ALIA Biennial 2012

I’ve just taken a stroll through previous posts on the ALIA Biennial blog and have learned so much.   So much stuff out there to help you through life!   Fides and I are looking forward to talking more about these developments at the Biennial Conference.  Only a couple of weeks to go now.  It is has been an interesting journey putting this conference together and we hope that for those who attend and/or who follow us through social media, that you will discover and re-discover all sorts of interesting things.  The key feature of an ALIA conference is that it brings together all sectors and we encourage you to explore the inspiring work that other libraries and colleagues in Australia and overseas are doing.  The program is exciting, wonderfully diverse, and should lay the seeds for many conversations during and beyond the conference about reimagining, re-envisioning, and discovering ourselves as a profession.

One comment about the conference we’ve regularly heard is that the conference is expensive because it’s being held at the Hilton.  Not true.  Conferences are costly events to host as yes, you do have to pay for a venue that’s large and flexible enough to hold the estimated number of delegates, concurrent sessions and exhibition space, plus you need to supply catering, ensure IT support, attract interesting speakers etc.  However, the cost of having the conference at the Hilton was extremely competitive compared with other venues, particularly as there are no hidden costs as most of what we require is already available at the hotel.  Being in the heart of the city means that getting to the conference is easy for delegates and once at the hotel, plenty of options for dining.  Of course there is the lure of the QVB with its upmarket shops, not to mention the new Westfield city complex, but we trust that our delegates and their accompanying family and friends, will shop each day after the conference has finished.  After all, there is only so much you can spend in three days!  The Hilton is not too far from the NSW Art Gallery where we are having our conference dinner, and there is also the Museum of Contemporary Arts, the Sydney Museum and, of course, the iconic Sydney Opera House.  So there’s a lot on offer within walking distance to keep delegates and accompanying family and friends well occupied. 

When planning the conference dinner, it was clear that delegates wanted something different to a traditional sit down dinner but wanted to be all together rather than separating into smaller groups.  A few of the Conference committee members explored options and felt that the NSW Art Gallery would do the trick.  The menu looks delightful and there will be plenty of opportunity to chat with one another and enjoy the beauty of art.  There will be time for dancing too!  Volunteers at the Art Gallery have kindly offered to show delegates around, our very own personalised tours.  You can’t get better than that. 

Another important social event of the conference is, of course, our welcome reception party.  This is because it is the official opening of our exhibition.  Our sponsors and exhibitors are essential for having a successful conference, they all put a lot of effort into putting together their stands and are keen to talk with delegates about their products and services.  At the Biennial Conference the exhibition will be set across two floors and we encourage everyone to visit EVERY stand.  Our sponsors and exhibitors are crucial to the holding of the Conference and we encourage everyone to check out the massive exhibition space.  You will be amazed at what you see and who you meet!   

Looking forward to meeting you at the Biennial.

Best wishes,

Janet and Fides

Janet Fletcher and Fides Datu Lawton

Co-Convenors, ALIA Biennial 2012

*This post was cross-posted on the ALIA Biennial blog.

“Living Books” at CQUniversity Melbourne

During Library & Information Week this year we introduced the concept of “Living Books” to the Melbourne Campus Library of CQUniversity. Interesting members of the community came along and talked to students and staff about their life. Each “Living Book” chose a title and wrote a blurb. A copy of the blurb was posted outside the meeting room where the book met “readers”. For Melbourne's international students talking with the “Living Books” gave an insight into some Australian characters and an opportunity to practice English.

Gamil Abou-Lehaf  gave himself the title Why I call Australia Home:

Gamil Abou-Lehaf’s coming to Australia in 1966 was to be for a temporary period while he saved enough money in order to study in France.
Things did not work out this way and he had no choice but to go on making a living and try to settle in.
He thought when he left Egypt, that he had an open, liberated mind as a result of his French educational background in Cairo and his enjoyment of listening to foreign music and watching foreign movies.
Instead he encountered a totally unexpected cultural shock that made him despair. He was at a loss as to how he could achieve any successful outcome. It was not the language he couldn’t understand but the delivery of it and the directness of people’s opinions that he couldn’t handle.
A very patient Australian wife and many years of teaching children at secondary school to helped him come to terms with the situation and sort out the mixed cultural bag that he carried from Egypt. Getting rid of double standard attitudes, impractical beliefs helped him adjust and become a very satisfied and happy citizen of Australia.

