomba a little before me. Her most recent book Fox and Fine Feathers is on the shortlist for the CBC Awards. This is a wonderful opportunity for Townsvillians to meet this incredibly talented Australian writer/illustrator, and to learn from her work.
I met her in Mackay some years ago at a SLAQ conference where she talked to us about the process of her work being used as design in the children's area at Brisbane Square Library.
My favourite: The Best Beak in Boonaroo Bay - because it's set at the beach, and it's fun.

in the playhouse

2010-05-03T22:07:00.001+10:00

i feel that i never get to enough plays, so to have eight in one hit puts my annual total up a bit. this is the weekend i was waiting all year for, since i moved here.
the north queensland festival of one-act plays over two nights at the civic theatre was as good as i'd hoped. i don't know which play or performances won yet (didn't stay for the decision) but i know which ones i liked. i remember going to either the first or second festival years ago when wendy was teaching drama at st margaret mary's (this was the 17th) and the audience was much larger.
i was disappointed with the size of the audience this time. hardly any young people and possibly lacking in many of the local school drama departments' students and teachers (although the weekend clashed with groovin the moo at murray, so maybe that was where they all were?)

my pick for best play: jabberwocky by ken cotterill with community theatre.
my pick for best actors (several): emma davis in sorry wrong number (as well as several of the operators) by columba catholic college and both esme mullens and lyn tarring in townsville little theatre's garbage by helen wyngard.
no idea about best direction (there were many good elements).

synopses:
mitch and miranda (community theatre) - effective use of breaking the fourth wall, and repetition with a twist in the end that i did not see coming.

lee (kumcom theatre) - interesting use of old film to introduce the play (subject - who really killed jfk?) but it went on too long. the man and lee were very powerful characters.

heedless spirits (pimlico state high) - good cast (4 f, 2 m) but the synopsis didn't match what i saw in the end - while i heard that julia was no longer in love with dave, when he came to sit next to her at the end (in a very smooth move), she looked bashful rather than indifferent. the interaction between the girls was brilliant though.

jabberwocky (community theatre) - excellent absurdist theatre! i absolutely loved the woman who was not there, especially her rhythmic spoken word dance act - he beats her / every night / bam / bam (cheryl maddox). the poor man! he eventually gave in to 'the force from outside' and staggered off stage at a 45 degree angle. the waitress was good too with line delivery.

the shed (townsville little theatre) - clever, a one act play with two sets.

sorry wrong number (columba catholic college) - excellent lighting and direction. mrs stevenson was in bed, only used her upper body, only ever used the telephone. no walking, just lots of talking (and shouting and one very effective scream). each telephone operator was stagelit at their turn at one side of the stage. there were some very funny accents and mannerisms. it was very dial m for murder. the sound of the train and the deep-voiced man at the end were very chilling. lovely to see mrs stevenson alive after curtain fall to come in to the audience for the next play!

garbage (townsville little theatre) - strong audience support from tlt members. lyn tarring as florrie probably had the most heartrending stage speech of the festival. as both florrie and sniffy left the stage (at different times), i would have probably made a point of writing that both of them had left their homes or once had homes. it was a point made for florrie, but i don't remember it for sniffy. mags, who liked the open space never left the stage.

three brilliant performances coming up in the year for the school's program too.
the gruffalo, an adaptation of the picture book by julia donaldson and axel scheffler.
special delivery, a visual comedy.
and something i highly recommend (i saw these performers at out of the box 2006) - tashi!! two tales from imaginary theatre and anna and barbara fienberg's tashi stories.

thanks, townsville theatre community!

added notes 5.5.10: Results published so far

Congratulations to Columba Catholic College students involved in the Townsville Festival of One Act Plays held over the May Day Long Weekend. The play “Sorry, Wrong Number” won the award for the Best Production – Junior Section; Best Director – Junior Section; and Best Crew – Festival.

black is the new black

2010-04-26T23:16:00.001+10:00

two black books arrived in the mail for me from Jean and Alison at CMIS - and I love them both. The Black Book of Colours, proclaimed as innovative and groundbreaking across the world, incorporates Braille text with white typeset text against completely black pages. the right side of each double spread has raised black line drawings depicting the imagery of the text. i like that thomas finds red 'as sweet as watermelon'.

Rebel is the second in a quadrilogy by R.J. Anderson, and I'm finding faeries quite intriguing. they're edgy, they've got attitude, and they're living among us. look out! a wonderful antidote to those syrupy daisy meadows creatures.

i couldn't find a black enough image of The Black Book. the image above is from a review by Leanne Hall here.

have you read these books? what do you think of them? tell me.

where's your poetry wall?

2010-04-14T00:28:00.000+10:00

http://bit.ly/b6pqPn
Rebecca's young poets have created ephemeral poetry on their green fence. Love that a whole lot, Bec.
I will have to dig out a photo of the green chalk board at our place in Maryborough, and will have to get one at our new Townsville place.
Is yours a chalkboard? Or black ink poems on the walls and doors (ala QWC Metro Arts - if I'm remembering correctly Kate?) Or post-it notes on the wall? Framed poems? Projected on the wall? Projected on the side of a building?
Has anyone got a poem on their table?
I created a story lamp once, and made poetry jeans (slide 9/14), inspired by Joanna's storylamp, but I'd like a poetry table!
My new desk at work has light coloured timber... hmmm

Send in your wall photos and celebrate poetry month - wherever you are in the world

another fortune cookie message

2010-04-08T22:45:00.000+10:00

the next month will bring great change.

love it!

whose role is it anyway?

2010-03-17T22:11:00.002+10:00

Synopsis: The issue of accepting interlibrary loan requests for textbooks from tertiary students at a public library has stimulated debate on whether the public library should or shouldn't, with or without conditions.
And yes, considering ALIA's standards, SLQ's standards and guidelines, the Australian ILRS code, the library's CDP and mission statement.

Question: What is your public library's guideline on this issue?

Please add your comment below, or email me at wordbox@live.com.au(nospam)
Usual disclaimer: remove (nospam) from the address - make your spam into poetry but not for me.

Thanks!

librarything thing

2010-03-17T21:11:00.004+10:00

LibraryThing for Libraries is compatible with Spydus, so it's on my wish list, and now they have Library Anywhere which looks delicious.

Dreaming of future times with an upgrade, I've set up an LT staff site, and a top reads site which lists our most popular borrowed titles each week. We already submit to the the local newspaper's Saturday books page and have listed the titles on our website.
The LT thing is to encourage more interactivity, discussion and wide reading, and to promote use of LT by customers. There's RSS and events/venue listings, reviews, librarysharing, discussions and challenges...

In January's Booklist, Joyce Saricks* is imploring librarians to 'make a list (of titles you read last year), put the titles on a display, add them to your blog... and don't forget to start keeping your list for next year'. Hm. Do it in LibraryThing! It's so much more amazing.

I thought I had our top reads site all swish, especially after excellent coding advice from Jean at CMIS and Neal. I linked the books to the record on our catalogue like Jean does for reviewers. Tested at home and at work - all pretty. Until a very helpful email from Jean who uses Firefox and wasn't getting the link. Hm. I do remember that advice now from Setting up a website 101.

More helpful coding advice from Jean which I will test tomorrow (or later in the week because I'm a bit over coding right now) should see the links working with both Explorer and Firefox. Hope.
Harps, do you have FF (you couldn't access the link on: http://bit.ly/dkn5Ra )?
And probably the links on our top5 webpage don't work in FF either. Hm.

Here's my LT with no trickyschmicky catalogue links: librarianalison on LT (note to self - you're a bit behind in adding titles!)

Ancient memory: A blip in time before I started to get into creating sites on my miniscule scale, I did some training with Melanie Hassell at UQG who told us of having to learn html to write the whole page/s. Thank you technical people behind the scenes who do all the hard work now so we just have to understand code and maybe just write a little. you're awesome!**

* Saricks, J. January 1 & 15, 2010. At Leisure. Booklist. 106 (9-10) p. 41.
** tried to be clever here and put in junk code around 'you're awesome': couldn't 'cause blogger turns it into links. clever blogger.

poetry walls!

2010-03-09T00:11:00.000+10:00

http://bit.ly/9EXzRQ
Rebecca Newman's called the chalkboard on her back fence a poetry wall! Love it!

