Nigel Marsh then came and shared with us how to make reading cool. Just because something is interesting/important to you doesn't mean it is interesting/important to others. Use authenticity and honesty to sell and make it cool, don't use tricks! Be brand appropriate - reading does not have to justify itself. Use your brand attic - get people to remember the stories. Remember the McDonald's ad where the kids came out of the adults and headed to McDonald's for lunch? This was connecting with consumers memories of having McDonald's as kids. Now think of how a library could do this? Be creative - money should not be an issue if you are creative. Unfortunately, the thing that stuck out most for me during Nigel's presentation was his video of how they made a Wrangler's ad. There was lots of cowboys and bull riding!!
Jane Caro, Cheryl Kernot, Jaye Ford and Dr Bernie Curran then confessed their favourite reads and their guilty secret read.
Cheryl Kernot = The ascent of man by Jacob Bronowski and A scandalous life is her guilty read.
Jaye Ford = crime and Lee Child, Sue Grafton, Raymond Chandler and Steven King. Her guitly reads are Mills & Boon and Jane Austen.
Dr Bernie Curran = manuscripts as you get to watch the language grow. The scarlet pimpernel is his guilty read.
Best practice sessions saw me attend the session about Tweet Reading. This group meets on Twitter on the last Tuesday of every month. They try to cover a wide range of topics and people can participate from anywhere. They have been following the National Year of Reading monthly themes this year and have already developed the themes for next year. I try to particpate in this event each month either through contributing to the conversation or observing to learn about some good reads. The group has been going since 2011 and won a 2011 Marketing Award for NSW Public Libraries. Why does it work? Supportive environment, learn as you work, suits variables workloads, covers geographical distance. So why don't you participate in this month's discussion theme "question" at the end of the month?
Sue McKerracher then spoke about how we can continue the momentum of National Year of Reading. She shared with us some of the activities/events that had already happened including Flash mob reading groups, displays, giveaways, Simultaneous Storytime--over 2500 events in libraries, schools + more. The flower logo is going to be continued to be used. And libraries need to continue working with the partnerships already developed to keep it going.
A lovely session on storytelling with Ashley Ramsden was next. He reminded us that eveyone can tell a story and it is not necessary for us to understand every story we tell. Stories are a way of getting to know each other and hold the roots of community. Stories are little mirrors as we enter into them we find ourselves. It is not about the story but the act of attention.
I then attended another best practice sesson discussing community driven collection development with Alex Mills from Singleton Public Library. Alex discussed the teething problems from their first few community book buying sessions but have now found a process that works. This is timely for me as we will be offering a community book buying session in September as part of our National Year of Reading events - however we hope to continue it in the following years. It was good to hear that it does work but you need to find what works well. Thankfully, our book supplier has been involved in these before and has a system that works - I'll keep you posted.
I won't discuss the fun debate - Is the book always better than the movie? Because I can't give it the justice it deserves via the written word - you really had to be there!!
Marcus Barber was the last speaker of the conference and he gave us an insight into the future. Which unfortunately I didn't capture in tweets/notes because my tablet battery died. So I will share others tweets. Define the future your want, work out barriers, remove barriers, then do. Use crowdsourcing as a way of making sure you are providing what your users want. His presentation was rushed because the conference was going overtime, and that was disappointing as he had a lot of good things to say that was missed due to it being rushed.
I will do one more post on my overall feel and thoughts from the conference tomorrow but I'd love to hear/read what others thoughts were from those that attended.
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