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.

Ramblings....

Back towards the end of July I came across an article written by Kerry Parnell listing the 25 books you really don't have to read before you die. 

The books listed include:

• Eucalyptus / Murray Bail
• Ulysses / James Joyce
• Cloudstreet / Tim Winton
• The Dice Man / Luke Rhineheart
• Catch 22 / Joseph Heller
• To The Lighthouse / Virginia Woolf
• The Slap / Christos Tsiolkas
• Twilight / Stephanie Meyer
• On The Road / Jack Kerouac
• The Metamorphosis / Franz Kafka
• Midnight's Children / Salman Rushdie
• Oscar & Lucinda / Peter Carey
• My Sister's Keeper / Jodi Picoult
• Sons and Lovers / D H Lawrence
• We Need To Talk About Kevin / Lionel Shriver
• 50 Shades of Grey / E L James
• Crime and Punishment / Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Eat, Pray, Love / Elizabeth Gilbert
• Shantaram / Gregory David Roberts
• Tess of the D'Urbervilles / Thomas Hardy
• Charlie and The Great Glass Elevator / Roald Dahl
• Memoirs of a Geisha / Arthur Golden
• The Devil Wears Prada / Lauren Weisberger
• The Secret / Rhonda Byrne
• The Celestine Prophecy / James Redfield

There's a comment from Grant of Melbourne right at the end that neatly sums up a lot about how I feel about this article....

I [am] so glad that we have someone like this reviewing books who is clearly more intelligent than the multitudes who have enjoyed these books or the people who as a group have reviewed the books and deemed them worthy [of] recognition. Sorry Kerry but many of us have progressed beyond the Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham, have laid down the crayons from our colouring books and can follow stories that have multiple threads, moral dilemma, convolutions or the other issues that seem to plague you with these books. The reason that people enjoy them or that they are deemed classics is that they reflect in many regards our lives. You inability to connect to this either indicates a bland life or some other disconnection with the world around you... rather sad either way,

Moving on.

There are various ways of looking at this list - one is to take the list at face value and consider the merits (or not) of each title, another is to consider the act of list making itself (after all who am I or anyone else to tell others what to read and what not to? I honestly dislike lists that state "100 books to read before you die", or "100 places to visit before you die", and so on - seriously, a slow reading year for me is roughly 100 books, does this mean my death is imminent?). 

I guess the chief part of this article that I truly take umbrage to, before I even get to the books listed are the words .... "I'd like to relieve you of some literary pressure and reveal the titles life's just far too short to waste time on". Since when is life too short to read whatever takes your fancy? Since when is life too short to read what has won an award? Since when is life too short to read outside your comfort zone and push the boundaries of what reading (and indeed writing) is?

I personally have no intention of reading beyond Twilight or 50 Shades of Grey - I've read both those titles and have no inclination to read the remainder of either series. Whilst I consider both books to have some literary flaws I also see great merit in both. I will continue to hold up 50 Shades as an example of writing that has got locale descriptions down perfectly - R L James certainly knows how to describe a room, what people look like, what they are wearing. The rest of the book didn't do a lot for me personally but I do recognise and accept the appeal to others. Aside from what I think, both books got people reading and the bottom line is that it's all about "bums on seats".

I have read Ulysses by James Joyce. It's not an easy read but I do believe it's worth it. Reading Ulysses forced me to reconsider the experience of reading and to be challenged to accept that a story can be told in oh so many ways - all within the one novel. I am also a serious fan of train-of-thought (as anyone who knows me well will attest) so the ending pages were an absolute delight where lack of punctuation fought hard against the flow of words - I loved it!

I personally cannot stand Thomas Hardy, but I put a lot of that down to a bad experience reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles during high school. Being forced to read a book and choosing to read one can really influence how you go on to feel about that book and this one is certainly a case in point. Here I was frustrated by the number of pages Hardy spent describing the heath yet leaving me simply with a feeling that it was low and a green-purplish colour.... But, I am an impatient reader - I want to know now what is happening and certainly as a 17 year old I had no patience at all for the casual meanderings that established the scenery. Now I see the cleverness, now I see the beauty in the prose, now I see the clever use of language, now I see that the pages were worth it .... I'm still an impatient reader but I'm a lot more forgiving these days.

I could discuss each and every title on this list but it will only and always be my own opinion, to which you are very welcome to disagree. There is no definitive list, there will never be any agreement. Disparity is as natural as agreement. I adore Shakespeare. I like dark vibrant colours. I prefer Fantasy fiction over World fiction. I am me. You are you. And to be blunt, thank goodness for that for if we were all the same it would be a jolly boring world we live in!

I remain however, vehemently opposed to anyone who tells me that I shouldn't waste my time on a particular book. After all, it's my time to do with as I please. Reading is a personal experience and one which should be respected. I don't think there can ever be a list which definitively gathers those books which are worthy of reading and those which are not. You need only look at any title listed on GoodReads to see the sheer variance in rating and opinion for each and every title there. And I for one think that the difference of opinion is what adds to the discussion and to the value of each reading experience.

Oh and by the way, I've only not read 6 out of the 25 books listed ... 

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.

blog updates

It's been a while, but the Reference & Information Services, RISG-New Technologies, and Readers Advisory blogs have returned with a fresh face-lift & some new content.
With recent posts on cutting edge technologies in libraries, Storify, and e-readers and the national year of reading there is lots of information to share and learn from.

I'm looking forward to seeing what else there is in store from the RISG & RA crowds this year!