I have magnetic poetry words on my filing cabinet in the library for us all to play with. I want the large magnetic poetry words. I saw them online once, and being used by people in a park (possibly NY?).
If anyone has photos of the poetry walls at QWC at Metro Arts, send them!
Where's your poetry wall and what have you created on it?

and I guest blog @ Sally Murphy's about children's poetry

2010-03-06T11:00:00.001+10:00

Shout about it! Sally Murphy has a new book out - Toppling; a verse novel. To celebrate its release Sally asked authors, readers, teachers and librarians to participate in a blog tour on her blog during March.
We were asked to respond to the topic, What I like about children's poetry.
Here's my post from over there (reposted below) - check Sally's blog during March for others' musings on children's poetry. And read Toppling!

summer watermelon moments

What fun to be guest blogging on Sally’s site on what I like about children’s poetry!
I like the zing of verse novels; their raw emotional intensity. They look just like other novels sitting on the shelf, but open them and you find words, carefully chosen words strung together in free verse with the power to crumple your heart and open your mind.

I discovered YA verse novels while working in a school library, first Steven Herrick’s, then Margaret Wild and Catherine Bateson’s titles. I was amazed how these authors could tell such compelling tales using so few words and so much white space. On the first page the reader is introduced to the characters, the narrator and the situation and then quickly flung into the action. The reader feels a part of this wild ride. It can be a quick read because of the economy of words, but intense.

Children love poetry written for them because it speaks of their experiences, their lives. Think of Laura Purdie Salas’ Stampede!: Poems to celebrate the wild side of school. And to have these poems read aloud or performed! Audiences quickly make the connection that poetry is life captured on the page (or stage). Congratulations to Sally, who’s adding to the genre with Toppling.

My challenge: add a poetry wall to your home, your school, your place of work. Encourage people to write their poems in ink, on postcards or post-its, or project poems onto the surface. Use magnetic poetry. Poetry forces you to clarify your thoughts.
Just like that pure moment when you bite into your first summer watermelon!

check out a verse novel - and feel yourself falling into the story

Best wishes Sally!

best how-to books ever

2010-03-05T21:04:00.002+10:00

a kick in the head and a a poke in the eye - dangerous stuff!

And there's also:
The Mentor Kit for young poets at Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Awards
The Australian Poetry Centre
Poem in your Pocket Day
the fridge

which poems do you enjoy (writing or reading)? tell me do.

the little library in little street (circa 1980s)

2010-03-01T19:24:00.006+10:00

View Larger Map

... just working out how to add Google Maps code to a webpage so that I can use it on our library's site. The red pin came across on this one, but not on the one I did earlier today. Frustrating? Yes. A good challenge? Yes.
The Council built the bigger library in Victoria Street in about 1990 (late 80s?) - two storeys plus a covered carpark.

Laurel Bank Park used to have an amazing playground with some whizzy spinny dizzy things, and there is also a sensory garden in the park. And statues. I must visit again sometime, preferably during Carnival.

View Larger Map

aha! figured it out I think. will test tomorrow at work.

mall sprite

2010-02-28T19:27:00.001+10:00

blush

2010-02-27T22:02:00.000+10:00

just checking

2010-02-27T21:35:00.003+10:00

brand yourself a librarian or with one of these?

fail

2010-02-27T20:12:00.001+10:00

Rhett Butler fails as a reference librarian!

Customer: "Where do I find "Gone with the Wind?"

Rhett: "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."

via 'Fat' in comments at Faith and Theology.

poetry on saturday

2010-02-20T12:00:00.000+10:00

library shelves full

serendipity guides her
haiku poetry

the first day

2010-02-16T23:23:00.001+10:00

the first day of an awfully big adventure

poetry on saturday

2010-02-13T12:00:00.008+10:00

Adelaide and Bazaar Streets, Maryborough

poetry on saturday

2010-02-06T12:00:00.004+10:00

remembering Maryborough's and Toowoomba's much-anticipated November splashes of colour

microfiction - 100 words

2010-02-05T12:00:00.004+10:00

wrote this back in '05 for BWF's microfiction comp, with Live 8 in mind.

Gyr8

She swirled those liquid hips, sending moving images through her phone of an historic day to friends stuck indoors. Many vibrant, politically savvy people (and those who knew a Woodstock when they saw one) were captured on live streams, telecasts and phone screens that Saturday. Mass consumption in response to mass famine. Music can do that.

It’s about the faces in the crowd, names on the list, inroads made on the long walk to justice. Too young for Live Aid ’85, now it’s her time to make a difference.

While packing her bag she texts home: ‘I’m moving 2 Africa’.

love is all around

2010-02-03T23:43:00.001+10:00

our library is running a mini-romance writing competition - 50 words, no more, no less - for Library Lovers Day (valentines day for you other romantics) !!
what fun!
more fun today - critically examined the reference serials collection with Julie, and cleared a few shelves ready for those car manuals that are so hugely popular. another day's work ahead with this (that's just serials, then comes the whole reference collection x 3 branches).
yesterday - smart service training with a stash of great ideas for customer service and working to improve kpi outcomes.
tomorrow - feeling the love at a staff meeting, then updating website with a prac student from CSU and our fabulous trainee Bonnie
tomorrow tomorrow - collection development meeting all day - good to have at the beginning of the year so we can get on with it.

2010 is getting better every day.

now if only i can finish that poem / write that guest blog post / get into that literature research / register for that writing class / get that next book to review / and review it / get into the novel / write that mini-romance / and get going on the 10 000 steps challenge / then I can tick February off as a big success.

what are your personal goals for February?

librarything is so much prettier

2010-02-02T23:25:00.001+10:00

the tower of books on my bedside table is growing...

for Henry Rogers b. 1892, Bristol

2010-01-30T18:50:00.002+10:00

during a 2008 workshop with Ross Clarke in which we wrote poems using objects associated with a person, where the arrangement of objects would show how we felt about that person.

my grandfather’s house,Waitui,
on Parker Street -
shells collected over several visits
scattered by the door,
bucket and spade still sandy,
the Hillman Hunter, rusted.
Inside, barley sugars by his bed for a treat
books tipping over on the shelves
and a whiskey glass by his chair,
empty now.

microfiction - 100 words

2010-01-30T18:26:00.002+10:00

long stretch

As she sat on the couch watching her medical drama, he swept through like a whirlwind. She heard “… going for a run,” as he passed in a blur. His itchy feet were pounding down the road before she could even respond.

He felt the whip of the wind and heard conversations buzz as he moved along at increasing speed. Chasing dreams, his heart beat the bass while his pumping limbs thrashed out a furious rhythm.

He ran to escape her slothfulness, but in the end – when her measured doses of arsenic finally kicked in – he lay perfectly still.

poetry on saturday

2010-01-30T17:31:00.001+10:00

librarything is my new thing

2010-01-28T21:56:00.001+10:00

just started Estelle Pinney's House on the Hill - set in Townsville. Fabulous characters so far, and check this from page 27: In the early 1920s Townsville was a melange of graceful stone architecture, wandering suburbs, jerry-built stores, balconied hotels and a sweeping waterfront called the Strand. The town was a mosaic of colours and creeds and down the long main street the torrid air was rich with a cacaphony of different tongues.

Also has luscious descriptions of frangipanis and the monsoon.
I shall have to add a new collection to my librarything, maybe 'Townsville literature' ?

Warren mentioned David Williamson's play/screenplay Travelling North as another story featuring the wet season. I remember seeing the film some years ago.
Which books have you read featuring Townsville or NQ, and particularly with rich visual descriptions? Tell me!

And yes, I will be incorporating librarything into reading promotion for our staff. Looking forward to the day we upgrade to the Spydus version that can incorporate LT.

frantic wet wednesday - librarydayinthelife 3

2010-01-27T22:17:00.002+10:00

I got to work dry, but then mid-morning it started bucketing down and didn't let up until dark. I had left my umbrella in the car. Hmm.
I was on an Information Services shift until 1pm. Talked with a wonderful 90 year-old lady about her war service in Scotland where she worked on Spitfires! She was keen to book for a beginner's computer class as her son had recently given her his old model.
Another lady wanted to borrow any Janet Evanovich novels we had because she'd read her first and it made her 'laugh out loud in bed'. We had a couple on the shelf, and I reserved others because she's a popular author and the rest were out.
Another lady rang to find further information on edelweiss flowers. They are an alpine flower, quite rare, growing in Italy (among other European countries). I gathered this information from a number of authoritive websites, and the response delighted her because it fitted in with what she remembered of stories her Italian mother had told her when she was small. She is now writing a chapbook of poems, in Italian, and wanted to feature the edelweiss.

I fielded a couple of enquiries from circ staff who noted that renewals were being dated at 6 weeks instead of four, something I corrected in our Spydus loan policies area.

