I first heard about the BibloRed (Capital Network of Public Libraries) of Bogotá, Colombia after it won the 2002 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Award. You can read more about it in this short report. It sounded a really exciting way of bringing a lot of change to a library service quickly, and there sounded to be many lives changed as a result. I am still very interested in visiting this library. I will have to work on my Spanish so it is not as basic as it currently is.
This month for #blogjune I have been sharing some of the libraries on my wish list to visit. Over the next few months I will be writing about libraries I visited as part of my holidays. They were only part of my holidays. I saw and did a lot of things which did not involve libraries as well.
It will take me a while to bring all the ideas and information together about this. You can have a look at the images I have been loading to Flickr. It will take me a while to upload all the library photographs, and so far the descriptive information is minimal. I will be writing about these libraries, and adding to their descriptions on Flickr over the next few months.
I would really like to visit a lot of libraries in New Zealand, and the National Library is one of them. I really like their use of twitter and Digital New Zealand is very impressive.
While I am just mentioning one New Zealand library, it is a country with many interesting libraries on my wish list to visit.
I heard very impressive things about this library from one of its readers, so it would be great to have a look at it after having heard so much about it.
Kolding Bibliotek was built in 2006 bringing together many modern library design and service elements. It is great to see that the services were redesigned along with the library spaces.
This library represents some of the many libraries I would like to see in Denmark.
The National Art Library, at the V&A is a specialist library in an amazing museum. It sounds like it has an amazing collection as well as very interesting research space.
With the vast range of amazing libraries in the Netherlands to choose from, this is just a sample of libraries I would like to visit there. The new Bibliotheek Almere and the Schiphol’s Airport Library both look very interesting sites to visit.
The Winchester Mystery House is described as being a steampunk house. All good steam punk houses should have a library, and this sounds an amazing place to visit.
This paired design by Frank Gehry and West 8 looks so amazing that I am sneaking it into a wish list of libraries as I am sure I could find a library theme if I visited the spaces in Miami.
The Netherlands Architecture Institute has developed an augmented reality app for several cities in the Netherlands which shows building which used to be in an area, planned buildings and buildings which were never built. It sounds and exciting place and includes a library.
The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek - Bavarian State Library sounds amazing. It has been open since 1558, has really long opening hours (8.00am to midnight) and is doing really interesting work with apps (Famous books, Oriental books, with Ludwig II on the way and including augmented reality).
This river based library service uses “indigenous boats to provide free public access to computers and the internet to residents in impoverished remote communities.”
Newcastle City Library is another library which is contributing to the identity of the city. It is a new library which, from photographs, seems to connect people within the library to the streetscapes out views outside. The local studies collections and displays seem to further tie this new building into the heritage and life of the city it serves.
This is a library which looks amazing, with a mix of retro and futuristic design. The motto is learn/innovate/live – which is something we all should be doing. It is mainly in white, and I would be interested to see how this feels without many splashes of colour.
I also like their "learn - innovate - live" tagging as it is a great way to live.
Cardiff Public Library has had a new central library within the last few years, and they seem to have though in interesting ways about their programs, services and collections as part of this change. It would be interesting to explore the bilingual nature of this library as well.
The readit2011 theme for May was grrlpower. I did not seem to get much reading done this month and not much was on this theme. I had a few did not finish titles, and there are several other titles I am still reading which I will finish.
I shall wear midnight by Terry Pratchett was a stand out read. It was a tale of disharmony becoming harmony. Tiffany Aching exemplified #grrlpower – as she was a very self possessed witch.
Another outstanding reading was Trouble twisters by Garth Nix and Sean Williams. This is a start of a series and I am looking forward to reading the other titles when they become available. Great use of normal objects in a scary/suspense way – amazing scenes involving cockroaches and mice.
I completed a series by Sean Williams by reading The hanging mountain (which is about changing perspective) and The devoured earth. I did not like the main female character as she is very annoying, but other than that they were very enjoyable reads with interesting perspectives.
Sunken treasure by Wil Wheaton is a gem, and Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stephenson a pleasurable mix of frustration and fun.
Anything can happen if you let it. This is one of the catch phrases of Mary Poppins the musical (and not the film). It is a reminder that we do need to let things happen, and be proactive about change, and not get in the way of developments. We also have to let others change and develop in a work place and not be the ones who are the blocks to innovation, collaboration and change.
