Blog Archives
Lovely Library
The Sydney Morning Herald ran this story about a new library for Green Square, Sydney.
Sydney’s first 24 Hour Library on its way?
Part of a larger proposal going before the City of Sydney Council this month is the possibility of the library in the Old Custom House building being open 24 hours.
This is just one of many measures to attract a greater mix of people, events and businesses to the city at night and boost annual late-night turnover to $30 billion by 2030. The plan proposes developing a ”night cities global index” to rank cities by their night economies – with the goal of earning a top-three placing for Sydney. It said a 25 per cent increase in jobs in the city’s night economy by 2030 would count as a measure of success, as would increasing shops to 40 per cent of businesses open after 6pm.
Read more here.
The page includes a radio interview between Suzie Matthews from the City of Sydney and Angela Catterns and Wendy Harmer where Ms Matthews was questioned about the impact of 24 hour opening on them, eg. attracting homeless people to the library all night and how much extra power would all the night cities activities generate?
A poll on the page, which asks “How do oyou rate the idea of an all-night library at Circular Quay?” is showing good interest in the idea (36% of respondents).
Just some bits and bobs I’ve found interesting . . .
Books and Reading
Is your favourite book in the top 10 most read books in the world?
I don’t know how To Kill a Mockingbird didn’t make the list ;(
We’ve all chuckled over children playing at being some character out of a book they’ve read but have you ever thought about the influence of fiction in your [adult] life? According to a new study from researchers in the US, “when you loves yourself inside the world of a fictional character while reading a story, you may actually end up changing your own behaviour and thoughts to match that of the character.” As this Guardian article by Alison Flood speculates, that may be a dangerous thing!
I really like this graph showing the colour distribution of YA book covers published in the US during 2011.
The author, Michelle Andelman, has gone to a lot of trouble analysing YA covers further for representation of gender and minority groups. It makes for fascinating reading and you can persue the topic here.
It’s come as a bit of a shock to me that Johannes Gutenberg did not invent the first printing press using moveable type. Apparently, Chinese and Korean inventors had been producing printed books for centuries before Gutenberg was born. There you go!
Here’s a challenge I bet you won’t be able to resist! What speed do you read at? How do you compare with the US average? Click on the red Start Reading button in the graphic below and take the test. Don’t cheat and skim the text because there are a few questions to answer to check.
Source: Staples eReader Department
According to the produceers of this test, 3rd grade students read about 150 words per minute, average adults read about 300 words per minute, and college students read about 450 words per minute. After 3 goes, I’ve been able to get into the 500s. That means I’d be able to read War and Peace in 16 hours and 12 minutes! But before I get all big-headed I need to put things into perspective; Anne Jones, six times winner of the World Speed Reading Championships (why was I never invited to that one?) reads an awe-inspiring 4700 words a minute!
This article, The millionaire author’s club, discusses the vagaries of the writer’s lot – according to this only 68 books have sold more than 1 million copies since Nielsen BookScan started keeping the stats in 1998. Can you hazard a guess at who’s made the 1 million mark? According to a survey by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society, the median annual income of a writer in Britain today is just £4,000 ($6400).
Libraries and Librarians
Librarian-turned-detective and historian, Kevin Morgan, helped gain a pardon for a man more than 80 years after his execution. Colin Campbell Ross was hung in 1922 at the Old Melbourne Gaol for the rape and murder of a 12 year old girl. Morgan’s book, Gun Alley, which was instrumental in Ross’ 2008 pardon, has been followed up by the newly released Detective Pigott’s Casebook based on the scrapbooks of the detective working on the case at the time. Piggott was an outstanding policeman of his era and his scrapbooks document the first example of blood-spatter interpretation in Australian forensic history. “He uses an interpretation of the scene and where the blood landed, where the body was found in relation to where the shotgun was found and he was able to put those factors together with mathematical precision”, said Morgan. “It’s illustrated with photographs that are only here in this album. Read more here.
Now in double dip recession, Britain is having to economise hard and for some time Libraries have been under threat all over the country with many having been closed already, others scheduled for closure and some going over to the community to run using volunteer labour. So it’s heartening to know that in a recent surveyby the Carnegie Trust, the first such survey of public attitudes towards libraries across the UK and the Republic of Ireland, it was found that people in value their libraries highly.
Books on Screen
My friend Sharon was saddened when I told her that Charlaine Harris has announced that she will only be publishing one more Sookie Stackhouse novel. And my other mate Janet will be devastated for what this will mean for the True Blood TV series. This Guardian article explains how the True Blood author can suck no more out of the vampire series.
Filming has begun on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s harrowing novel about the Nigerian-Biafran War 1967-70, Half of a Yellow Sun. The novel won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2007 and was included in the New York Times ’100 most notable books of the year’ in 2006.
Librarys ARE cool – official!
Time Out Sydney has posted an A-Z list of What’s Cool in Sydney and it may surprise some of you that haven’t been to a library recently that Library’s (or in this case the Surry Hills Library) have made it into the list at L :
L is for Late night library
You may wonder what ‘library’ is doing on a list of all things cool, but Surry Hills Library is a cultural hive on Thursday nights. We’re talking rock’n’roll, dirty talk and booze. Seriously. Each adults-only Late Night Library is different, so as well as live music and erotic fan fiction you might find a literary event like Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire’s Women of Letters, DIY publishing presentations, twisted comedy, film screenings, or artist talks. All are free and for many you can BYO!
The Edublog Awards blog
The Edublog Awards blog allows people to nominate their best blogs in a variety of categories:
- Best individual blog
- Best individual tweeter
- Best group blog
- Best new blog
- Best class blog.
- Best student blog
- Best ed tech / resource sharing blog
- Most influential blog post
- Best twitter hashtag
- Best teacher blog
- Best librarian / library blog
- Best School Administrator blog
- Best free web tool
- Best educational use of audio / video / visual / podcast
- Best educational wiki
- Best open PD / unconference / webinar series
- Best educational use of a social network
- Lifetime achievement
We have had a think and we are going to nominate Read It 2011 in the Best librarian / library blog category. A plain, unassuming little blog, this blog is packed with good reading ideas and backs up a twitter reading group run by the NSW Readers’ Advisory Working Group. We have been posting about it all year.
The Readers’ Advisory Working Group works hard at encouraging their colleagues and the public to enjoy their reading and nudges them into areas they may not have ventured into before (Fantasy for me *shudders*). Then they are encouraged to post on the blog and tweet about their reading. It’s been fascinating reading about other people’s reading.
We have had a lot of fun reading in the various themes suggested, and hope you have too.
The State Library of NSW is undergoing a makeover – 
