Uncategorized – Page 7 – matt finch / mechanical dolphin

The music my notes created

October 5, 2015Mechanical Dolphin

Yesterday I took part in a library crawl – a walk around all of Lambeth’s libraries as they were transformed for the day into Fun Palaces. I wasn’t alone – I walked with the author Stella Duffy, who is one quarter of the team behind the whole Fun Palaces extravaganza (over 140 places this weekend, in England Scotland, New Zealand, Australia and New York). Her notes about the walk (much more poetic than mine…..) are what inspired the title of this – my attempt to transform my notes into something that reflects the sights, sounds, colours, smalls and experiences packed into 8 hours.

Entrance to Carnegie Library

Our starting point was the beautiful Carnegie Library by Ruskin Park in Herne Hill. I arrived as people were just setting up, and could see already the Fun Palace theme being brought to life: Everyone’s an artist, Everyone’s a scientist –…

View original post 672 more words

#Citylis student feedback

April 14, 2015April 14, 2015Mechanical Dolphin

This is (also) #citylis in full effect, folks (@DrMattFinch at #INM380) pic.twitter.com/LrKkT7jf9w

— Ernesto Priego (@ernestopriego) April 10, 2015

Last week I talked with students on Ernesto Priego’s library and information science course for City University, known as #citylis on Twitter. You can see more, and read my notes & slides from that talk, in last week’s blog post.

One of the #Citylis students has written their own blog post with very kind words about my guest appearance:

I have to say week 9 for LAPIS was one of my favourites. What’s not to love about a lecture that talks about comics, zombies and Snoopy? Dr Matt Finch has been one of my favourite guest lectures. Not only was he engaging as a speaker but his passion for literacy was actually infectious…

Although I’ve done a lot of speaking and workshops at this point, it’s always a slightly anxious experience. I think it was the Scottish literacy guru Bill Boyd who said, “I always get nervous, no matter how many times I give a lecture, because it always matters to get it right.”

Ernesto’s students were a joy to chat with and I’m really pleased that the next generation of library students are going into the profession full of passion, play, and the desire to make a difference.

Thanks for having me, #Citylis!

The Sun Comes Out At Night, Feed The Fever: 2014’s Perfect Summer

August 25, 2014August 25, 2014Mechanical Dolphin

Dawn over Galicia

As I write this, the rain is streaming down on an August bank holiday in the UK — but I think I’ve just had the best summer of my adult life. One of those childhood summers that seem to go on forever. As if these months of 2014 had opened a gateway from adult mundanity into the eternal Dream Summer.

For me, that summer’s epicentre lay somewhere around 1989 or 1990. I was about ten years old. It’s not precise because events, details, things I imagined and things I later learned, have all since run together. They slip beneath the calendar’s boundaries in both directions.

Library Journal on Play For Grown-Ups: Dark Night Burlesque at Auckland Libraries

July 25, 2014Mechanical Dolphin

Dark Night at Auckland Libraries — Image by Dylan Horrocks

Over in the US, Library Journal has just published my piece on last year’s Dark Night burlesque season at Auckland Libraries in New Zealand.

The festival for over-18s aimed to “question, celebrate, and challenge sex and sexuality on page, stage, and screen” – and it led to exciting new projects such as this year’s award-winning XXUnmasked media literacy event.

Library Chat from VALA Red Carpet

February 10, 2014February 10, 2014Mechanical Dolphin

Last week, I was one of six keynote speakers at the biennial Australasian culture-and-technology conference, VALA.

My speech will be online later this week, and I’ll post a written version on this blog shortly, but in the meantime you can hear me being interviewed by Corin Haines in a special VALA Red Carpet edition of Library Chat.

Dark Night and Wonderland

November 8, 2013Mechanical Dolphin

librarykris

I’ve been waxing lyrical here and on Diligent Room about the cool things that people are doing for their communities at their libraries. What is really exciting me is finding out the philosophy behind why they are doing it – their community is changing and they are changing with it. Seeing the kaupapa shared has made me think of Dark Night and LATE.

Dark Night was “a guerrilla festival of burlesque, literary, and cinematic events that question, celebrate, and challenge sex and sexuality on page, stage, and screen” at Auckland Libraries in June. It’s the kind of event series that I would have loved to have gone to – sassy, fun, informative, entertaining, better than an author talk (which, btw, I love.) It was an event that promised to discuss ideas and society’s attitudes to those ideas. The fact that it was a number of different events across…

View original post 580 more words

What’s a Library?: Written by a man rich enough to live on W. 53rd St. who’s never been to the library and Googles everything

May 14, 2013Mechanical Dolphin

Librarians in comic book stores – Free Comic Book Day and Star Wars Day in Auckland, New Zealand

May 6, 2013Mechanical Dolphin

Librarians in Auckland ventured into comic book stores to celebrate Star Wars Day and Free Comic Book Day by issuing memberships and loaning items from their collections. More soon, but in the meantime here’s Twitter coverage via Storify.

[View the story “Auckland Libraries goes mobile for Star Wars Day/Free Comic Book Day” on Storify]

“I much prefer it when libraries are less about archiving the past, and more about presenting culture today”: Stewart Parsons on “Get It Loud in Libraries”

March 5, 2013March 15, 2013Mechanical Dolphin

Marina and the Diamonds getting loud in libraries! — Marina and the Diamonds – image (c) Frances Ross

Libraries are utterly thrilling places. At least they ought to be. They should wow the pants off people. Shouldn’t they? All that free stuff. All that culture. All that Keatsian poetry to woo the ladies, and bomb-like knowledge to help pave your way in the world. What’s not to like?

I have long held the belief that a library user should leave a library a more enlightened, brighter, happier, braver, more empowered individual compared to the same person that first went in. In modern TV-land, the romance of people “going on a jouney” is increasingly paramount.

People go on journeys in libraries every day. Maybe we just don’t shout about it enough?

But for that to happen, for that surging flood of the imagination to take place, for the journey to take place at all, the original resources often need to be re-imagined. To be presented in a way that is fresh and appealing and meaningful. Especially to the young.