I discussed the coming roster with Robin, and really have to get it out tomorrow.

Tried to access our new intranet site but am locked out - emails flying back and forth now.

James made me envious when he showed off his new Kindle DX (??) complete with ancient dictionary which values precision in word use. We discussed LibraryThing over lunch, and discovered a mutual admiration for Wodehouse.

More information service tomorrow, and ....

working from home - librarydayinthelife 2

2010-01-25T11:53:00.004+10:00

I have a day's leave, and I had some great things planned like heading up to The Strand but I've been rained in. I rescued the clothes dripping on the line and stuck them in the dryer. They were well rinsed.

Then, onto work. I set up a meeting for Friday, checked emails and forwarded one from Civica on. I started working on the next fortnightly roster on the weekend and am now inking it in. We have rather a few too many staff unavailable and on leave again, plus some at meetings (including me for two days in the first week - one for our new team that will focus on kpis, and the other is a collection development workshop for which I'll be banking an RDO). The interesting thing here is the opportunity to help shape the direction of the service.

Our fortnightly roster covers three branches and twenty-five staff. Shifts are usually three or four hours and we're introducing virtual information service into that. Some staff can work across three branches, others one or two. Some people's usual work is more portable than others (my huge black bag is my portable office but my laptop is rather too heavy so I usually hotdesk). If someone is in a particular branch for children's programs, or computer classes or meetings, if I need them for IS that day I have to try to roster them on at that branch so that we don't have too many staff travelling between branches unnecessarily.

Tomorrow is the public holiday for Australia Day and the only work-related thing I may be doing is reading a book. I've just finished Boori Monty Pryor's Maybe Tomorrow (he's a North Queenslander).

Right now I have to finish off the review I'm writing on Sue Lawson's After for CMIS Focus on Fiction. Deadlines!

wet season

2010-01-24T23:47:00.004+10:00

mt stuart in the rain

on a night like this everyone stood in their doorways, looking out, looking up. the pregnant clouds were dumping swimming pools-worth of rain straight down. puddles were forming around houses, lakes too. people stuck their hands out in it, their faces, some even danced about. eventually, with more of the same, each person closed his door and headed for bed. each lay there, smiling inwardly, listening to the rhythm on his roof. one thought of her clothes still on the line, getting an extra rinsing.

on a day like this she walked through the clumps of eucalyptus gums, past the paperbarks and crocodile infested waters. she marvelled at baby koalas, patted grey kangaroos, and stood in awe of the mud-covered water buffalo as he emerged from his pond. what she most enjoyed on her morning visit to Billabong Sanctuary was the sultry rain that fell, the plump, warm drops that drizzled down, later, as she enjoyed tea on the open verandah the steady shower turned to a bucketing that sent people rushing for cover. the red-tailed black cockatoo had his crest slicked down with the rain. his attempts to fluff his crest back up were futile. glorious rain!

librarydayinthelife 1

2010-01-23T00:24:00.005+10:00

I'm no. 61 on the list of librarians from various countries participating in round 4 of Librarydayinthelife - where a collection of librarians shout out about their day/week in the library.

I'm Alison and I'm an Information Services Librarian at a public library service in north Queensland. I graduated from Charles Sturt University in April '09 and started my professional job search.

I started out as an assistant in a primary school library in central Queensland, created wordbox4writers, while on the Fraser Coast, and am now in my element as ISL in NQ.

If Librarydayinthelife had been on last week I would have written about the mammoth job of weeding stack NF and stack REF. The week ahead promises a lot of information service with our fabulous public. Welcome to a week in the life of a librarian. Check out the wiki for links to other librarians' days and weeks.

reviews

2010-01-22T01:02:00.011+10:00

CMIS Fiction Focus (print and online)
Slice: Juicy Moments from my Impossible Life by Steven Herrick, 2010 at CMIS Resource Bank
Shark Girl by Kelly Bingham, 2010 at CMIS Resource Bank
The Worst Thing She Ever Did by Alice Kuipers, 2010 at CMIS Resource Bank
Rebel by R.J. Anderson, 2010 at CMIS Resource Bank
The Black Book of Colours by Menena Cottin, 2010 at CMIS Resource Bank
After by Sue Lawson, 2010, available online at CMIS Resource Bank
End of the Alphabet by Fleur Beale, 2010, available online at CMIS Resource Bank

M/C Reviews: Words
Australia Dances: Creating Australian Dance 1945-1965 by Allan Brissenden and Keith Glennon, 2010, available online at M/C Reviews

Allen and Unwin Teachers Reviews
The Winds of Heaven by Judith Clarke, 2009, available online
Mouse Noses on Toast by Daren King, 2007, available online

Writing Queensland, QWC
The Runes of Odin by Ben Julien, issue 164, July 2007, p20.

VATE Newsletter
The Peach Season by Debra Oswald, no. 4, September 2007.
The Tattooed Flower: A Memoir by Suzy Zail, no. 4, September 2007.
The Secrets of Eromanga by Sheryl Gwyther, no. 3, June 2007.
The Legacy of Odin by Ben Julien, no. 3, June 2007.

API Review of Books, Curtin University of Technology, W.A.
No Place Like Home: Australian stories by young writers aged 8-21 years, edited by Sonja Dechian, Jenni Devereaux, Heather Millar and Eva Sallis, issue 44, July 2006.
Available online

Aussie Reviews
Platypus Deep by Jill Morris, June 2006. Available online
Bertie and the Bear by Pamela Allen, April 2006. Available online

tropical summer mood

2010-01-01T17:07:00.003+10:00

the strand on sunday 27 december

north queensland's wet season began on christmas night and it's been quite unlike anything i've experienced. almost immediately, and certainly after a week of night rain, i felt that the weather was actually a character in this story we live. it has substance enough to be a character, more correctly i should say it provides an incredible sense of atmosphere or setting - it is full with passion and outbursts of frangipani blossoms.

frangipanis blooming at the strand

my attention has particularly been on rainfall as i have been pool-sitting for friends and have been careful to keep the level just so. the record-breaking torrential rain of Wednesday night/Thursday morning (206.8mm - Townsville's wettest December day) was described as a deluge, and yes, it filled that pool up well. required a few bomb dives to get it down a little for the next deluge.

it's been a while since i've lived in a place with weather. weather so pervading that it can be described in innumerable ways and can provide direction for people's lives. toowoomba had the fog that descended and made people huddle close. no such thing as central heating, we had a kerosene heater that we would huddle around, first to roast our backs and then our fronts.
dalby just had 'hot weather' - nothing atmospheric about it. maryborough's weather was so mild that we forgot all about seasons. winter was a few days of wearing an extra layer (it was really nothing after having experienced toowoomba's weather). both myall creek and mary river flooded while i was in those towns, and those were certainly events, but not annual.

now to townsville where the wet season is something anticipated, discussed, warned about, but must be experienced. the vibrancy and deluge of this tropical atmosphere immediately led me to question who has written about this season, this atmosphere, this northern summer mood?
i remembered thea astley and had heard of ian townsend. i have borrowed affection from our library and am seeking out astley's hunting the wild pineapple, it's raining in mango, girl with a monkey for their north queensland settings. i want to feel how they convey this incredible atmosphere. affection has a tag line: 'there is no cure'. that could be said for becoming a north queenslander, and certainly a townsvillian. there is no cure. i love it here.

can anyone recommend other stories with NQ, particularly Townsville as a setting, particularly with the atmosphere used to effect?

on a night like this

2009-12-21T21:34:00.002+10:00

I wish Kathleen Noonan would write a book - her articles in The Courier Mail are so poetic.
Read her latest, then close your eyes and compose your own stories starting with her first line 'on a night like this'.
Then send them to me in the comments, 'cause you know I love to read.

always a surprise

2009-12-21T21:22:00.002+10:00

was surprised on the weekend to read that Rod Stewart was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2001. he can still sing.
laughed ironically with this article though - fine needle aspiration is a 'virtually painless procedure'. dreaming.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/spotlight/2001-02-22-stewart-thyroid.htm

happy christmas!

2009-12-17T22:04:00.005+10:00

just wanted to share my secret santa story. it can be difficult to find a special gift for a colleague (or classmate if you're at school) for under $10. the person who got the gift i bought liked it (i was eavesdropping) *whew*. and then i received these little figurines - the largest is only about 5 centimetres high - wrapped in a beautiful little red recycled paper bag. i immediately set the little nativity scene up for others to enjoy. i think i know who gifted it, but i haven't been able to catch up with her yet to say thanks - but i could be wrong of course!

thank you secret santa!

it's very sweet.

and starting this saturday down at the strand, townsville has http://www.stableonthestrand.com.au/ - an interactive nativity scene transporting you back to the day. i haven't seen it yet, but there was a similar production in maryborough - get in amongst it.

before our christmas morning tea and secret santa we had our last full staff meeting for the year. our ceo and director attended and listened to us all talk up our service. harps, i mentioned you in my spun conference report - with your library launching IM use. were your ears burning?

