The Australian Bureau of Statistics released a snapshot yesterday, as part of Library & Information Week, detailing several facts about library usage in this country including:

46% of Australians aged over 18 years visited a library in 2006
72,600 Australians reported unpaid involvement in libraries and archives in April 2007
Libraries were the second most attended cultural venue [...]

Oops, almost missed it Today marks the start of Library and Information Week 2008, running through to Sunday, 25th May. There’s a bunch of events planned including, but not restricted to:

National Simultaneous Storytime
National Library Technicians Day
Biggest Morning Tea @ your library

Please comment on what your library is doing this week.

The Call for Abstracts has just gone out for the annual LIANZA conference in New Zealand, to be held in Auckland, 2-5 Nov, 2008. The conference theme this year is: Poropitia - Outside the Box.
IMPORTANT DATES:
Abstracts for papers due: 2 May 2008
Notification of acceptance: 30 June 2008
Confirmation of format of presentation: 14 July 2008
Completed papers [...]

The Australian Library Journal is editing a special issue on web 2.0 and the library and information science profession. The issue is being put together by a couple of folk responsible for the recent Beyond the Hype Symposium in Qld.
Guest Editors: Helen Partridge and Clare Thorpe
Contact: Helen Partridge Email: h.partridge at qut dot edu dot [...]

The ALIA National Simultaneous Storytime is on a bit earlier this year, Wednesday 21 May 2008. From their recent update:

National Simultaneous Storytime 2007
Wednesday, 21 May 2008 at 11:00am
We are thrilled to announce that the National Simultaneous Storytime book for 2008 is Arthur by Amanda Graham and illustrated by Donna Gynell!
The book is [...]

…and the conference season is upon us once more. First cab off the rank is Beyond the Hype in Queensland (rego closes in a couple of days, draft programme announced) on Feb 1-2, very closely followed by VALA on Feb 5-7 in Victoria. Plus there’s a bunch of Calls for Abstracts (CFA) out at the [...]

A report [pdf, 325k] on Public Library usage for 2005/06 has recently become available (or at least I received a recent notification). The 35 page report is a straightforward read covering the work of public libraries across the country:
“Access to services is provided through a network of 1,522 public library service points (1,439 fixed point [...]

As commented elsewhere, a librarian and aussie has won the Ig Nobel prize for Literature! Glenda Browne of NSW, won it:
“for her study [pdf, 173k] of the word “the” — and of the many ways it causes problems for anyone who tries to put things into alphabetical order.”

Meredith Farkas, of Information Wants To Be Free, has begun posting the results of her 2007 survey of the Biblioblogosphere. Of interest in the demographics section is that 39 bloggers from Oz participated, along with 6 from NZ. Whereas in the 2005 results, there were a total of 5 bloggers from Oz & NZ combined.

I’m playing around a little with the restrictions for Blog Day 2007 and going for a combination of blogs I’ve recently come across, blogs I’ve re-discovered and blogs that continue to delight with new content…admittedly that last is stretching the rules ever so slightly. Some of my interests of late have veered toward the esoteric [...]