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.

non-readers and RA.....

Earlier today I came across this post from Flavorwire titled The first 10 works of fiction you should read if you've never read a book before  via Good Reading magazine. It follows a comment from Jamie Oliver about how he doesn't read much fiction (mostly because he's dyslexic but also because he's busy); he makes the comment that he gets bored easily, but had also just finished Suzanne Collins' Catching Fire. 

The Flavorwire list includes:
The adventures of Huckleberry Finn / Mark Twain
Hamlet / Shakespeare
The catcher in the rye / J D Salinger
Heart of darkness / Joseph Conrad
The great Gatsby / F Scott Fitzgerald
Ender's Game / Orson Scott Card
The hobbit / J R R Tolkein
To kill a mockingbird / Harper Lee
Beloved / Toni Morrison
Mrs Dalloway / Virginia Woolf

Whilst these are all wonderful stories and well worth reading I wonder if they are truly a good selection of titles to suggest to non-readers. As Jamie Oliver states, he gets bored easily. I don't see any of these titles engaging the adult non-reader and inspiring them to read the next book and the next and so on.... Why not? Well for starters they're a little heavy on language. I mean, would you really introduce someone who admits to not being that keen to sit down and spend some considerable time doing nothing else but reading to Shakespeare as a good place to start, to turn that non-reader into a reader? I wouldn't, and I love Shakespeare.

The key element to suggesting titles for a non-reader (indeed any reader) is to consider what they want out of the experience, to suit the title/author to the person's likes and interests. Take a hint from Jamie Oliver and think current authors who are in the news and/or whose books are in the movies and you're sure to provide some great introductory texts to adult non-readers. Many movies are based on an original book and sometimes if someone has really enjoyed the movie they'll consider reading the book. So taking this as a starting point I'd think about suggesting the following titles (in no particular order) as places adult non-readers might like to start on their journey towards becoming readers.

http://matthewreilly.com/the-novels/

The Hunger Games / Suzanne Collins
Master & Commander / Patrick O'Brian
My week with Marilyn / Colin Clark
Silver Linings Playbook / Matthew Quick
Contest / Matthew Reilly
Jurassic Park / Michael Crichton
Marvel comics (Iron Man, Avengers)
DC comics (Superman, Justice League)
Under the dome / Stephen King
Wicked / Gregory Maguire

I wouldn't say this is my top 10 (I don't think there is one), rather a place to start the conversation towards finding out what your non-reader's tastes and interests are before you suggest a place for them to begin their adult reading journey.

Stock Quality Health Check 2012

This time round a new team has gotten themselves together to select 500 Junior & Young Adult titles which best typify a healthy collection (this includes picture books)

Collection Health 2012

Of course, after a week of upgrading new members of the RA wiki to Writer status I finally couldn't help myself any longer and started adding in my own suggestions of authors & titles & series & so on. As an avid reader of everything, and with 3 teenage children, I've got a lot of info to impart.... I also felt it worthwhile commenting on titles which I thought were in the wrong category and why as I'm sure my feedback is just as important as my suggestions.
It was also fun to add Steampunk as a genre!
So, what would you add??

And before I forget ................ #readit2011

The #readit2011 Twitter reading fest has been an amazing journey so far. All the details can be found here - http://readit2011.wordpress.com/ - and here - http://readersadvisory.wetpaint.com/page/2011+Twitter+Reading+Group

Not to mention the shirts you can buy the shirts from RedBubble here - http://www.redbubble.com/explore/readit2011

There are plans afoot to continue the love next year too in conjunction with the National Year of Reading and make it bigger and better and broader and bookier!! .............. is that a word? You get what I mean, I'm just a tad excited about it all.

Now, I'd best be off to update my reading challenge list on the RA wiki .............................

February's #readit2011 and #heartreads

The NSW Readers Advisory Group is running another reading challenge during 2011 - #readit2011.

The challenge this year is to read a particular theme each month and either tweet about it using the #readit2011 tag (http://twitter.com/home#search?q=%23readit2011) and/or add your reading list to the RA wiki (http://readersadvisory.wetpaint.com/page/2011+Librarian%27s+Reading+Challenge).

During January the theme was Horror, reflecting the Summer Reading Club’s “scare up a good book” theme, using the twitter tag #suagb.
For February the theme is Romance, linking in with Library Lovers Day / Valentine’s Day, and using the tag #heartreads.
March’s theme is Fantasy (or speculative fiction) to tie in with this year’s RA seminar – Dragons in the Metcalfe.
And so on, you can go to the readit2011 blog to find out more - http://readit2011.wordpress.com/

This is not a reading challenge just for fiction lovers nor just for books, this is a chance to read, listen, perform, and even play games all based around the theme for that month. So why not challenge yourself and join #readit2011 today.

Feb 1 - MashUps revisited

MashUps are one of those things I wish I had far more time for. I enjoy utilising what others have done but would really like to be able to do more of them myself. That said, I'm choosing not to do this week's challenge simply because after 6+ weeks of finding time to fit these activities in I'm still at a loss as to when that will be.
I like the idea of MashUps - not just of images but also of information and see the value of resources like LibWorm which take a search query and correlate rss fed data to answer it. That said, the query requires a degree of sophistication to get the right set of results (like any online search really). It's a flip from my stanadrd rss feeds which direct my searching and querying simply by the nature of the ebb and flow of information as I read through them. Obviously I'm more of an organic thinker (stream-of-consciousness) than structured.

On an RA note I'm curious about the rise of Literary mashups and the blending of established classic pieces of literature (biography/history) and obscure (and perhaps confronting) genres into mainstream (though fairly oddball) fiction - beyond the realms of Jasper Fforde and into the world of the bizarre with titles such as "Abraham Lincoln, vampire hunter" and "Mr Darcy, vampyre" - otherwise known as Literary monster mashups (as a subgenre no less!).