Ann, Anna, Katie: Librarians swap smocks for hard hats

Carolyn Robertson, Libraries and Information Unit manager, has recently been out and about in Sydney and Wanaka. She’s been giving interesting presentations on how Christchurch libraries have handled this brave new world for libraries.

We’ve made PDF copies so you can read her presentations:

• Alive and online: Digital developments and earthquake recovery at Christchurch City Libraries
  [7.3MB PDF] SWITCH Conference, Sydney. 21 November 2011.
• Shaken but not stirred: Libraries supporting earthquake recovery
  [10.8MB PDF] Disaster Management for Libraries.  State Library NSW, Sydney. 24 November 2011.
• Shaken but not stirred: Libraries supporting earthquake recovery
  [6.1MB PDF] LIANZA Otago/Southland weekend school, 12 November 2011

Thanks Carolyn for sharing this important learning.

Subscribe to her blog or follow her on Twitter and you will be informed and entertained.

And the reference to “no Dewey, all face out displays, 6ft alligator” – it’s about  Lakeshore Library in New Orleans that has rebuilt from ruin to portacom to shiny new library following Hurricane Katrina. I’m sure the story will resonate with many Christchurch librarians.

Thankfully the 6ft alligator is a statue only.

Scrolling down the first page a number of Christchurch names and experiences jumped out – Penny Carnaby talking about the Capturing History project to record the impact of the quakes and the recovery process and Joan Simpson talking about how the University of Canterbury Library coped with the impact of the earthquakes.

Debbie Fox has blogged on her conference experience, now you can read in more depth the ideas that excited her.

Highlights?

Many things stand out as making this a memorable experience for me not least of which is the sense of collegiality with colleagues from across the country but especially with fellow CCL librarians. Other memories which I will carry with me – the eerie similarity of the Michael Fowler auditorium to our own beloved Town Hall; the haunting music and poetry of MC Apirana Taylor and of course some truly inspirational keynote speakers – in particular Andrew Green (Wales), Michael Houlihan (Te Papa) and Jenica Rogers (New York). These speakers whilst acknowledging some very real challenges ahead for our profession in the next few years were also able to engender some hope for the future.

Sometimes however it is the simple things that resonate with us and give the best opportunity of trying some small thing that may make a difference to our customers. Andrew Booth, an evidence based library and information practice exponent from the UK discussed the idea of helping people get the best outcome with the way they currently search for information instead of always trying to force our own concepts of information literacy upon the hapless searcher! A simple notion with much to recommend it?

Reports from conference attendees and speakers are starting to appear online if you want to read more.

For anyone thinking about going to conference in the future – give it a go! You have nothing to lose but potentially a lot to be gained.

Debbie Fox

The afternoon was taken up with two overseas keynote speakers  (Martin Molloy and Molly Raphael) dealing with the problems public libraries face in this the era of the credit crunch. Most of us have heard of the difficulties facing UK libraries in particular – 400 branch and mobile libraries have closed there. A very sobering statistic for our profession.

Exhibitors are in evidence everywhere and it is interesting to see what is new in the marketplace especially as most of them have the added incentive of chocolates, free bags and the opportunity to win an iPad 2!

Day two in Wellington has provided the opportunity to meet up with some fellow MIS students at the ‘Newcomers’ morning tea and listen to a very thought provoking speaker  – Dr Aroha Mead speaking about WAI 262. She gave us the essence of this very lengthy 1000 page document in a concise and sometimes humorous presentation.  A visit to the Te Papa library will be the highlight of my afternoon today. Days are full on and surprisingly exhausting with the sheer amount of information on offer and networking with colleagues from a diverse range of libraries.

Reports from conference attendees and speakers are starting to appear online if you want to read more.

Debbie Fox

• ‘In a way, the quakes have pushed us to develop our community role’: Interview with Carolyn Robertson of Christchurch City Libraries, New Zealand
• Comics in New Zealand Education: Interview with Steve Malley

The theme this year was ‘People in harmony’ which was also the theme for Race Relations Day. We attended a variety of different sessions but failing to split ourselves into two or more we couldn’t go to all of them. Some of the key ones were:

• Multicultural Councils: serving diverse communities Tauranga, Rotorua & Waikato Multicultural Councils,
• Diversity and Business Auckland Chamber of Commerce
• Multiculturalism and its relevance to 21^st century NZ New Zealand Federation of Multicultural Councils
• Poverty, Inequality and Cultural Privilege Poverty Action Waikato

You can view forum presentations on slideshare.

Two new books were launched this year. Tangata Tiriti from the Treaty Education Group is a new resource specially written for migrants as an introduction to our very first immigration document. It’s a fun workbook designed for educators or personal use.

The second was introduced to us at the Diversity Librarian Network session. Jenny Magee, the editor, presented New to New Zealand: ethnic communities in Aotearoa: a handbook, an updated introduction to the myriad of minority communities in New Zealand. Look for it in your library or you can ask us – we won the pop quiz and the prize was our very own copy.

We both agreed that a highlight for the event was seeing Deaf Aotearoa receive an award for their work in producing a National Anthem DVD featuring all three of our official languages. Very heartwarming and beautifully presented.