Gamil Abou-Lehaf and students

David Cherny called himself King of the Homewares:

David Cherny is the Director of Tabletop Homewares. The company imports and distributes leading kitchenware brands across Australia and New Zealand. Customers include Coles, Woolworths, Target Kmart and smaller gift outlets.David is an Australasian Business Council Member for Gresham Lehman, Austin, Texas. In this capacity he advise overseas investment companies regarding investing in Australia companies.David was educated at Scotch College until year 8, he transferred to Kingswood College for year 9 and 10. Despite not completing secondary school David is the Director of thriving import business.

David Cherny and students

Roger Wilson’s title was To Live a Life Upon the Ocean Waters:

Roger Wilson was born in 1930 at East St. Kilda. He went to sea shortly after the 2nd World War at the age of 16. By 21 he had travelled the high seas and been around the world. He’d worked his way up from deck boy to Able Seaman.
The philosophies of equality, fair play and fair pay became important to him. In 1949 he joined the Communist Party of Australia and in 1950 he attended the 2nd World Peace Congress which took place in Warsaw, Poland.
Roger worked as the Assistant Secretary of the Seaman’s Union of Australia between 1959 and 1984.
He continues to work to improve the living standards of people with the national “Fair Go for Pensioners” coalition. “Fair Go for Pensioners” seeks to influence all levels of Government concerning the lives of senior Australians.

Roger Wilson and students

The experience and my Halal compliant cake were both a huge success with students and staff.

Jane Wilson

Library Manager, CQUniversity Melbourne

Photographs by Barb Watson
Library Technician, CQUniversity Melbourne

Lessons from a new library building

Robots, resources & people ftw!

It’s almost a year since the new library at Macquarie University opened – here’s an overview if you want some more detail. The new library created a lot more space for library users by housing much of the collection in an automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS). The experience is very different to the previous library.

Here are a few things we’ve learnt along the way:

• Having resources in an ASRS hasn’t been a big deal for library users. Carefully planned collection storage principles including consultation with academics have ensured most students get all the resources they require from traditional shelving and rarely need to request anything from the ASRS. It makes sense - a large recent study by OCLC indicates that 80% of circulation in an academic library is driven by just 6% of the collection.
• Fears about the loss of serendipitous discovery have hardly registered in client feedback, as tools such as a virtual bookshelf within the catalogue provide this type of discovery AND include electronic resources.
• The library was designed so that the furniture would suggest behavior with configurations indicating collaborative spaces or individual study spaces. While this has been largely successful, reminders about noise in some of the quieter individual spaces have been required. (But aren’t they always?) 
• Quiet, individual study spaces are just as popular as ever. Much has been written about libraries as collaborative spaces, and these spaces are extremely popular, but the demand for more quiet, individual spaces has been even stronger. We have reconfigured furniture to create an extra 200 individual study spaces in response to this demand. 
• More space means more people. Lots more people. We knew the new building would be popular, but daily library visits have almost doubled compared to the previous building. Yep, the new library has certainly taken its place at the centre of the University.

People + space = more people 

Brendan Krige is Communications Coordinator at Macquarie University Library

ALIA Biennial

The ALIA Biennial conference is nearing, and I can feel the excitement building! 

I am lucky enough to be on the social media committee for the upcoming ALIA Biennial, along with Ellen Forsyth from the State Library, Cathy Johnston from Coffs Harbour Library, Sophie McDonald from UTS Library and Jeff Cruz from the City of Sydney Library.

The thing about this group, is that 4 of us are in Sydney and one of us is in Coffs Harbour, so I haven’t actually had the pleasure of meeting Cathy face-to-face as yet, which means that we’ll be meeting for the first time at the conference itself, while we’re flitting around adding to the conference’s presence via our social media streams. (If you see us in person, say hi. If you’re not attending the conference, say hi anyway, via any of our social media streams!)

That’s the beauty of social media- you don’t have to be in the same city, or even in the same country to form a group, network or add to your PLN. I digress.

The ALIA Biennial social media committee has been experimenting with lots of different social media, including Pinterest, Tumblr, blogspot, Flickr, Springpad, Google + and of the tried and true old favourites, Twitter and Facebook. You can see a list of our efforts and their links here.  

And while you’re at it, why don’t you head over to the ALIA Biennial blog, to check out our Blog Every Day of June efforts over there? We’re focusing on discovery and what it means for us in our daily lives and from a work sense. We’re also interested in hearing your thoughts, so I invite you to submit a short 30 second video or a photo on your take on ‘discovery’. You can find out more here. 

- Crystal 

Crystal is the convenor of ALIA Sydney and is also on the ALIA Biennial social committee. She’s an academic librarian at the University of Sydney Library and she tweets @crystalibrary.