If I don't get this book for Christmas I'll be very surprised:

It's probably under the tree already. I'm a very bad gift buyer. I always get given much better gifts than i receive. i just don't shop. or i think - i'll come back later and get that. don't be like me!

Happy Christmas everyone, and if you're travelling - have a splash of fun for me!

spread the joy at christmas

wordbox4writers in MARC!

2009-12-15T21:02:00.002+10:00

*smile* Hume Library in Victoria has wordbox linked in their Dynix catalogue, also visible in MARC. As a librarian that makes me smile.
They have the old url but I've alerted them to the new site just now.

So if wordbox was a book it would be hanging out at 808 at Hume. Interesting.

082: 14 $a 808 $b WOR $2 a14

082: 04 $a 808.02079 $b WOR $2 22

245: 00 $a Wordbox $h [website] : $b for young Australian writers and readers!

260: $a [Australia] : $b wordbox.bravehost.com, $c [2006?]-

writing workshops, qwc & hbca

2009-12-12T22:44:00.004+10:00

pleased to find i've managed to attend one creative workshop a year for the previous four -

poetry workshop with Julie Beveridge from Queensland Writers Centre, townsville, november 2009
short story and poetry workshops with Ross C. Clark, hervey bay, november 2008 (organised by lynn from hervey bay council of the arts)
teaching writers to teach with Cynthia Rohner at Queensland Writers Centre, february 2007 (useful when planning my maryborough workshop)
writing for children workshop with Jill Morris, hervey bay, april 2006 (again, hbca)

check out the 2010 workshops available from QWC.

julie made some great suggestions for my airport poem, so that's what i'm working on now. that and the review for cmis!

incite into townsville

2009-12-10T23:12:00.005+10:00

my article published in InCite December 2009, page 34 - celebrating the people I've met along the way. Happy Christmas inspiring people - http://tinyurl.com/ye82lkw (pdf article).

I got the print copy in the mail today and found more townsville people had written for InCite also!

Mr Ron Store's article about our QPLA/PLA conference (that he organised so well) is on page 8 with the pretty origami twist fish we all folded (he's going to hate my favoured use of lowercase, but I'm an e.e. cummings fan, and he knows it :)

Bronia Renison from the Townsville Health Library writes with Margaret Larcombe about librarians working with nurses on a research project (page 17). I was at the hospital today and a doctor mentioned how good their library was.

article also from kellie ayre from tablelands - nearish to townsville - page 21.

and, not townsville, but someone I know from CSU and mentioned in my article - Sharon Uthmann, Shire Librarian at Bellingen Shire wrote 'going on a book hunt on the dorrigo plateau' with a colleague.

Jan Richards, ALIA president, made an interesting observation in this themed issue (rural and regional libraries): 'In small rural libraries you can work across a range of tasks and roles, and you have the authority to make decisions and try out new ideas at an early stage in your career'.* It's so true.

* Richards, J. 2009. Frontline. InCite. 30(12). p.4.

Another Townsville colleague, Keil Jones, had an article published in the October issue on Movember.

It all happens in Townsville.**

** although for me it began like this - I grew up in the little library on Toowoomba's Little Street where Robyn Sheahan was children's librarian, and where I read my way through an amazing collection of paper dreams

If you read my article, share in the blog comments your memories of the libraries/librarians in Toowoomba, Dalby, Fraser Coast or Townsville.

DPC awards night!

2009-12-06T18:12:00.003+10:00

... and the staff Christmas party. Great night with friends and seafood. Found out another colleague who used to live in Tooowoomba. After the fun of the learning 2.0 program Warren and Susan presented prizes. I got a participant's prize of a pebble mp3!! and have spent awhile downloading music onto it. So far: Garbage - Absolute Garbage, Robbie Williams Live at Knebworth Summer 2003, So Fresh 2009, Bridezilla and Triple J's Hottest 100 of all time. Love my prize, love my workplace, and love spell with flickr.

townsville!

2009-12-01T23:02:00.002+10:00

My birthplace! My family lived in Acheron Avenue. Kerry, my dear friend who I met as an 11 year old in Toowoomba, started out in Vincent. My aunt, Anne Rogers, worked in what is now the JCU library. I love The Strand, Harold's and Masala, the one-act play festival, the bikeways, Magnetic Island, Riverway, the people, the libraries, sunday markets...
I've lived in a few places around Queensland. Toowoomba was great (now, looking back..) but not the year it snowed.
Where do you come from, and what do you love about Townsville?

DPC #7 tagging

2009-12-01T21:43:00.006+10:00

I couldn't find my D*P*C #7 anywhere!! so had to start over. I obviously hadn't tagged it very well if at all.
It's all about tagging.
What I like about LCSH 'tags' is that they are set in stone. For a previous course I had to construct a thesaurus and that was difficult but rewarding. Remembering which tags you used for something two months ago is hard. What if you feel differently about it now?

I like the use of the hashtag in twitter, especially to follow conferences or group things. Check #qpla09, and #infservice (what's happening on information service?). I've tried to use minimalist labels/tags on this site so things are easily found (like the tag D*P*C for this program).

This is the wordle I created using content from the D*P*C website, and this one is from a beautiful Robert Frost poem I discovered when I was impressionable and reading Susie Hinton's The Outsiders. After The Outsiders I then read Gone With the Wind. I still think of Rob Lowe as Sodapop from TO even though I've seen him most recently on Brothers and Sisters. Anyway, the poem is Nothing gold can stay, written in 1923. An earlier version did not include the Edenic reference. And the article in wikipedia includes a see also reference to The Outsiders. That Susie Hinton! She brought a whole new generation to American poetry and boy culture. And all at a very young age.

And for more visual tagged wordart, revisit this site: The Visual Dictionary, and my 'cafe' and 'library' images that used to be outside the Uni cafe in Hervey Bay and Nerang Library respectively. Here's their mashup of the visual dictionary and twitter.

DPC # 6 & #16 mashups and finale

2009-12-01T15:25:00.005+10:00

Loved Caitlin's name in Spell with Flickr so much that I had to try too. That's so pretty.

That was so much fun! Thanks, Warren, Neal and everyone who set up the program.
I've learned a lot, and need to revisit many of the discoveries, like IM and I really should put more images into flickr. And refine my delicious account. But I'm just not that into Facebook.

I still like blogs as a 21C way to communicate industry information among colleagues, like Skerricks among TLs, and still my favourite information services librarian site: the swissarmy librarian. I want to investigate mashups with maps.

So, not the end - the beginning.

And here's a book I just found on the library returns shelf of interest -

The rough guide to blogging: navigate the blogosphere, by Jonathan Yang, published October 2006 (old, much?). 006.7 YANG at Flinders Street, or ISBN 978184353682X from your bookstore.

Am I done yet?

you will use IM you will use IM you will use IM

DPC #15 mobile phone information service

2009-11-26T10:17:00.007+10:00

They say that young people don't email, don't twitter, don't blog, but they do IM and text. And for those of us who do twitter and blog we can text from our phones directly to our online sites. And with 22 million mobiles in Australia (*ABS) there is a huge potential audience for mobile phone information services (in some libraries, the service has been there for years).

Council's new TELL_TCC text service already includes the library - if people want to ask basic questions like 'when does Flinders library close?' or 'how many books can i borrow?'
More detailed texts requiring a response, like 'can you renew my books?' will be referred onto library staff to action. Text services are present in academic libraries around Australia, see James Cook University (overdue & recall notices sent), and in Brisbane libraries (a huge service of 33 branches).
http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/BCC:BASE::pc=PC_1240: you can text Brisbane Square and the Hub libraries. And QUT.

One I'd like to see? Embed IM on the library front page for information services. A timely article from Nina today is 'How-to: working with campus marketing classes to improve reference service visibility'. Duke and MacDonald** note in their paper that 'the marketing students strongly advocated starting an instant messaging (IM) reference service... ultimately chose Meebo because of its ability to work with Yahoo, Google Talk and MSN chat software. ... the Meebo widget could be embedded into library webpages.. high visibility...' This occurred at The Ames Library at Illinois Wesleyan University, which then developed a stategy for promoting the IM service.
Of course, having the ability to access e-books, podcasts, etc will be amazing too.
As Bonnie said, Shan is already sending SMSs out to people who have booked in to events to confirm bookings.

