In the last of three features pushing the boundaries of what librarians can learn from pop culture, Melburnian writer and roller derby official Jordi Kerr tells us what libraries can learn from the glamorous, full-throttle sport of roller derby.
Author: Mechanical Dolphin
Dirty Library Trilogy, part 2: Readers’ advisory at the World’s Freakiest Bookstore
In the second of three features pushing the boundaries of what librarians can learn from pop culture, we take a visit to Melbourne bookstore Polyester Books and talk readers’ advisory with one of the most provocative booksellers I’ve ever met.
Polyester Books – the self-proclaimed ‘World’s Freakiest Bookstore’ – spells trouble. It did from the moment I discovered it.
I was visiting Melbourne for the first time and a friend recommended an alternative bookshop at the far end of Brunswick Street in Fitzroy.
I had no idea where this was, so on a visit to the State Library of Victoria, I asked one of the youth librarians to help me find it. She googled ‘Polyester Books’ on a State Library computer terminal and we were both immediately confronted with the store’s incredibly NSFW logo.
As Polyester proprietor Jo Emslie puts it, “If that sign upsets you, don’t look around our shop, ‘cos your head’s gonna explode!”
- Polyester Books, Melbourne
Yet Polyester’s commitment to supplying all kinds of books, DVDs, zines, art, and periodicals is deeply relevant to the mission of 21st century librarians. I dropped in to the shop for a browse and was impressed to find the likes of obscure Austrian novelist Hermann Broch on the shelves alongside the more eyebrow-raising fare.
So what can librarians learn from the World’s Freakiest Bookstore?
Dirty Library Trilogy, part 1: Drink your way to better librarianship
This is the first of three blog posts exploring the very limits of what librarians can learn from popular culture.
I often end presentations and workshops with the challenge: “What’s the naughtiest thing librarians can do to promote literacy today?”
‘Naughty’ doesn’t mean dangerous, inappropriate, or damaging – but in a profession sometimes misrepresented as staid and conservative, and so often at the mercy of local government bureaucracy, it’s important to remember that public librarians are firebrands – that public libraries are innately subversive institutions, born of the radical notion that every single member of society deserves free, high-quality access to knowledge and culture.
So being “naughty” in the name of literacy might involve kids smashing up fruit inside your library; or playing real-life versions of video games among the shelves; it might involve zombies besieging kids and teens within your building.
In the ‘Dirty Library Trilogy’, I’m going to try and push the boundaries and see what libraries can learn at the far reaches of pop culture…from the battling broads of the rollerderby rink to the barrooms of the world.
So…could we drink our way to better librarianship?
A youth event with a difference highlights the community value of libraries
There is no-one in the library when the children arrive.
Jagged letters are chalked across the door: SAVE YOURSELVES.
Blood is pooled on the front step. Within, bookshelves have been knocked to the ground, their contents spilled across the carpet.
The air is thick with summer heat and silence.
The children suspect a prank. They’re quick to investigate, eagerly picking over the vandalised interior, quizzing their teachers:
“Is it a murder mystery game?”
“Did you fake a burglary?”
Before the adults have time to answer, a terrible cry comes from the street outside.
The children run to the library doors.
They see figures approaching: gruesome, deformed individuals from the ranks of the walking dead. Zombies attack! The children scream as the teachers hurry them inside and barricade the doors.
Only the library can save them now…
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The zombies of Tullamore: A library youth programme with a difference
As my regular readers will know, Friday 9th November saw a very special event in Tullamore, New South Wales. Australasian libraries have run a lot of innovative youth activities in recent years – but I think this was the first time that they had gone so far as to summon the living dead in the name of literacy…
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Kia Handley gives a personal response to the zombie workshop which I ran today at Tullamore Library, New South Wales. Stay tuned for more reports from the “Zombpocalypse”…
A guest post by Dr Matt Finch
Snoopy was my first comic book hero. Before I could read, before I could even follow the stories from frame to frame, I used to flip through the dozens of Peanuts books we had lying around our home, hunting out the pictures of Charlie Brown’s taciturn dog.
Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, was a master cartoonist who could convey volumes with a minimal number of pen strokes. The image above, capturing Snoopy in a soaring act of imagination, is potent because, though wordless, it belongs to the world of storytelling (and therefore literature) as much as art.
It took time for my infant self to fully make sense of Charlie Brown and company, but once I did, there was another mystery waiting for me – the inscriptions by my Mum and Dad in every edition. It took a few years for…
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Image gallery: September workshops from Australian libraries
A selection of photographs from some of my recent workshops for children and young people in New South Wales.
These school holiday sessions in libraries offered high quality speaking and listening opportunities alongside exciting and unusual hands-on experience, with attendees also producing a range of narrative and non-fiction writing amid the fruit smashing and tower building!
Stealing fire from the gods: Keynote address to Canberra Early Literacy Conference
On 13th September, I spoke in Australia’s Parliament House at the inaugural meeting of the Parliamentary Friendship Group for Early Literacy, followed by a keynote address to the third annual Paint the Town REaD Early Literacy Conference.
Paint the Town REaD (PTTR) is the Australian initiative which encourages families, carers and the wider community to ‘read, talk, sing and rhyme with your child from birth.’
I tend to give speeches the same way I used to prepare my classroom as an infant school teacher: research the topic, put loads and loads of resources into place, then allow free play across the interests and needs of the audience. Today’s blog post captures a few highlights from the conference’s keynote discussion, assembled under the hashtag #occupyliteracy.
matt finch / mechanical dolphin 