A different type of library tourism

I’m sure quite a few of us are pleasantly guilty of ‘library tourism’ – sneaking in a visit to the library in the city we happen to be on holidays in (usually often a spectacular building in itself), or perhaps even planning a holiday based on libraries you want to see. In fact, an issue of ALIA’s Incite last year even focused on the activity. 

Lately though I’ve been talking to people about those of us who undertake this library touring as a form of serious leisure, or even as part of their professional practice, and I want to introduce a few of these projects here. These are projects where there’s an activist or creative drive behind the library ‘tourism’, and it’s often undertaken in groups. This is different to the library tourism we do when we stand in awe inside the reading room at the British Library, or drag our whole family to the Seattle Public Library to admire the architectural feat of its building. Instead, these are discrete projects that engage with ideas and issues around libraries and information work, and present different ways of engaging with everyday places (perhaps your workplace?).

Cycling for libraries

This is an activist project that is a perambulating unconference; participants from all over the world cycle through Europe visiting libraries and other sites of significance to the profession. In 2011 eighty library workers and their friends cycled from Copenhagen to Berlin, and in late July this year another group will cycle from Estonia to Latvia (finishing around the same time the IFLA conference starts in Helsinki).

The Cycling for Libraries collective say: ‘Cycling for libraries supports grassroots networking, and internationalism, physical and mental well-being of library professionals, and — last but not least — the crucial role of libraries for the society and for the intellectual and scientific education in general. Cycling for libraries also supports environmental values and ecological way of life.’

This year’s tour registration has closed, but keep your eyes out for next year's – for around 300 euros it works out to be a great way to explore a continent, challenge yourself physically (and mentally) and develop an activist approach to the library profession.

Biblioburbia

Biblioburbia is a writing project by local Sydney writer and zine maker Vanessa Berry, who documented her visits to libraries across the Sydney region on her blog. As well as the blog, Vanessa exhibited a massive (wall sized) map of all the libraries she visited, with beautiful hand drawn images of each library and excerpts from her writing alongside each one. She also made a zine about the visits, and has been speaking publicly about the project.

She says ‘it’s a project that comes from my lifelong love of books, reading, and writing, as well as my love of Sydney’s suburbs and my interest in public spaces. Libraries, like op shops, are spaces you can inhabit without needing much money, and they are places where you can browse and discover things by chance. They are public spaces, but can also be quite personal spaces.’

This is a different type of library tourism. It’s local, and it’s reflective, and there’s much creativity inspired by it. Perhaps your local library is on the map?

Fly Away Zine Mobile

The Fly Away Zine Mobile is a different type of library tourism again. Instead of visiting libraries around America, it is a mobile zine library that visits towns and cities. Full of zines and other forms of DIY published material, the van drove around North America last summer, with events organized around its arrival in each town. These events included workshops, readings, and open hours. The zines and musical instruments in the van could be borrowed, and their return negotiated. Melbourne based librarian and zine-maker John Stevens was one of the ‘Orderly Disorder’ zine librarians on the tour last year. He found it an ‘incredibly illuminating and liberating experience as a conventionally trained library professional from a highly regarded gate-keeper institution, encountering substantially more para-professionals involved with the spaces that the zine mobile stopped at along the way (not to mention the zine mobile itself, which happily threw conventional cataloging out the window - when no cars were overtaking - in place for ordering by colour and size rather than topic or author)’. (Thanks to John for his words on the experience!)

The zine librarians head out again this summer on a cross-pollination tour – perhaps you might bump into them if you happen to be in the United States in the next month or two.

Jessie Lymn is a PhD Candidate at UTS and works in the Information programs at both UTS and CSU. She researches archives and subcultural practices.

Eight Great TED Talks I've Watched Recently

TED talks. What a wonderful way to explore new ideas. Online videos that are interesting, inspiring, educational and thought-provoking. And since I've downloaded the (free) TED app on my phone I can save a library of talks to watch or listen to later, without needing an internet connection. But there are currently 1100+ talks available. Which ones to choose? 

Here are some of the talks I’ve recently watched. Do you have any recommendations for TED talks? Please add them to the comments section.

Eli Pariser: Beware online filter bubbles (9 mins)

February 2011

"Facebook was looking at which links I clicked on, and it was noticing that I was clicking more on my liberal friends’ links than on my conservative friends’ links. And without consulting me about it, it had edited them [the conservatives] out. They disappeared."

A thought provoking talk on how the flow of information online is changing as services (such as news and search results) are being tailored to individual preferences by companies like Google and Facebook. Eli Pariser argues that we need the web to introduce us to new ideas, new people and different perspectives. And he’s worried that is happening less and less with these ‘filter bubbles’.