* Australian Bureau of Statistics. Population Clock: http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs%40.nsf/94713ad445ff1425ca25682000192af2/1647509ef7e25faaca2568a900154b63?OpenDocument (sourced via Warren at http://citylibrarieslearning.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/discovery-15-mobile-phones/)

** Duke, L.M. & MacDonald, J. B. (n.d.). How-to: Working with campus marketing classes to improve reference service visibility. Information Today Inc. Accessed online at http://www.infotoday.com/mls/nov09/duke_MacDonald.shtml.

another image from oppersephone's fanpop gallery, just because.
http://www.fanpop.com/spots/edward-cullen/links/8813136

twiharder - audience par-tic-i-pation

2009-11-24T19:21:00.006+10:00

orppersephone's photo on fanpop
http://www.fanpop.com/spots/edward-cullen/links/8839864

i came to the twilight series later than most after seeing long lists of people reserving each book from the libraries. usually i don't care for popular fiction, but sometimes i make exceptions, and sometimes i'm pleasantly surprised.
i loved the first book, and steph should have stopped just there - leaving readers wanting more, but she had to go on and the fourth had me laughing out loud. most especially when Bella has the baby and names her Renesmee Carlie after both their mothers and fathers - how soap opera is that?
You know the old soap trick where characters name their child after themselves or the grandparents so the audience can keep track of whose kid it is a year later when it's fifteen and creating havoc? like Brooke + Ridge = Bridget.
i'm not even going to get into the whole argument that's raging everywhere about what a waste Bella is as a female character. there have been stronger, that's for sure.

had a classic information service encounter a month ago - a middle-aged lady came in and plonked twilight down saying she wanted to return it and cancel her reservation for the rest because they were atrocious! she started reading parts aloud and expressed distaste at the whole vampire thing. usually when someone does that they expect the person they're talking to to agree with them, but i couldn't of course.
i laughed with her, and said that while i appreciate that they're not to everyone's taste, i enjoyed them. she saw the funny side. i hope i steered her towards books more to her liking.
okay, enough negative vibes.
i read all of them, and loved every part where edward was written in.
team edward declaration.

so i watched twilight on dvd and was disappointed when it finished. not because it was a great film - if i hadn't read the books i'm sure i wouldn't have followed some of the film. so of course when new moon came out i had to see it along with the rest of the female population of townsville/the world, and it is better than twilight.
it was so like going to a Rocky Horror Audience Participation screening! The funniest was at the last when edward says 'marry me bella' and the screen faded because that was THE END of the movie!! and the whole audience said 'ooooh', as in 'no! don't end now!'. classic.

if you liked the twilight series you may also enjoy other vampire fiction, or the more subtle literary age-old storylines suggested like romeo and juliet or any of its derivatives. send a list!
you could start with the smouldering Heathcliffe in Bronte's Wuthering Heights.
edward cullen, you're a champion of readers everywhere. god bless your soul :)

.

cmis focus on fiction

2009-11-24T10:45:00.002+10:00

yesterday I received the fullsome Focus on Fiction journal by post from the awesome peeps at cmis because I've signed on as a reviewer. Good reading ahead. They have a LibraryThing page set up for reviewers to choose titles from. What about that for our top titles? Until we get LibraryThing on the LMS in an upgrade.

online databases = unsung resources DPC #14 & citations

2009-11-23T20:41:00.007+10:00

This discovery has been up for six weeks and this is the first time I get to it? October/November have been full on.

I've used online databases extensively while researching for university assignments. For some I found information within, for others using the database was the assignment.
While working here I've had the wonderful opportunity to participate in and lead webinar training offered by the State Library of Queensland where we have explored NoveList, Library PressDisplay and Oxford Reference Online from the comfort of our own Learning Space with Smartboard.
Hooking into alerts from various databases is invaluable for professional development - select some from SLQ (or other state/national libraries), your local public library, and ALIA if you're a member.
I really like recommending database use to school students, and their parents, because it opens up a whole new world of information access. And some databases generate citations for each article, making a student's work easier.

I used the visual search feature on History Reference Centre and found this article in full text, with citation examples (this one APA style). Chosen because the MTQ is an amazing place for exploration, and they offer free entry to locals.

References
Menghetti, D. (2002). Museum of Tropical Queensland. Australian Historical Studies, 33(119), 194. Retrieved from History Reference Center database.

If you're a school student you should check out Your Tutor, but through your public library site.

I've just logged in to ProQuest through SLQ using my e-services card and searched on 'townsville'. Quite a few articles came up, including these:

Ocean Research; Research on ocean research published by scientists at James Cook UniversityAnonymous. Ecology, Environment & Conservation. Atlanta: Nov 27, 2009. p. 198
Biodiversity; Scientists at James Cook University target biodiversityAnonymous. Ecology, Environment & Conservation Business. Atlanta: Nov 21, 2009. p. 392

I used the 'create a web page' feature and emailed the selections to myself and James (what will he be thinking tomorrow morning?)

http://tinyurl.com/66awf2 - Visit Townsville CityLibraries online databases page to find some information for your needs.
Or SLQ: http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/find/articles
Or NLA: http://www.nla.gov.au/app/eresources/
A secondary school loving databases: http://www.jerichoschools.org/hs/Library/esources.html
and our favourite alma mater, CSU: http://www.csu.edu.au/division/library/find-info/databases/
Join ALIA and receive access to the ProQuest journal package: http://www.alia.org.au/LISjournals/.

Don't let online databases hide - show them to your community!

Why all this gathering of information and correct citing? To learn from others, to form your own understanding, and to create new information and knowledge. And producing a perfect reference list will get you good marks in university (and should be highlighted through intensive information literacy education in schools) - today's Courier Mail had an article about plagiarism in Queensland universities (see citation below).
The article stated that 'plagiarism was rife and most cases were a result of students not understanding attribution and referencing conventions'. (Wenham, 2009, p.3).

Wenham, M. Cheats on the rise at our unis: checks detect 2000. The Courier Mail. 23 November, 2009. p. 3.

A classic post on a discussion list earlier in the year reported a conversation between a parent and a TL where a senior student had obviously used a large chunk of someone's else's work without attribution. I've seen it happen in school myself where the teacher merely googled the student's phrases and found the ripped articles right at the top of the results list. Anyway, the indignant parent said to the TL that (paraphrasing) 'everyone knows that you're allowed to plagiarise up to 25% at university'. ??
There are so many things wrong with that statement that it really is not so amusing. As the article reports, plagiarism cases can be dealt with by marking down, 'receiving a zero mark, being stripped of all credit, or being suspended' (Wenham, 2009, p.3). You only have to visit any university's website to see warnings about plagiarism, and visit the library websites to see helpful articles on how to write essays, critical reviews, etc and compile reference lists according to whichever style, and many will also allow access to EndNote or ProCite to make the student's job easier.

So gather information, process it, acknowledge sources, create your own understandings and get your information out there. And then find yourself out there on Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts with Full Text..

Lee, Robin. "Why you need an MBA." inCite 28, no. 1/2 (January 2007): 14. Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts with Full Text, EBSCOhost (accessed November 23, 2009).

Uthmann, Sharon. "Libraries are for everyone." inCite 29, no. 11 (November 2008): 13. Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts with Full Text, EBSCOhost (accessed November 23, 2009).

Love writing

all the cool people are living up north

2009-11-23T20:26:00.002+10:00

Glenys will be moving to Cairns!!

airport poetry

2009-11-19T18:59:00.002+10:00

poem composed on the train yesterday, using visual stimuli (julie beveridge's suggestion), and then drafted and rewritten at the airport. at gate 46.

poem composed after attendance at a city workshop, not instead of networking you will note, comrade harps! :)

fabulous to catch up with corinne hills who i haven't seen since we shared a dorm at CSU res. school back in '03. she influenced my decision to move to townsville - something i wrote about for InCite. best wishes for your Masters, corinne!

met great librarians from ipswich (home of the infocoach), nerang (check background image on my twitter), gold coast, federal court, drug arm, etc.

julie beveridge rocks townsville!

