rss moments, or week 4 revisited

I found another blog to RSS; this time it was Sharon Lee's and full of references to her writing so I now know there is a new novel to look forward to. I've also subscribed to the new ALIA blog for The Librarians so we can all discuss how the series commencing next week makes us look! Obviously I couldn't miss that.
The funniest RSS moment however came when an I.T. visitor at our library services team meeting yesterday asked a room full of people doing Learning 2.0 if we knew what RSS was because he thought it could be useful on the library website. Yes, we cried, week 4! (Except for those who admitted they weren't up to it yet.) I think he was surprised. Certainly the discussion that followed couldn't have happened even a month ago.
The result is I'm going to look at putting RSS feeds on the Chinese and Vietnamese webpages so that patrons can be informed when the new materials lists go up.
City of Yarra doesn't have wikis however. What are those? our visitor asked.
Week 7, came the response.

Explaining EJO's popularity

I think there's a thesis in there somewhere. Monica Godfrey's biography which was published a few years ago might shed some light but I have to confess I've only read the intro and looked at the illustrations. In the intro she suggests EJO's enduring popularity relates to the connectedness of her stories, even the ones that are not strictly part of the Abbey series but still have some connection with them thus forming what she calls a "complicated canvas".

Gene Stratton Porter

My mother gave me Limberlost when I was about twelve; I think it was the closest I ever came to reading teenage angst books. I also read Freckles, and Michael O'Halloran, and Her Father's Daughter, and The White Flag to name my favourites. I haven't read any of them for years but I still have very clear memories of the stories because they were so often about things not being fair and when you're a teenager I think that is a very powerful hook. I've got them tucked away somewhere in the dining room so I'll have to pull them out and see how I find them twenty years later. Not Politically Correct I suspect. I remember Her Father's Daughter being quite rabidly racist about the Japanese and this was twenty years before Pearl Harbour.

D(orita) F(airlie) B(ruce) and the Series Factor

The two main criteria for success as a writer of girls' school stories are clearly the possession of three initials and a Series. Hence we have EBD of the Chalet series, EJO of the Abbey series and DFB best known for the Dimsie series although the Springdale series and the Nancy series also have a strong following. I personally prefer the Dimsie books because I like the antisoppists ( a society opposed to soppy behaviour) and they have a fabulous villain. I'm very partial to a good villain. Angela Brazil on the other hand who is quite erroneously credited with creating the genre languishes because she only has two initials and apart from a couple of pairs, her books are all singletons.

Visitng the sandbox (#17)

I was just going to polish off thing 17 before my working week starts tomorrow but I got hooked reading the favourites. I added my bit to the books and tv shows in passing. I have contibuted to a wiki before; I did a couple of school story writers for Wikipedia earlier this year. This was much more fun though.

Explaining EJO's omission

EJO's not one of my favourites though I love Hamlet Club and Roundheads. The early Abbey books are good but most of the later ones are dire. She's generally regarded as one of the big three in girls' school stories along with EBD and DFB (also missing from my list) but I don't think she is primarily a writer of school stories. Too many births, deaths and marriages.

experimenting

I'm not sure what happened with this. The GIF file copied as a link which doesn't seem to link. The JPEG at least is visible if a little smaller than I wanted. Now if I can just work out how to get rid of the GIF links.