Dr Rónán O’Beirne’s Weblog

Education; Technology; Digital Transformation; Information & Knowledge Management; Librarianship; Digital Leadership

I am pleased to be opening the first exhibition of the academic year, in the Bradford Gallery at the Yorkshire Craft Centre. Featuring the work of Mick Manning and Brita Granström.

Multi-award winning children’s author and illustrator Mick Manning began his career at Bradford College’s School of Art in 1978. Over the last twenty years he, and his partner, Brita Granström, have written and illustrated over seventy children’s books. In 2012 Bradford College nominated Mick for a AoC Gold Award and as a result he was honoured on the AoC Roll of Honour. Last year Mick and Brita were jointly shortlisted for the ALMA – the largest children’s book award in the  world.

This unique exhibition, the first time Mick’s work has returned to be exhibited in his native West Yorkshire, will not only display the original book illustrations from Mick and Brita’s highly acclaimed books: Charles Dickens: Scenes from an extraordinary life, Taff in the WAAF and Tail-End Charlie but will also feature canvases, paintings and prints, many  available for sale. Brita Granström was educated in Sweden and is an exhibiting and collectable fine artist in her own right.

The exhibition runs from 30th September until 11th October 2013. The Gallery is open from Monday to Friday, 10.30am until 4pm.

Please come along, on Thursday 3rd October from 5-7pm  I look forward to seeing you there.

I am busy preparing my keynote presentation for the SWITCH conference.   Looks like an excellent venue with an exciting programme and of course it will be great to return to Sydney. The abstract for what I will talk about currently reads as:

Yearning for the vast and endless sea – thoughts on the future of public libraries.
With the upheaval in formal education brought about by informal open learning systems what opportunity does this provide for the community-based public library to fulfil its role in supporting learning? How might notions of digital citizenship and information literacy be realised by public library strategy? Through the advent of social media how might the public library go beyond its walls and engage more proactively with its users? Such initiatives present exciting challenges for the library of the future, but what are the implications of a proactive and innovative approach for library workers?

Should be good fun developing these threads for discussion.