2009-11-17T20:31:00.002+10:00

*****

my first full creative day in ages - saturday in townsville with julie beveridge for a poetry workshop - five star day.

julie is director of queensland poetry festival, marketing coordinator at queensland writers centre and author of Rock'n'Roll Tuxedo and Home is Where the Heartache is (two poetry chapbooks, the latter of haibun).

and 'specially nice to be with a group of other writers for the day too

and we did an open mic. which i've done before in the gallery at HB, but my first time here.

and then i got a long email from glenys who is writing a novel - fully into the creative phase of character and scene development - and who owes me some pages!

i have to update some details on wordbox on the weekend - check it out next week.

You will write a haiku by the end of the month

top writer blogs no. 122!

2009-11-13T22:48:00.003+10:00

some days are diamond. the-storyspace is a runner up at no. 122 on Jonathan Crossfield's The Top 50 Australian Blogs for Writers.
http://www.jonathancrossfield.com/blog/top-50-aussie-writer-blogs
Angela Mayer and Justine Larbalestier's blogs came out on top, but the-storyspace is in there amongst some amazing Australian writers: Kirsty Murray, Catherine Bateson and Julia Lawrinson. Our first blog award! *Just a bit excited here*

I will have to invest a little more time here at the-storyspace so it can rise in the ranks. More reviews, guest bloggers, etc. Reaching out to young readers and those who work with them.

Thanks Jonathan !

what does 'reading' really mean?

2009-11-08T21:01:00.003+10:00

Interesting discussion over at OZ_TL regarding visual literacy, techno-literacy, reading books vs. reading text on screens.

to READ –verb (used with object)
1.
to look at carefully so as to understand the meaning of (something written, printed, etc.): to read a book; to read music.
read. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved November 08, 2009, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/read

The discussion began with an observation that 'skills for reading from print (on paper) are different to those for reading from a screen and we need to teach both. Research is telling us that kids need really good traditional literacy skills before they can read well from a screen' (Barbara Combes, Edith Cowan University, Perth).
Then a young teacher from outside Australia responded with a bit of a dismissal that prompted many learned teachers to respond.

He suggested that his generation had no problems reading and interpreting text from a screen - he has several screens open on his desktop, and he constantly flicks between them. He said that he doesn't read everything on the page, but that's what his generation is about. I'd say already he has a problem understanding what the act of reading means. To read means to look at something printed, displayed, etc in our language system carefully so as to form an understanding of its meaning. If the writer didn't want the reader to read so much he or she would have uploaded less words. Each word counts towards the reader's comprehension of the writer's intent, or to the formation of the reader's own interpretation. If you view less than the whole you cannot gain full understanding.

Many teachers responded to his argument using sound pedagogical examples, including that TLs need to invest a lot of time into teaching techno-literacy because so many students believe everything they view online. That is, they view it and accept it instead of reading and applying judgement. If a website or other online medium has not been created according to W3C standards, then the viewer already has a barrier to comprehension if he or she is flicking between screens because they won't readily see the important information.

So I responded from a writer's viewpoint, and yes, a few teachers responded to my response with cheers. I like technology applications rather a lot, but I would never suggest that the container is more important than the content.

My response: The thing is, if 'your' generation is about not reading everything on the page, you are going to miss out on some incredibly creative use of language - which is the difference between stories/poetry and a business report. If you skim you may get the gist of a story, but not its nuances and subtle pleasures. And if you are a teacher and endeavouring to teach children how to write creatively - there's a problem. Similarly, by skimming readers may miss important textual clues which would aid comprehension and support their development of further knowledge (as in the fake websites examples). Certainly students need to be educated to be capable of one day understanding business reports, as important decisions are made on the strength of them. You can use all the tools to create a digital story, present it with visuals, use stop animation, tell all your mates about it on Facebook or twitter, but the actual story should have substance. I don't believe all stories/poems have to be in book form. The story matters to me - whether that's projected on the side of a building, written in chalk on the footpath or downloaded on a kindle. The technology needs to be used effectively to support the content. I wouldn't say 'I'm going to write a story for a mobile phone screen'. I'd think about the story I wanted to write, then consider the best medium for presentation. And as the technology container affects how/where the content is communicated, then TLs are well placed to educate students in understanding this.

pendragon shoes

2009-11-01T09:36:00.002+10:00

these shoes absolutely surpass any other shoe i have ever seen - wearable wordart. delightful!

Cello and Ancient Mariner with their ancient script detail, and Pendragon Shoes' workshop is in Maroochydore! Want.

coffee dominion beats us to it

2009-11-01T09:28:00.002+10:00

page 36 townsville bulletin, saturday october 31, 2009

'baristas on call as text service grinds down coffee wait time' by Ryan Matheson.

Manager Jia Brooks said that 'we're always looking to find a better way to deliver our customers coffee on time'.

Over at the library, we're always looking for better ways to deliver information and resources to our customers on time - I'm going to bring this up at our customer services meeting tomorrow morning.

balconies lit & redbacks escape - emma's haiga

2009-10-31T22:31:00.004+10:00

A beautiful poetry site discovered tonight : Australian Haiku by Emma Dalloway via the equally fascinating seasoncreep.

And to bookmark other notable poets - Kilmeny Niland's haiga and janice m. bostok.

summer reading club 2009/2010

2009-10-18T23:17:00.007+10:00

NEWS! The Summer Reading Club 2009/2010 website will be live by the end of October - and activities will be all over public libraries in Queensland (but others also?).
I'm excited because this is the first year I've submitted activities for the booklets, and they're available now for librarians to print. My activities are available in levels 2 (Book Quest, p5), Know the Novel Quests and Adventures Level 3 (p4 & Wordsearch, p2), and Level 4 (Know the novel travelling tales, p4 & Wordsearch p8). Thank you to the marvellous Denise O'Connor and Sarah Keating for SRC, and thank you to my team of activity testers :)
Go, read!

Information from SLQ:

Children will be taken on a world-wide adventure through a range of exciting and interactive creative writing and arts activities and online games which encourage the love of books and reading as well as literacy and computer skills.

Participants can chat online to children’s authors Tristan Bancks and Christine Harris, write their own wacky fairy tales like Martin Chatterton, read Shaun Tan’s virtual book, follow Jonathan Powell’s comic blog, and write their own ending to a story started by James Roy.

Levels
The activities in each level are aimed at, but not restricted to, the following ages:

• Level 1 – targeted at birth - 4 years of age
• Level 2 – targeted at 5 -7 years of age
• Level 3 – targeted at 8 -11 years of age
• Level 4 – targeted at 12 -16 years of age

Dates of program
The Summer Reading Club is designed to run during the Queensland school holidays:
Saturday 12 December 2009 to Saturday 23 January 2010. These dates, like the rest of
the program, are completely flexible and can be adapted to suit your library.

in melbourne for the SPUN conference

2009-10-18T20:36:00.007+10:00

SPUN conference photos taken at CQ Melbourne on Queen Street by Caroline Ramsden (caro6302) : http://bit.ly/1s9exF.

These State Library of Victoria images taken from cnr Swanston Street and LaTrobe, and inside the Dome.

I've fallen in love with Melbourne.
I started the week with an enjoyable day at our own QPLA/PLA conference (check out #qpla09 on twitter) in Townsville, then while everyone else was listening to Noel Pearson, Helen Hooper, Susan Coker, etc, and showing guests around our libraries, I flew to Melbourne for the SPUN conference where I was fortunate to meet dozens of librarians who work with Spydus every day.

My days were full with the conference, but in late afternoons and on Saturday I took the opportunity to explore the city. Next time I'll stay longer and explore St Kilda, Luna Park, etc. So I found the City Library in Flinders Lane, a vibrant packed-full-of-people library in a very busy precinct. They have the Living Library concept, and loads more - just go there! I participated in the iMap project of course, 'cause I love public art projects.

I was told there was a subscription library in Collins Street, so, not ever having visited one - I had to of course. Melbourne's Athenaeum, very nearly 170 years old and still attracting subscribers/readers. I loved the theatrical atmosphere and the gentlemanly leather armchairs. I was told they may still had a card catalogue, but I saw computers in operation, and current fiction titles.

And I visited the State Library of Victoria - very impressive architecture, especially the LaTrobe Dome Reading Room (based on the British Museum Reading Room I'd suppose?). I got to see a few exhibitions: The Independent Type: Books and Writing in Victoria (including the laptop on which Peter Carey wrote The True History of the Kelly Gang) and Ned Kelly's armour in The Changing Face of Victoria. His death mask was also on display so I didn't need to pay for a tour at Old Melbourne Gaol 'cause it was all at the library (and I hate old jail tours - have visited both Fremantle and Port Arthur). RMIT students were playing soccer in the grounds bordered by the old gaol - I just find the atmosphere melancholic. I've visited most of the state libraries now except Darwin and Adelaide and STILL love Brisbane's SLQ the most. The vibrancy, the 21st century atmosphere... but hey, SLV was packed. Being Saturday I missed meeting Mike or Lilli at the Centre for Youth Literature. My bad.

