all the pretty Redbubble things

The NSW Reference & Information Services Group has been part of the Redbubble community since 2010 when they launched their first piece of seminar themed merchandise for #ra2010 Murder in the Metcalfe and #bookbinge. From the simple beginnings of seminar hashtags in varied fonts on tee shirts and stickers and the occasional poster the range has now expanded to include tote bags and notebooks. As Redbubble has grown so too has the capacity to include images as well as text, to show that all important image attribution and to make the most of the opportunity Redbubble presents. Items are sold directly thru Redbubble at cost price on a pay-per-make basis with no profit to the group. The full range of products available on Redbubble continues to grow but the products used by nswRISG remains simple and straightforward - tote bags and notebooks are the key items.  They have the added advantage of being unique items that can easily be used as thank you gifts to local and international keynote speakers at the annual Reference @ the Metcalfe and Readers Advisory seminars held at the State Library of NSW for public library staff.

Exploring Redbubble has been a challenge I have relished. With no budget to access resources like Adobe Photoshop or other such graphic programs I ended up teaching myself how to use GIMP. There's often a fair bit of swearing involved each time while I reorient myself around the program, but it's easy and straightforward and quickly helps me design and create image files that can then be used in Redbubble to make things. I generally find that the first new design takes a while until I'm sure of the look and feel and then the rest of the designs come along pretty quickly. Designing in GIMP and sharing in Redbubble always leaves me feeling satisfied and rewarded by the creative process. There's something about making "things" that is hugely rewarding.

In 2015 I suddenly discovered that Redbubble was making more than just tee shirts (thank you Ellen), the world of tote bags opened up and so too did the idea of using images instead of just text to market the seminars. My first forays were a bit clunky but a highlight has been finding old library posters that were out of copyright and could be used to promote our library seminars (see #risg2015 and #risg2016). The idea of using images to support a seminar theme became both a challenge and an opportunity. Westerns @ the Metcalfe involved first finding a suitable image and then hunting high and low to ensure we had permission to use the image. Images for the 2017 seminars came from the E. A Seguy collection (Insectes and Papillons), from the Special Research Collections Center at North Carolina State University Libraries. The readers advisory theme was 'diversity' and inspired the use of butterfly images to reinforce the ideas this theme explored. Using cicadas for the reference seminar seemed utterly appropriate given the Australian setting. These were followed in 2018 by some rather lovely bombinator frogs and a selection of cephalopds inspired by this Pinterest board and compliments of the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Noting attribution for the source of the image has been paramount throughout the entire process and a huge thank you to the State Library of NSW for their delightful array of digitised photographs and posters which first began this journey.

As to what images will delight in 2019, that's a journey that's still to be had. I'm looking forward to it.

Reference @ the Metcalfe library bags

For the 2015 Reference @ the Metcalfe seminar (and for the first time for RISG) the range of marketing materials made available by the NSW Reference & Information Services Group included RedBubble bags. 

This particular bag was designed using an image available from the State Library of NSW featuring a rather appropriate poster, niftily titled Item 609A: Photographic copy of poster advertising the free lending service to country people /NSW Government Printer.

Rather neatly, it was possible when creating the final design for the bags & shirts to include the details & hashtag for the day as well as provide source attribution for the image on the item - it just goes to show that with some careful work & planning you can make excellent use of historical images available via creative commons.

Last Thursday (22/5/14) the annual Reference at the Metcalfe seminar was held at the State Library of NSW and hosted by the NSW Reference and Information Services Group (@NSWRISG). You can catch the Storify of the day's tweets below as a slideshow (the Storify site has since folded so I am sorry but this is no longer available).

The day made great use of Hangouts to connect with Nate Hill at Chattanooga Library, Oliver and Nick at Arapahoe Library, and Lubi and company at The Cube (QUT) in Queensland. As well as presentations from local NSW public librarians sharing and networking their ideas and innovations, experiences and challenges for providing reference and information services - physically and digitally - across the state.

Storify from yesterday's #risg2013 seminar at the State Library of NSW

#risg2012

image courtesy of nswRISG's RedBubble portfolio

I actually started writing this post way back on May 8th - while Reference @ the Metcalfe was happening, but you know, life got in the way. So, here I am back again to quickly direct attention to the presentations from the day which have been uploaded to the RISG wiki and can now be viewed in all their glory.
Unfortunately I couldn't attend #risg2012 but I did follow the day via twitter, so a huge thank you to all those peeps who shared their experiences and viewpoints on the day - certainly made for some interesting reading!


Enjoy.

And now for something completely different.......... #risg2011

Last Tuesday, May 24th, was the annual Reference @ The Metcalfe seminar, #risg2011.

The day had an exciting line-up, including David Lee King (via skype), Craig Thomler, Mitchell Whitelaw, Paul Hagon, and Ross Balharrie. Not to mention Megan Pitt doing her bit to showcase CNRL's fabulous CWA Country of Study webpage. Plus loads more.

All the details and presentations can be found here.

I missed attending this day in person, but thoroughly enjoyed following the action via twitter. A huge bonus has been the ability to view the Twapperkeeper stats and feed after the event to catch up on those moments when I wasn't shackled to my desk following the twitterstream.

As always a huge thank you to the RISG team for putting this event together and especially to Ellen Forsyth (@ellenforsyth) for all the hardwork she puts in when the rest of us simply can't make it to the post.

r u game? post event happenings

It's almost 3 weeks since the rugame2010 seminar in WoW and in that time it's been great to see the wiki grow as participants add in screen shots, an edited transcript, websites mentioned, etc.

On top of that it's also nice to catch up with what others have put together from their experience of this event (thanks Kim).

Overall, this was an exciting program for public library staff and has opened doors for more of the same. The success of the online session in World of Warcraft certainly validated the scepticism that some felt for such a venture. Too often as Librarians we feel comfortable where we are and don't want to explore new ways of doing things. Events like this, which to many would appear mundane, make us uncomfortable. We lose sight of its inherent value.

I look back at this event when I sat glued to my pc for 2 days following Twitter and think how I would most certainly go through that again for the benefit I got out of it. I cannot promote to enough colleagues the value of events like this which push the boundaries just a little.

Planning is now underway for next year's Reference @ the Metcalfe seminar and I'm very excited about the proposed program. It too pushes the boundaries of what's comfortable just a little and to be perfectly honest I think we need that push - really.

I'm also looking forward to designing a new shirt to add to the RISG collection on RedBubble.