Anything can happen if you let it – so how about we let innovation, collaboration and change happen, and work hard to make sure that they do. Mary Poppins and Bert are not passive in the destiny. Bert is consistently cheerful, and is working at a range of jobs to make a living, and he is open to the wonder, surprise and joy that Mary Poppins brings with her. May has a tough love approach and won’t let people get away with bad behaviour, kind of like appropriate management in a work place, but she also has imagination, joy, hard work and perseverance which are good work practices for all of us.
Who would have thought going to see Mary Poppins would inspire such thoughts? I was also reminded by a talk I heard at Information online a couple of years ago, by Liz Lawton where she used Mary Poppins as an example of incentives (spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down). I also really enjoyed seeing Mary Poppins as a musical with all the layers of darkness and joy which it has.
As an aside the customer service at The Capitol was excellent. Staff were seeking out eye contact with customers and were being proactively helpful. They looked like they enjoyed their work. Even when some customers proved a little difficult there was no negative body language or eye rolling. The staff continued to provide positive, polite and professional customer service.
11 Room to read is investing in reading rooms in developing countries. These are school libraries to help enable children with their reading. Room to read is a very practical way that people can help complete the United Nations Millennium Development goals. Its program is around schools, libraries, publishing in local languages, and scholarships. The statistics below have been taken from their website.
Schools 1,442
Libraries 11,246
Books Published 553
Books Distributed 9.4 million
Girls' Scholarships 10,590
Children Benefited 5.1 million
Donkey libraries are used in several countries in Africa as a way to provide a school library service to a number of schools. The book carts are rat proof (necessary) and are drawn by donkey or cyclists. You can fund these libraries through the Good gifts charity (my section at work has been doing this for several years, and there was the recent Buy a library project which also raised money to fund donkey – and other libraries).
In the discworld books which Terry Pratchett writes there is an Unseen University, and that university has a library
People were stupid, sometimes. They thought the Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library.
Guards, Guards, p.166
The study of invisible writings was a new discipline made available by the discovery of the bi-directional nature of Library-Space. The thaumic mathematics are complex, but boil down to the fact that all books, everywhere, affect all other books. This is obvious: books inspire other books written in the future, and cite books written in the past. But the General Theory of L-Space suggests that, in that case, the contents of books as yet unwritten can be deduced from books now in existence.
Lords and Ladies, p.55
Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass, and on that simple equation rests the whole of L-space. It is via L-space that all books are connected (quoting the ones before them, and influencing the ones that come after). But there is no time in L-space. Nor is there, strictly speaking, any space. Nevertheless, L-space is infinitely large and connects all libraries, everywhere and everywhen. It’s never further than the other side of the bookshelf, yet only the most senior and respected librarians know the way in.
The Globe: The Science of Discworld II, p.38
The John Igo Branch of the San Antonio Public Library in Texas looks one many interesting libraries to visit in this service. It looks light and spacious and is a well used library.
Hogwarts Library is described as a recognisable library, with some hazardous books in the collection. It is a key part of the story telling of the Harry Potter novels as people (mainly Hermione) seek to find out information. The library in Patrick Rothfuss' books would also be fun to visit.
Another library to think about is that described by Mel Odom in The rover, The destruction of the books and Lord of the libraries. In these the librarians have a key role of content creator, they are curators of content as well, but they also create, going to great lengths at time to do so. This could be a good role model for us (see writing by Mal Booth about this as well).
We have key roles as content creators and co-content creators but sometimes it seems we are reluctant about this, and we should not be.
Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library, Kansas is of interest because I have been reading David Lee King’s blog, and tweets and hearing about the developments at his library and watching what has been happening via social media. It sounds an exciting library and I would like to see how the community use it.
The Hercules Library in Contra Costa County is a new library, built collaborately. It sounds like it provides great services to the community, like all in this system.
The camel library is a great way ti you help get reading to remote areas. The camel library operates in northern Kenya which has a mobile population. Creative and locally appropriate methods are needed to deliver services, hence the camels.
I saw the Universitätsbibliothek, Technische Universität Berlin on Mal Booth's flickr set, and it is the only way I have seen it. It looks really interesting and I like the sense of space it conveys.
I will be participating in blog every day of June #blogjune I will write about 30 libraries I would like to visit. I am selecting 30 libraries outside of Australia, they are not in any order. There are many more libraries I would like to visit, both inside Australia and in the rest of the world. The selected 30 libraries are are ones which I have seen pictures of, heard about through word of mouth, podcasts or videos or read about. Some of the libraries are imaginary. The libraries I have selected are not meant to be representative. but are simply some of the many amazing libraries around the world. I could have done a list of thirty libraries I would like to see in the Netherlands or Denmark with no other countries included. Most of my posts will be short, or even very short.