Also checked out FedSquare - a most happening place! Flinders Street Station - 100 years old and the busiest suburban railway station in the southern hemisphere, Aki Sushi, laneways just bursting with life, and I went on a tram for the first time ever!! Counterclockwise from LaTrobe Street, past DFO (no time), Parliament House and then SLV.

Conference news - much Spydus work, meeting lots of fascinating librarians especially all Queenslanders from Atherton to Lockyer Valley and Civica staff who have previously just been voices on the phone (although I met Nikki in TSV), postive information on RDA - goodbye AACRII (don't like some terms like 'expression of the work', but overall - positive), Talking Tech - an amazing green solution, LibraryThing for Libraries from Thorpe-Bowker, service pods in UK libraries, and more.

Should have taken my laptop to the conference to tweet (and catch up on work emails) 'cause the hotel internet connection was not so hot, but I kinda enjoyed the downtime. I tweeted from Brisbane airport on return journey just 'cause why not? but I didn't have much time between flights.

And on return, a note from BFF Kerry who will be moving to Melbourne in January! So I will return. Beautiful city. Note for next time - buy a black coat.

And thanks Townsville CC and my managers for sending me. I know some librarians aren't allowed conferences interstate or at all, so yet another big tick for TCC. I have so much Spydus work to go on with on my return.

You will be inundated with Spydus requests on your return, and you will welcome them.

#qpla09

2009-10-12T20:08:00.002+10:00

QPLA/PLA conference began today in Townsville. Great organisation, inspirational speakers, and great to catch up with special people, especially Jo Parker from Fraser Coast. Michael Stephens is very personable. In his keynote address though, he had a photo of a cool ref desk which is walkaround, standup etc. Ours at Thuringowa is totally better though - standup, walkaround, less imposing, customer sits/stands right next to you and shares your screen. Having the extra screen at our other branches is cool, but those desks are not so - too solid and a barrier. But Thuringowa - that's the place to be for up close and personal reference work (information service, ask me service, genius bar work, etc, whatever you call it that sounds more now than reference desk).
I caught Paul Hagon's session on reusing library data and Heather Gordon's on facing some uncomfortable truths.
I met Nikki from Civica and Frances from Tablelands, who I only 'met' last week on the videolinq at BRITAFE Pimlico.
Excellent to hear all the news from Fraser Coast from Jo Parker. They have RFID...
Caught up with Rosslyn Coussins from Toowoomba (award winning librarian previously in NT). Miss those people.
Enjoy your next few days at #qpla09 peeps. It's running well.

promote promote promote

2009-09-26T21:29:00.004+10:00

!! This is what I was thinking about back in May/June - Promoting the library on big screens at the airport, and the Swiss Army Librarian has seen it done in America! In Hervey Bay's airport I saw a big screen promoting a local iconic activity (MELSA's trains in the park), but nothing in Townsville's airport. Also I have seen a big screen in Stocklands - great advertising space for the library. And static poster space on some bus stops. Places where people congregate in the community. I like marketing, it ties in so nicely with our focus on the customer.

Thanks Brian! And congratulations to the Las Vegas County Library and Airport.

DPC 13 Social networking

2009-09-26T20:44:00.005+10:00

I joined the Library 2.0 ning this year, but have not yet gone to Facebook. Technology overload. That you can use video and other apps on Facebook, nings, etc, is useful as a community resource. In the past week I've seen three references to Facebook in the local newspaper. People have died and the paper reports that readers can leave messages on their Facebook sites. Virtual mourning? I explored Facebook v Myspace earlier here: some professional library usage.

Here's the Library 2.0 badge - go there. Actually, if someone can tell me how to make a badge I'd be happy. One for the new wordbox.

Visit Library 2.0

DPC 12 Web video

2009-09-21T11:25:00.010+10:00

I would like to embed a Cure clip, Close to Me or Love Cats 'cause I was given Triple J's Hottest 100 of all time today, but a) that would breach copyright, and b) the videos have embedding disabled. So watch them yourselves and share the joy: Close to Me / Love Cats.
There is, however a range of library related tubes, some serious even. I posted about USQ's digital open day a while back. And I'm sure we can make some here, on our children's programs, about information services, about our author visits, etc. But I found this fun one, which would be great on the library's big screen:

And yes, they're simple to embed in a blog. Copy the code kindly provided on the youtube site, then paste it on your blog after clicking the 'edit html' code. If you were to embed in the sidebar you just have to go to layout, page elements, add a gadget, add html/java script and paste. You'd probably have to edit the width too: width="425" height="344".

Here's one I like: public art in an Arizona library:

I like that you can share the clip on twitter, facebook etc, viewers can comment and post clip responses which turns it all into a discussion. Viewers can rate it, link to it, embed it in their own blog, thereby sharing the love. Our library site definitely needs more interactivity, currency and visuals. Love the tube.
And since you mentioned 70s shows I was thinking of Welcome Back Kotter, but I found something funny - a parody of Kotter called Welcome Back Potter.

Okay, what do we need to make our own clips?

DPC roll call

2009-09-14T22:50:00.003+10:00

For our Learning 2.0 program:
#1 blogs a # 2 twitter a#3 web 2.0 & library 2.0 a#4 rss a#5 flickr a
#6 mashups r
#7 tagging a#8 keeping track a#9 communicating online a#10 online collaboration - wikis a#11 online docs and more! a
Up to date again! Now, can someone grant me a parallel universe so I can get some of these applications into my work process?!
Hey everyone, there are prizes, focus groups with Dr Stephens, the #qpla09 tag at the conference, innovative colleagues... and so many more applications to discover, explore and connect with. Thanks Warren, and Neal, and other learning 2.0 adopters. I must talk with Keil about mashups.

update 26 September: #12 web video a #13 social networking a

DPC #11 online docs and more

2009-09-14T22:25:00.003+10:00

Brilliant! Google Docs is what I need! or Zoho - so far I've only gone into GD. I am forever saving a half-done roster at work and emailing it to my home account so I can finish it there, or vice-versa. Now I can just save it to Google Docs. Less messing about!
There's no drama at work because we're all on a network so I can still access work documents as I work between branches, except for when I may have IT dramas.
I've saved an old doc as pdf - but I can't see where to follow this instruction:
Just click the Share drop-down menu on the top right and choose Publish as webpage. Then, click Publish now. Help!!
It's my submission to SRC last year that didn't get used afterall. When I do eventually provide access; if you're going to try the quiz, ignore the top section blatantly labelled 'answers'!

DPC #9 communicating online

2009-09-14T22:00:00.002+10:00

SMS, IM and webinars...
I'll have to sign up for IM at work sometime - if enough people were on it may be a way of catching up in real time instead of playing telephone tag or email e-voidance.
SMS though - saves students big phone bills (and they're texting anyway) if library has an SMS information service where they can enquire about opening hours, extending their overdues, etc. I've seen it in use at QUT - very professional service.
Webinars - I recently participated in my first webinar (online tutorial) through SLQ's OPAL, and tomorrow will set up participants for another - on NoveList. We can participate by typing in the text box, or by using a microphone to speak. With Warren's instructions I taught myself how to use the smartboard, so will be able to enable audio for the training room, so participants shouldn't need headsets (fingers crossed).
An hour session is enough as a tutorial. The trainer presents information and allows participants to ask questions. Everything was clearly understandable.
It is beneficial afterwards to have a staff discussion period, and a suggestion for staff to on-train others.
I will gather participants' comments for the next FOCUS issue (our new information services bulletin).
I like that smartboard/whiteboard with add-ons... All the cool classrooms have them now. I'm so far behind!

