Tweeting Moby Dick

There she blows!--There she blows!--There she blows!--Tweeting Moby Dick

Thanks to the Maud Newton blog via the reeling and writhing blog I am following Danco who is tweeting Moby Dick.

Follow at publicdomain

I confess I never did manage to finish this book. The tweeting has been going for nine months and they have just sighted the whale: There she blows!--

In a strange way the broken up feed of tweets strangely focuses you on the language, eg:

A gentle joyousness--a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness, invested the gliding whale

EDUCAUSE Perth Wiki

EDUCAUSE Conference is coming up soon in Perth May 3-6 2009 and some of the participants have set up an EDUCAUSE Perth09 Wiki at wikispaces: http://educauseperth.wikispaces.com/
A few are gathering there already.

I am going to one of the pre-conference workshops: From Creation to Delivery - iLife, iTunes, I'm done and also Day 3, Wednesday 6th May

Twitter newbie

Finally succumbed and started tweeting under @jaygee35 and using this icon of our dear old Max (R.I.P.)

There are some great Twitter for libraries guides out there:

Phil Bradley's webpage What is Twitter and Twitter for librarians

Ellyssa Kroski the iLibrarian wrote this Twitter Guide for libraries back in 2007 and if you search her blog under Twitter there are a few more ideas.

Things have got to the point that now we need some tips on how conference speakers can manage the "back channel". How about this! How to present while people are twittering

EDUCAUSE also has some resources on Twitter use in universities

In receipt of Vice-Chancellor's Citation

That photo is a bit too formal, but nevertheless...

great news, I am a member of the ECU Lbrary team of five who are in receipt of the Vice-Chancellor's Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning for 2009.

the wording of the citation is:

For a sustained contribution to the improvement of teaching and learning through the provision of innovative and effective learning spaces and library services

This is on behalf of the whole library and has been several years in the making, steadily gathering evidence, interviewing staff and students and implementing many changes.

Details of all the award winners are on the ECU Website

One Australian Book Meme

After doing the One Book Meme a few weeks back I've done my own variation on that:

The One Australian Book Meme. Unlike the others, this one has some non-fiction in it.

One Aussie book you’ve recently read:
Doing Life: a biography of Elizabeth Jolley by Brian Dibble. Thoroughly researched and full of detail, but a good read for those who know a bit about EJ's amazing life

One Aussie book you’d want on a deserted island:
Eucalyptus by Murray Bail. If you were stuck on a desert island you'd need something to lift your spirits and remind you of the Australian bush

One Aussie book you’ve read more than once:
Highways to a War by Christopher Koch. I love this book and it's so evocative of time and place. It transports you into the life of a war correspondent in South East Asia in the 1970s. I had a thing for Neil Davis, on whose life the novel is loosely based

One Aussie book you’ve never been able to finish:
Illywacker by Peter Carey.
Enjoyed Carey's Oscar and Lucinda, Bliss, and several others, but couldn't finish this one for some reason

One Aussie book that made you laugh:
Unreliable Memoirs by Clive James. I'm chuckling just thinking about it. The others in the autobiographical series are great too

One Aussie book that made you cry:
Joe Cinque's Consolation by Helen Garner
Clearly a one sided picture of this terrible miscarriage of justice, but good on you Helen for tackling this story. Wonderful writing too.

One Aussie book you’ve been meaning to read:
Tree of Man by Patrick White. I have the first edition at home, bought by my father when it came out in the 1950s, so I have no excuse ;)

One Aussie book you keep rereading:
The Reader's Digest Book of Australian Birds.
This is the book that got me started on my whole crazy bird watching life. Parts of the book are imprinted on my brain.

One Aussie book you believe everyone should read:
The Man who Loved Children by Christina Stead. It's an Australian classic and should have been recognised as such at the time, except for its American subject matter. Apparently Stead had originally set the book in Sydney, but changed it to meet her U.S. market. It is a depressing, Depression story :(

Further to my post on EBL ebooks on your iphone , I came across this paper at the ascilite conference in Melbourne last year: Usability and usefulness of eBooks on PPCs: How students’ opinions vary over time

The paper by Paul Lam, Shun Leung Lam, John Lam & Carmel McNaught from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, was voted one of the ascilite paper award winners. It makes interesting reading. It seems even in a place such as Hong Kong, where acceptance of online would seem to be high, students have trouble adapting to reading whole books onscreen. Of course this is referring to reading on mobile readers and devices such as iphones. I don't find this a surprise at all, and it may be a while yet before we see changes in practice.