Libraries – Page 30 – matt finch / mechanical dolphin

Why are New Zealand libraries letting their enemies write “the final chapter”?

May 2, 2013May 2, 2013Mechanical Dolphin

A local politician in Marlborough, New Zealand, has suggested ditching the district’s libraries in favour of distributing e-readers to residents.

The Kiwi TV show Breakfast on One reported this news in a piece titled “The final chapter for libraries?”

Although Kiwi librarians are attempting to push back with the Twitter hashtag #morethanbooks, responses have tended to focus on the fact that libraries use e-books too, and include other items like music in their collections as well.

The simple truth is, libraries aren’t about books on shelves, or compact discs, or even e-readers. Those are tools, mere means to an end.

Libraries are about helping the public to explore the world of knowledge and culture on their own terms. That might mean performance art in British libraries, bringing books to life through gaming in Toronto, or holding teen zombie battles in Auckland.

A library isn’t just a storage space for books on shelves – it’s also a place where musicians perform; where computer software is written; where teens get to wrestle a zombie-bitten police officer to the ground while debating the ethics of surviving a disaster scenario.

Yet one local politician has said “Why not replace libraries with e-readers?” and Kiwi librarians are on the defensive, letting their enemies set the terms of the debate. Read more →

Zombies at Tupu Library, South Auckland

April 28, 2013May 15, 2013Mechanical Dolphin

Auckland Libraries' Anne Dickson in zombie makeup — Auckland Libraries’ Anne Dickson led teen zombie hordes against a group of survivors in Tupu Youth Library

Last Friday in Tupu Youth Library, South Auckland, I ran an interactive live-action zombie event for teens on their school holidays.

The ‘survivors’, aged from 12 to 18, found themselves besieged in a meeting room while zombies feasted on hapless victims outside. Teens made barricades from furniture, used library resources to plan their escape from South Auckland, and faced special challenges including detecting potential zombie victims and even wrestling with a zombified police officer!

See the Tupu Zombies on New Zealand’s TV3 News and find more coverage at New Zealand’s Stuff.co.nz website.

Library Chat Podcast – on Nerf guns, literacy and boisterous play

April 21, 2013Mechanical Dolphin

This week you can find me talking about libraries, literacy, and immersive play on Corin Haines’ Library Chat podcast.

Corin is head of digital services with my current employers at Auckland Libraries in New Zealand, where I’ve been encouraging youth librarians to embrace play, performance, and forms of literacy which needn’t involve books on shelves.

One of the first things I did on arrival in Auckland is arrange for the library to purchase a number of Nerf guns – toys which shoot foam darts – with the aim of encouraging librarians to create activities which combined literacy with more boisterous forms of action and adventure.

The message I’ve been trying to get across is that roleplay and activities which immerse you in a story are just as valid for libraries as anything involving books on shelves.

UNESCO’s Missions of the Public Library don’t even use the word ‘book’ once – but they do mention providing access to cultural expressions of all performing arts, stimulating the imagination and creativity of children and young people, and providing opportunities for personal creative development – alongside reading!

Corin has been, to his credit, an early adopter of the Nerf gun in Auckland – that’s him in the final frame of this YouTube video, which shows staff getting to grips with the toys:

But Corin did ponder the moral implications in a blog post on gunplay and libraries at his own website, concerned that we were encouraging children to celebrate violence through this kind of activity.

This is the kind of problem that keeps a decent librarian awake at night – especially in the light of recent news from the US.

When creating Heroes and Villains activities for the school holidays, how scary should we dare to go?

Should we be allowing kids to identify with explicitly villainous figures? (Somewhere in my mum’s house there is a photo of me dressed as Darth Vader – but I alternated that costume with Spider-man pyjamas and my favourite hero outfit, Batman).

If kids use play to make sense of the world, do we have the right – or the power – to stop them thinking through violence and its consequences using play?

In the light of recent events, I’ll be following up on these questions after a pause for contemplation and acknowledgement of the tragedy in Massachusetts.

In the meantime, you can hear Corin and I chat about literacy and immersive play over at Library Chat.

I believe in Space…and Desire: Jessica Begley on library design

March 26, 2013March 29, 2014Mechanical Dolphin

A guest post by urban planner turned librarian Jessica Begley. What can libraries do to help users make the most of their spaces?

Like the Pixies, I believe in Space.

I have been fascinated by how and why people use space, and how subtle design can influence behaviour, for as long as I can remember.

As a teen, I merged this interest in social geography with psychology and came up with a degree in Urban Planning and Design. I was going to change the world. Improve open spaces. Create spaces people felt happy in. The reality I found was far from my planned dream. Rows of brickwork, overshadowing, trellis screens, and complaints all dominated my day. Not even I liked the spaces I was approving. Approving, not designing.

Fast-forward fifteen years. I am still an urban planner, but only in my mind. I have been trained to look at spaces, movement of people, land use, all in a certain way. I can no longer look at a space like an ordinary person. Taking my kids to the shops, the park, the library, I analyse the flow of movement through space. When I see conflicting uses, I see a design-based solution. When I see desire lines – the unplanned paths naturally taken by people in any setting – I read them.

Libraries learning from retail: Interview with Oxford’s indie music mecca, Truck Store

March 21, 2013March 21, 2013Mechanical Dolphin

This is the third in a loose trilogy of blog posts exploring libraries and music: previous features include a guest post by Stewart Parsons of Get It Loud in Libraries and an interview with rapper-educator Professor Elemental. Today, we’re joined by Carl Smithson, the manager at Truck Store, an amazing indie record shop in Oxford, England.

After attending the Foyles Futures workshop on next-generation book retail in London, I’ve become increasingly concerned with design and atmosphere in libraries. Great service and effective presentation of collections are vital for any 21st century public library.

Read more →

Dirty Library Trilogy, part 3: What Can Libraries Learn from Roller Derby?

January 14, 2013January 14, 2013Mechanical Dolphin

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.

Read more →

Dirty Library Trilogy, part 2: Readers’ advisory at the World’s Freakiest Bookstore

January 4, 2013Mechanical Dolphin

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 21^st 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

December 30, 2012May 29, 2019Mechanical Dolphin

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?