Wednesday, August 20

atlas.id

Yesterday in acquisitions we had a look at demographics and how they can influence your choices when constructing a collection development policy. Needless to say I got slightly sidetracked by the .id sites. I fount the atlas.id component the most interesting - it allows you to visually see areas of high/low density, media age, birth place and so on. For example, here is a map of Maribyrnong sorted by overseas births:


It can also sort by language spoken at home - such a fantastic tool!
It is a shame that it is not yet available for all council areas.

Here is the link. You can navigate to different sections using the tabs at the top of the page.


Crabtree

Morning all!

So I ended up giving my book talk last week on a fantastic children's book - Crabtree by Jon and Tucker Nichols. The kid in me found it absolutely hilarious, and it was interesting to see how well you got to know the main character, Alfred Crabtree, without many textual details.

It was published by McSweeney's who also do a bit of work with 826 Valencia.

I am still somewhat intrigued by his large collection of duck decoys however...




Wednesday, August 6

Booktalk

I will be presenting a booktalk for our children's lit class next week and am starting to try and think of some ideas. It would almost be easier if we didn't have to choose a book! This website is a kind of archive with a whole lot of different booktalks which was started in 1995. Hopefully it will give us all a few ideas, there is also a very handy tips section. There seems to be a big divide as to whether you can 'wing' a talk if you havn't read the entire book. Most seem to advise against it saying that the audience will know and hate you for it!

Here is the link

Will keep you updated on how my preparation goes!