JP Rangaswami: Information is food (8 mins)

March 2012

"When I saw ‘Supersize Me,’ I started thinking, now what would happen if an individual had 31 days of nonstop Fox News?"

Questioning how we consume data, JP Rangaswami compares it to how we consume food. He has some sharp and funny insights about information.

Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story (19 mins)

July 2009

"Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity."

Novelist Chimamanda Adichie grew up in Nigeria reading British and American children's books. So when she started writing stories at the age of seven, they featured white-skinned, blue-eyed children who played in the snow. Never mind that she had never seen the snow. Then she discovered African books. This talk examines how our lives and cultures are composed of a multiplicity of stories about each other, and warns of the danger of the 'single story'. 

Chip Kidd: Designing books is no laughing matter. OK, it is. (17 mins)

March 2012

"Much is to be gained by eBooks: ease, convenience, portability. But something is definitely lost: tradition, a sensual experience, the comfort of thingy-ness — a little bit of humanity."

Chip Kidd takes you on a tour of the book covers he has created – with a sense of humour that makes this topic come to life. A fascinating insight into design that made me look twice at the cover of the novel I’m currently reading.

Brewster Kahle: A digital library, free to the world (20 mins)

December 2007

"I'm a librarian, and what I'm trying to do is bring all of the works of knowledge to as many people as want to read them. And the idea of using technology is perfect for us.... I'm going to try to argue only one point today: that universal access to all knowledge is within our grasp."

The founder of the Internet Archive shares his ideas about digital libraries, and the importance of archiving our online history.

William Kamkwamba: How I harnessed the wind (5 mins)

July 2009

At fourteen, William Kamkwamba made a windmill to provide electricity and pump water for his family in Malawi. How did he do it? Based on books he got from his school library. This talk reminds me that access to information matters.

Susan Cain: The power of introverts (19 mins)

March 2012

"There's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas."

Do we design our schools and workplaces for extroverts? If so, does this bias waste the talent and energy (and happiness) of introverts? Cain argues that culturally we need a much better balance when it comes to creating space for introverts.

Solitude and quiet are becoming harder to find in our connected, socially networked world and it’s refreshing to hear someone passionately advocate that they still matters. Oh, and I love that she brought a suitcase full of books onto stage with her!

Amit Sood: Building a museum of museums on the web (5 mins)

March 2011

Amit Sood explains where his idea for Google’s Art Project came from. One word: access. If you haven’t played around with Google’s Art Project this is a great introduction to it.

One last thing - take a look at the new site TEDEd: Lessons Worth Sharing. It's a wonderful resource for students and educators. You can customise lessons, take a quiz after watching a talk or delve deeper into a topic. 

Sarah Fearnley
@SefLibraryLand

Sarah is an Events Officer for the ALIA Sydney Committee. She works at the University of Western Sydney Library. Her substantive position is as a Digital Librarian; however she is currently on secondment as a Liaison Librarian.  All opinions expressed are her own.

Dream and discovery

Three different tools: planning social media for ALIA Biennial
All rights reserved by ALIAbiennial

This is a month to #dream and for #discovery.  These themes are from two collaborations which I am involved in, which are also participating in #blogjune.. 

The #dream theme comes from the National Year of Reading twitter reading group which has a monthly reading theme based on the flowers in the logo.  This is the second year of a twitter reading group run by the New South Wales Readers Advisory Working Group.  This is a reading group which any library can promote to their readers, as if they had done all the work.  The themes are listed on the blog and each of the months has a description which libraries can link to, repurpose, or reuse on their own blog, facebook or other social media tool.  Libraries are using these themes for in library events and services such as face to face reading groups and story times.

Planning for the twitter reading group for 2013 will take place in Wagga on 19 June.  Ideas are being collected on the Readers Advisory wiki so you can add your suggestions for next year.  We plan early so that people can use the themes for their face to face reading groups. 

Your library can participate by promoting the reading group in whatever way works for your library clients.  You can participate by tweeting your reading during the month, or joining the end of month discussion which starts at 8.00pm on 26 June, come along for a few tweets, or many, and share reading which makes you #dream.

The #discovery theme is the conference theme for the ALIA Biennial conference. I am on the conference committee and am chairing the social media team.  Those of us on the social media team decided we would really go with the theme of discovery so we are trying different ways for people to interact via social media prior to the conference.  You can see the various tools we are experimenting with here.  You can read about the #discovery on the ALIA Biennial blog.  Join us in the discovery.

Ellen Forsyth