DPC #10 wikis

2009-09-14T20:37:00.004+10:00

I was reminded of the deadline approaching for our D*P*C program, because Dr Michael Stephens is coming for the QPLA/PLA conference in October and he will be working with focus groups on our Learning 2.0 program - and I haven't quite finished! However, I discovered that I have covered wikis in an earlier blog entry.
I've used a wiki since then for a work project - I invited colleagues to join the space as writers so they could submit information and links on information service. So far my writers are readers and I've moved on to other projects, but it's still alive, waiting for me to keep it alive. It would work better if it had a more structured content layout, but that's all part of web 2.0 - learn and grow.
I have seen some useful wikis, and I hope to contribute more.
So I've added a lot of content to our wiki - check.
In schools a wiki could be used as a subject information portal - students could contribute information they've found on Egyptian history, etc.
In a public library - a readers' advisory portal. A central space for reviews, suggestions, links, etc.
Some teachers may ban wikipedia as an information source, but what they really mean is that they don't want it used in a citation because the authority can't be checked. I support using wikipedia as an information springboard - launch from there to more authoritive sources once you've got a few more keywords and leads.
When people acknowledge 2.0 tools as a vital part of today's work fabric, they will devote more time to their utilisation. They're not just add-ons!
I still advocate Wikipedia is a good place to start for *some* information searches (see earlier post re film actors), but I did baulk when I saw a quote in our staff magazine attributed to 'wikipedia'. Someone needs a little citation education.
For a short list of library-related wikis, see OPAL's course notes online.
I like Princeton PL's BookLovers wiki as it is a specified-time project which should ensure people's active participation.

wordbox4writers - new in spring 2009

2009-09-13T01:17:00.003+10:00

Due to constraints soon to be imposed on Bravenet websites, I am rebuilding wordbox over on wordpress - the new site, a work in progress, is at wordbox4writers.
Please bookmark it, tell teachers, librarians, children, authors,

competition organisers, etc.
More news to come

Arrr! talk like a pirate on the good ship LIBRARY

2009-09-12T19:59:00.003+10:00

Arrr! There's fun t' be had in t' libraries this week! Grab yer parrot, yer eye patch and yer peg leg, and head to t' libraries to talk like an old sea dog and sing sea shanties! Yohoho

Tuesday 15th September 10am - Flinders Street
Wednesday 16th September 10am - Thuringowa Central
Friday 18th September 10am Aitkenvale

Check out t' site fer posters an' buttons: ITLAPD

Plenty of pirate books in CityLibraries - dive in!
A day in the life of a Pirate / Emma Helbrough
Captain Abdul's pirate school / Colin McNaughton.
Blackbeard, the pirate king : several yarns detailing the legends, myths, and real-life adventures of history's most notorious seaman / told in verse by J. Patrick Lewis.

Be there or walk t' plank!

Have I mentioned how much cool it is to work in a public library service?? Much?

libraries are about people

2009-09-03T22:58:00.004+10:00

With a nod to the Swiss Army Librarian and his reference question of the week, I'll post about mine.
At one of our library branches a woman enquired if I could assist her to find some information from a newspaper about her father. A tragic event had occurred and I had the feeling that having an article to read would provide the lady with some concrete facts and perhaps some closure. The lady knew the town in which the event occurred, so I looked up Newsbank to get an idea of newspaper names (although I know Newsbank only goes back to 1998).
I contacted the newspaper, asking if they kept microform back a few decades (not supposing that they would) and if their paper was of the same name back in the early 80s. So I would know which newspaper to search in. They emailed back quite promptly with the answer that I had already begun a line of enquiry on - the public library.
I called, asking to speak to the information services librarian or interlibrary loans librarian, but the place was too small to have such staff. The staff member who spoke with me though, was quite happy to help. I explained the request, for a newspaper article from a particular time period (a few days date range) with the lady's father's name. The library staffer told me they held bound copies of the newspaper, checked she had that date, found the article, and said she'd send it right away.
I logged the request through our ILL officer, and the article came in the post today. It was a difficult article to read, knowing what it may mean to the lady requesting it. I wouldn't have felt good about just sending it in the post, or leaving at the desk for her to collect. This was definitely a people issue. She wanted to collect it.
That was hard for both of us, I think, but it certainly felt that I had done something meaningful in my working day. Libraries are about people, and that is a timely message for me to take to our working group next week.

little black books big launch

2009-08-25T22:39:00.002+10:00

BIG day in Townsville Monday - Jeanie Adams from Black Ink Press (also author of Pigs and Honey, Going for Oysters) is launching 12 little black books - the work of young Indigenous writers and illustrators from Heatley, Aurukun and Garbutt. Congratulations to all involved!

Titles and creators to check out:
The Day My Yumby Went Missing / Graeme Owens
Fishing Time in the Banana Boat / Jesse Mooney
When I Was In the Bush... / Shannon Summers Phillips
Two in a Boat (Boatang mo'pull) / Steve Yunkaporta
Spearing Crabs / Brent Wolmby
Catching Fish (Minh Nga'an Wichan) / Venita Korkaktain
Disaster Camping / Monty Pompey
Watch Out For Cars / Bruce Nelson
My Fishing Adventure / David Inkerman
Trip to Cairns / Erica Kerr
Smashing Aunty Kathy's Car / Rehannon Pompey
My Holiday at Balgal Beach / Tasha Nelson

wordbox is SCISsed!

2009-08-25T22:33:00.003+10:00

librarians get excited about some crazy things. I just discovered that wordbox was reviewed on Curriculum Corp and has a SCIS number!! No: 1383316!
Check it. Thanks Nigel Paull, Teacher librarian at South Grafton Primary School, for spreading the word.

eve pownall book of the year

2009-08-23T12:10:00.003+10:00

In all the excitement of the Children's Book Week awards, make sure to borrow or buy the books shortlisted for the Eve Pownall book of the year - information books are amazing too!

The awarded books: Alive in the Death Zone / Lincoln Hall (winner)
The Word Spy / Ursula Dubosarsky, Tohby Riddle (honour book)

Simpson and his Donkey / Mark Greenwood, Frané Lessac (honour book).

Enjoy your discovery!

peace cranes

2009-08-20T22:07:00.003+10:00

So it's been a busy year with moving home and all, but at least I made it to the theatre before December. The place where I used to live had a fabulous theatre but I saw better plays at the Z-Pac amateur theatre in Hervey Bay. I did see Max Gillies in something at The Brolga some years ago, but apart from that it was all Wickety Wak comebacks and acts. Of course Glenys invited me to a Shakespearean ballet in June but I couldn't go because I was flying up here.

The Civic is smaller than the Brolga but there are some amazing productions coming - Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes and Thursday's Child. We have both books at CityLibraries, and Pam was generous enough to show me how to make peace cranes. If Nicole and Pam got together we would have 1000 in no time...

There are so many shows on that I have missed some - sad to miss the Grimstones last week at Riverway - Nic saw this puppetry performance in Brisbane and loved it. And I have yet to discover all the theatres here. And DanceNorth. This place is full on.

the-storyspace

what snoopy said...

docs

#followalibrary @townsvillelib october 1

NaNoWriMo

it's all greek to me

townsville stories and townsville authors

be an information services librarian and make a difference

#ALIAAccess 2010 Brisbane

brisbane in september

novel writing software

robert frost philosophy

joe egg

my grandmother's waitui

goodbye culture portal, hello pandora

some people will love it

in brisbane june 19-22

not before time

slice

oscar

one year in townsville

the benjamin andrew footpath library now in brisbane

M/C

826 valencia pirates!

writing real lives

free rice

in the punk salon

townsville!

the sorted books project

edward scissorhands was an editor

writers in townsville

in the playhouse

black is the new black

where's your poetry wall?

another fortune cookie message

whose role is it anyway?

librarything thing

poetry walls!

and I guest blog @ Sally Murphy's about children's poetry

best how-to books ever

the little library in little street (circa 1980s)

mall sprite

blush

just checking

fail

poetry on saturday

the first day

poetry on saturday

poetry on saturday

microfiction - 100 words

love is all around

librarything is so much prettier

for Henry Rogers b. 1892, Bristol

microfiction - 100 words

poetry on saturday

librarything is my new thing

frantic wet wednesday - librarydayinthelife 3

working from home - librarydayinthelife 2

wet season

librarydayinthelife 1

reviews

tropical summer mood

on a night like this

always a surprise

happy christmas!

wordbox4writers in MARC!

writing workshops, qwc & hbca

incite into townsville

D*P*C awards night!

townsville!

D*P*C #7 tagging

D*P*C # 6 & #16 mashups and finale

D*P*C #15 mobile phone information service

twiharder - audience par-tic-i-pation

cmis focus on fiction

online databases = unsung resources D*P*C #14 & citations

all the cool people are living up north

airport poetry

julie beveridge rocks townsville!

top writer blogs no. 122!

DPC awards night!

DPC #7 tagging

DPC # 6 & #16 mashups and finale

DPC #15 mobile phone information service

online databases = unsung resources DPC #14 & citations

DPC 13 Social networking

DPC 12 Web video

DPC roll call

DPC #11 online docs and more

DPC #9 communicating online

DPC #10 wikis