resting between breaths

Blogging here has fallen way down on my to-do list, which is a shame as it's an ideal platform for sharing the journey.
Ideas are teeming at the moment so I'm hoping to be able to gather them here again. No promises though.

As always, life is an ongoing journey and the road weaves its way ahead of us; surprises await.

Digital Skills in higher education as a metro map

This is rather cool.

All Aboard is a project funded by Ireland's National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning, which aims to identify the wide range of skills and knowledge that students, and all those who work in higher education, will need to feel confident and creative when learning, working in and exploring the digital world. They have produced this rather lovely interactive map showcasing a range of useful skills and their applications.

A year of reading - 2015

I like tracking what I've read and of course Goodreads is perfect for this.

Apparently in 2015 I read 67 books with a total of 21,475 pages - go figure.

    

  

SWITCH 2015 - NSW Public Libraries Conference ... a series of tweets

I spent most of last week in Sydney attending the NSW Public Libraries Association conference (SWITCH). It may be a little while before I fully collect my impressions (and photos) but I thought I would at least put up the few Storifys I put together rather hurriedly yesterday. There's probably some tweets I missed and huge thanks to everyone who tweeted and shared and are now collected here together. Enjoy.

Pre-conference: the bus tour
We visited Gordon, Bankstown, and Burwood Libraries. I quite like Gordon and was impressed by the sheer scope of Bankstown. Burwood was also quite nice. Each has its unique character and communities that they serve so there's a lot of little things from each that could be taken away and implemented in other libraries too. Lots of good ideas.

Day One: an interesting day, begun with a heartfelt and warm Welcome to Country. Themed around Sustainable Partnerships and Brand Sustainability, we heard from the NSW State Library's Dr Alex Byrne, Siobhan Reardon of the Philadelphia Free Library, David Dale, Paula Pfoeffer, Jack Goodman, Annalisa Armitage, and a delightful panel of Librarians from Adelaide City, City of Sydney, Gold Coast, and Hume Libraries discussing their unique partnerships.

Day Two: today's themes were Financial Sustainability and Sustainability of Libraries. After hearing from Sonia Toussaint and a large panel of libraries sharing their popup library stories, interspersed with a keynote presentation from Mark Hynes, the Director of Corporate Affairs from the London Borough of Lambeth, we then heard from Jackie Bailey, and finally Jane Caro.

Day 2 closed with the conference dinner held in the rather glorious setting of the Australian Maritime Museum on Darling Harbour and themed, rather appropriately, on Pirates, Privateers, and Buccaneers - the majority of the crowd dressed accordingly. Some photos can be found on Facebook here. 

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.

The anatomy of a grammar nerd (via Grammarly)

Doorways into science and science fiction reading

This is my presentation from last week's Readers Advisory seminar at the State Library of New South Wales: The Librarian's Guide to the Galaxy.
You can catch the Storify of the day's tweets here.

the sheer variety of novel formats....... lol

(from The Casual Optimist)

Hiatus

wow.

It sure has been a while since I shared anything here. Almost 5 months since I last put fingers to keyboard.

I've 3 more reviews to complete for my #aww2014 challenge (Franklin) and looking back thru my Goodreads list I've definitely got enough titles to choose from...

Dancing on Knives by Kate Forsyth
Beams Falling by P. M. Newton
and a selection of romance titles by Sara Bennett


It's weird. After being way ahead in my Goodreads 2014 Reading Challenge, I'm now 2 books behind. I read Brent Week's The Broken Eye last month. It's the third book in his Lightbringer series. I didn't read anything after finishing it for four weeks. I couldn't. I almost didn't know how to. Four whole weeks. Yes. He's that good. His characters are that good. The story is that good.
But then I simply picked up a book (Melissa Marr's Carnival of Souls) and found myself back on track. Immediately followed by John Scalzi's Lock In. And just last night I finished Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl. It seemed only appropriate to follow up such a big book with such amazingly talented authors.

And that's what has led me here today. I realised as I was reading Fangirl that is simply ages since I've blogged anything. Life has caught me up in its crazy fast lane and I've forgotten how to get off. So today, my first rostered day off in ages when I have made myself simply stay at home and potter around; when I have cancelled all appointments and ignored all my to-do lists; I have simply been. Been in the moment and in the now. I even refused to take my kids to school (I asked my eldest to do it instead, he was going in anyway).

It feels wonderful. Like breathing in the sweet smell of freshly brewed herbal tea. Like smelling that proverbial rose.

I've still done things. Yes the washing got done and most of the dishes are drying and okay I did completely reorganise the linen press but they're small inconsequential things. Things that needed doing anyway. It's been lovely. Every day should be like this.

Open windows, music cranked, sunshine, breezes, the smell of freshly brewed coffee....

* happy sigh *


CatyJ