Here are some suggestions on how to keep up-to-date with what’s happening in the diversity arena in Aotearoa:

• Join the mailing list of the Human Rights Commission to receive their newsletters. You can choose from 9 different titles – some relate specifically to the Diversity Action Programme and race relations, while the others deal with disability, transgender and Treaty issues
• Follow @nzdiversity on Twitter
• Follow the Diversity Action Programme on Facebook
• Subsribe to the RSS feed of news from the Human Rights Commission

Sarah M and Lisa S

The majority of students — of all levels — exhibited significant difficulties that ranged across nearly every aspect of the search process.

And even though students had problems finding the right information, they didn’t ask for help as:

Librarians are believed to do work unrelated to helping students, or work that, while possibly related to research, does not entitle students to relationships with them.

This article is about academic libraries, but I found in it some unexpected insights on how the public might view us, and how that affects the value we can give them.

Read all our posts from the 2011 Auckland Writers and Readers Festival

The team that covered the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival this year never quite got to do its Library Liaison session, where we report back and encourage and inspire others with what we learned and encourage colleagues to have a go next year. Events have overtaken us. But here’s a few facts, some highlights, and some noise.

• This is New Zealand’s biggest literary festival : This year’s festival set a record attendance of over 32,000 – up 21 per cent on figures in 2010.
• There is an incredibly popular schools programme – held over two days, it offers subsidised transport to schools, and kids can bring books to be signed. Many of the top authors take the time to work with young people.
• Web traffic always gets a bump when we cover a festival like this – it makes sense to put the library where the reading crowds are
• Here are some of the sounds of this year’s festival, recorded in the field in Auckland: Atka Reid and Hana Schofield share some thoughts on libraries, and there’s also some crowd noise and a manic street preacher: 

Highlights

Let’s start with the New Zealand Listener Gala Night which featured eight guests telling true stories – all based on a single letter of the alphabet. It was a great format – personal, quirky, funny and hopefully, a sign of things to come. It was so much better than straight readings – not that readings aren’t great, but this was something of the author’s own life or experience that wouldn’t necessarily have made it into a book.

The largest audience ever at a festival event was An Evening with A.A. Gill which took festival entertainment to a whole new level. Gill and ‘moderator’ Al Brown had been fishing earlier in the day. Brown’s moderation mainly consisted of him dodging a succession of sharp-witted barbs from Gill, before the nerves subsided and everyone decided to play nice. Wildly entertaining.

Naomi Oreskes’ ‘Michael King Memorial Lecture’  laid out the history of the damage wrought by contrarian scientists was immense, frightening and meticulously researched. On science and doubt can be heard on Radio New Zealand’s website.

Other popular sessions included New Zealand film-maker Vincent Ward with Charlotte Ryan; James Fergusson’s hour-long exploration of the Taliban with Sean Plunket; an innovative performance of music and spoken word by the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, and of course, This one’s for Christchurch, which you’ll get a chance to see in September as Putting words to the feelings.  Is it any wonder the audiences turn out when the organisers manage to harness such an array of talent?

There’s always a good visual session or three at the festival, and this year Peter Simpson’s Leo Bensemann presentation was a bit of a feast. Fantastica is an awesome work – and it would be great to see a Christchurch exhibition of Bensemann’s artworks at some stage. However the real highlight for me was the elderly woman who brought in some original pieces for the author to look at. It was Antiques Roadshow in real life.

Then there was the twitter wall – technology for fun. You could tweet anything with #happy in it and there was a chance it would show up on the twitter wall above the bookstore. The camera was pointing at the crowd and if people moved, big blue dots formed around them, like hot spots. Unlike the ones that you see in airports which are actually Flash movies, this seemed to be pulling tweets from a live feed. Very cool.

It was also pretty neat to meet Rives, a poet who had you trespassing one moment, and listening to dirty talk the next.

It’s my sincere hope that we can continue to cover events like these – it’s really important for libraries to support writers, and we have a tradition of developing great writers at our library – Margaret Mahy, Bill Nagelkerke. Events like these really sharpen writing skills, and are great to give insight into the literary world.

The Auckland festival crew always look after us and are an amazing team. My thanks to them and to my colleagues who take on the challenge – their dedication, professionalism and desire to deliver made it all look easy.

2011 was my last festival for the library, as I am moving on to other things. If you get the chance to go to a festival, I encourage you to take it. You won’t be able to go and sit there and soak it all in – you’ll need to do some interviews, record some audio and edit it, take photos and learn some technical skills. Report back as fast and as fearlessly as you can – it’s a great experience and a wonderful opportunity.

• View photos from the festival on the library flickr
• Read more posts from the festival
• Visit the official website
• Listen to audio from the festival via Radio New Zealand

Read the posts here:

• New Zealand public libraries: social media supporters
• Social media supporters of individual public libraries
• Social media influence of New Zealand public libraries

I recommend signing up to Sally’s most excellent Daily News – she curates library news from New Zealand and around the world, and kindly delivers it to your inbox. You should also follow @Sallyheroes if you are on Twitter.

Another way of visualising @ChristchurchLib on Twitter:

A fun infographic from Visual.ly