manifesto

short, sweet, making it connect - libraries, books, music, Christchurch, et al

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Posted 6 months ago
Libraries cost about a billion a year to run right now. Make it two billion and charge Google, Amazon and Starbucks all that back tax on their profits here. Or if they want to go on paying fancy lawyers to legally avoid their moral duties, then perhaps those companies could do an Andrew Carnegie and build us new kinds of libraries for a new kind of future in a fairer and better world?

Jeanette Winterson speaking at The British Library, as reported in The Guardian
(Source: Guardian)
- Libraries
- jeanette winterson
- 7
This is how we do it: Social media at Christchurch City Libraries

Posted 7 months ago
How have we been making use of social media? Are libraries doing it right? It’s one of the hot topics in the library and information landscape. The combination of articles, conference subjects, and an email chat with Tosca Waerea, Social Media Co-ordinator at Auckland Libraries, has made me think about turning that around. Why don’t we, as librarians, start talking more about what we actually do?

I am going to discuss how we at Christchurch City Libraries use social media – what we think is important, what we do, and why we do it. Hopefully it opens up a dialogue amongst Kiwi librarians. Wouldn’t it be grand if our information community were more forthcoming about sharing information on making the best use of social media?

Read the rest of the post on Christchurch City Libraries Bibliofile.
- 1
Posted 11 months ago
Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay.

Zadie Smith in article The North West London Blues, NYR Blog
- 2
Posted 11 months ago
On a cold and rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen instead. A human with a brain and a heart and a desire to be uplifted, rather than a customer with a credit card and an inchoate ‘need’ for ‘stuff’.

Caitlin Moran on public libraries, in The Library Book. Quoted in NZ Herald article Who cares about libraries? by Christine Sheehy
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Posted 1 year ago
My most treasured volume is Tarzan Presley, by Nigel Cox. The incredulity and audaciousness of its premise kept me reading, against my better judgment. I can recall that each time I picked it up to read further, I thought ‘this is bullshit’. But it is such compelling bullshit.

Doris de Pont in Four Kiwi authors open up their home libraries by Greg Dixon in the New Zealand Herald, Tuesday 8 May 2012.
Posted 1 year ago
Why do books matter? There is a world in a book and a universe in a library. Hamish Keith.

Hamish Keith in Four Kiwi authors open up their home libraries by Greg Dixon in the New Zealand Herald, Tuesday 8 May 2012.