Another week, another best ----- ever .
I'm filled with admiration for Christchurch City Libraries' dedication to online outreach. Last week, for the second year in a row, CCL sent a fully-equipped team of writers (4 staff members, I think) to blog the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival. You can browse all the posts here.
Writers Festival aren't my thing (I'm always scared an author will ruin themselves for me). But the CCL bloggers covered the Festival with spark and vim (and MP3s). They secured media passes (or at least pass) and managed to interview authors as well as cover talks, panel discussions, and Noelle McCarthy's shoes. While I have no way of gauging whether people were following the posts (although there are comments on many of them, and that's a pretty good indication of strong engagement) I think the whole endeavour is worth it - as much as anything, because it makes you aware that the real live people work at the Libraries, and they love what they do. And I like that.
P.S Palmerston North City Libraries were also blogging the Festival. If Palmy can do it, can someone PLEASE blog the Melbourne Art fair for me this year?
3 comments:
Hi there,
I'm one of the people who covered the festival for CCL. It's certainly done some amazing things for our stats. Just so you know, we had two media passes and two Super Passes, whcih essentially got you into everything.
I don't know if we'll get to Melbourne, but the chance would be great ;-)
I briefly met some of the Palmerston North crew, and I hope more libraries will send teams to the Christchurch festival later this year.
Richard Liddicoat
Online content author, Christchurch City Libraries.
richard.liddicoat@ccl.govt.nz
Hi,
Thanks for the comment about the Auckland Art Gallery's collection policy not being online. It's been something i have been trying to get agreement to put online and your comment sparked others interest so the collections policy should now be online in a few days. Goes to show the power of the blog :)
The power of the blog indeed!
Thanks Richard & Sarah for the feedback. I'm really glad to hear the Festival blogging was good for visitation - and even gladder to hear that a bit of fulmination is resulting in a change!
And yeah, bring on independant coverage of art fairs. Maybe John Hurrell will apply for another CNZ grant!
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