May 2015 VOLUME 36 Issue 5 ‘IF KIDS ASSOCIATE READING WITH FUN, THE BATTLE IS WON!’ GREAT AARON PROMO BLABEY TOOL! NSS 2015 AUSTRALIAN WRITING AWARDS CALENDAR LIBRARIES WITH GREAT MELBOURNE STORIES TO TELL CITY OF LITERATURE I Reach Australia’s library and information professionals effectively with INCITE and ALIA Weekly November/December 2014 VOLUME 35 Issue 11/12 January/February 2015 VOLUME 36 IssueK I1/2DS’ UFF SSMARTT IDEAS TO ATTRACT AND ENGAGE WITH CHILDREN PAUL WILLIS WHY MORE MIGHT NOT BE BETTER TIME FOR A CHANGE? THE UPSIDE OF WORKING OUT OF TOWN 7/01/15 9:42 AM Incite Jan/Feb 2015 Cover.indd 1 Coming features in 2015 include LIS careers, collection development, service innovation, new technology and library design. Visit the ALIA website at www.alia.org.au for details. Kate Petersen Email: [email protected] Ph: (08) 8379 9522 | Fax: (08) 8379 9735 www.hwrmedia.com.au NATIONAL SIMULTANEOUS STORYTIME Wednesday 27 May 2015 Be a part of NSS! 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CONTENTS 12 17 by Aaron Blabey Author Aaron Blabey says he has Australian writing awards the best job in the world – NSS 2015 calendar lift out 33 NSW Library Act 24 celebrates 75 years National Library’s Rapunzel IN THIS ISSUE COVER STORY 06 Your voice: Letters to the editor 12 Author Aaron Blabey talks about books, kids, and 08 From the President: libraries – NSS 2015 10 From the CEO: Gearing up for the busiest month in the LIS year SPECIAL FEATURE 17 Australian writing awards calendar 34 Last Word: NLA’s Nicolette Suttor donates her tresses to the Great Shave PROMOTE OR PERISH! 16 LIS Investigations: Time to promote research as well MEMBER AND SECTOR NEWS as libraries 07 Events 22 Public libraries know how to be popular! 11 Friends of Library groups celebrate 20 years 23 EEI: Marketing for school libraries 14 Melbourne: a UNESCO City of Literature 24 75 years of the NSW Library Act 29 Symposium explores future of academic publishing 25 A new way to value libraries? 30 eSmart libraries update 26 At the heart of the business: Arup Sydney’s library team 31 Help save your community’s languages 32 Helping Vanuatu 32 ALIA House news 33 ALIA Hunter unconference May 2015 INCITE | 3 INCITE is the magazine of YOUR LOCAL ALIA CONTACT the Australian Library and State and Territory Managers are Information Association. 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We will see half a million children sharing the same library, possibly never more so since the advent of the story, Aaron Blabey’s The Brothers Quibble, on the same insatiable appetite of social media became part of many day as part of the 15th National Simultaneous Storytime in library promotion programs. And promotion is only one a couple of weeks, so it’s only appropriate that our cover element in the marketing mix. story this month is a chat with Aaron about his writing and his take on libraries. Perhaps then, May is also the ideal month to dust off your marketing plan and see how you’ve been doing. Don’t Meanwhile, Library and Information Week displays and have one? Sorry, but that’s no excuse. There are dozens of events will be popping up all over in all sorts of libraries, free templates for marketing plans readily available online, so our feature topics this month are promotion and ranging from simple 90 day planners to marketing strategy marketing. From the results of Public Libraries Australia’s as a component of a comprehensive business plan. survey of what people love about their local library, to a ground-breaking trial at Arup’s Sydney offices that With this time of the year also being budget-planning has seen the staff equipped with laptops and officially season, now is the time to properly identify and cost those licensed to roam, this month we have a wide range of great ideas, ready to put your hand up when the money experiences and viewpoints to stimulate your promotion gets assigned for next year. In this context, ‘be prepared’ is planning. as good a motto for a library or information service as it is for a boy scout. We also have a very special pull-out feature: our Australian Writing Awards calendar. Created in consultation with the Don’t forget to share your Library and Information Week Australian publishing industry, we hope this calendar will and National Simultaneous Storytime events and photos spark many an idea for displays, events, book clubs, and with your fellow Members via the website and ALIA’s social much more in your library. media platforms. It’s time to be loud and proud! Of course, May is just one month of the year, but marketing LEE WELCH is truly the original never-ending task. To be effective, Editor INDEX: Melissa Maloney 33 CONTRIBUTORS James McGoran 23 Terri Pamment 16 Anne Doherty and Edwina Duffy 24 Nirmal Paul 31 Daniel Ferguson 11 David Ryding 14 Roger Henshaw 22 Kim Sherwin 26 Canberra Library Tribe 34 Aileen Weir 29 May 2015 INCITE | 5 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR YOUR VOICE Dear Editor, Montaigne and Proust obviously come to mind as two writers whose memories served them well (or not) but any I think that Michaela Owen rather over-eggs her number of other writers could be counted in their number. glorification of today’s library in her Last Word in the March 2015 issue of INCITE. But she does us a service in drawing We should be making more use of our prominent literary to our attention to the reported comments of prominent (and other) supporters. They do get media attention and literary people with regard to libraries, and in particular the they can be persons of some influence, not just amongst value of their memories of libraries, as we seek continually their readers but also politically. to situate libraries and librarians at the cultural centre. Just as some, such as McCall Smith count themselves as I recall a letter by Alexander McCall Smith, in the Guardian friends of a library, we as a profession should be befriending newspaper.