what snoopy said...

docs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

highlights:

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

suggestion:

1. 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.
2. 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

slice

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

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

one year in townsville

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?