Cycling for libraries is about to begin

Cycling for libraries – Librarians on the move

Tomorrow, on 25th of May we will hop on the Turku→Stockholm ferry, and drive to Copenhagen. As you all know, our Cycling for libraries -unconference begins on 28th of May, and our temporary, mobile thinktank of almost 100 people will bicycle 650km to Berlin, and finally merge into the 100th Deutscher Bibliothekartag.

Organizing a bicycling unconference is a huge (surprisingly huge!) amount of work, but luckily it’s fun and interesting. Many things have been prepared, and some things have been abandoned. After being in contact with our participants and our dear friends along our route, i know for certain that this will be epic.

I cannot wait. Adventure awaits!

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Nice Cycling for libraries tour, 110km Helsinki→Porvoo→Helsinki

The official Cycling for libraries cook Pasi Niemi got thumbs up 🙂

Last saturday, on 7th of May we did a bicycle tour from Helsinki to Porvoo and back. Total distance was about 110 kilometers. We were a team of 9 cyclists, plus a 3 -person filmteam and cook. The weather was really sunny, fortunately. I got almost nothing about the event on camera but luckily we had Jonas Tana with us, who is awesome with photographs and we had Kirjastokaista.fi -filmteam working with us. So keep your eyes open for some nice video+photos. I’m sure then you’ll be convinced it wasn’t just eating (like my photos), but sweaty cycling too. A lot of it.

This was kind of a training, prepping and marketing event for the actual Cycling for libraries -event from Copenhagen to Berlin, in the end of this month (*gasp* not far in the future). And in our debriefing with Jukka, we were happy to sum up that everything went quite perfectly 🙂 This day was 110 km, and the longest day of the main event is only about ten kilometers more, on 5th of June when we arrive in Berlin. I’m sure we can do it.

This pre-event was announced via Facebook mostly, and through the word of mouth. We departed from Itäkeskus at about 10 o’clock, and were back there a little after 18, so we spent almost 9 hours overall.

Enjoying and XQ at Söderkulla library

On our way we had a very nice stop at Söderkulla library, and Camilla was kind enough to come and show us the places, even when the library was closed. They’ve had a new library there since 2009, and i really like the way local comic artists, including bicycle-loving Kaisa Leka (see her comicblog too) are contributing to their library in large-size illustrations. We got some refreshments and chats at the library terrace, which i’m sure is a great place to enjoy the library collections on a nice day. The Söderkulla library also has an artotheque, and that’s something i always really appreciate.

Next up, the whole event with 10 times more people and 10 times more days on the road! Less than 3 weeks until the start.

By the way, big thanks to everyone who is giving their support for Cycling for libraries, i’m sure all the participants will find this unique library conference to be memorable experience, which will have long-lasting effects. Librarians, stay on the move.

Photos of Cycling for libraries -inspection online

 

Dream a large group of librarians in this picture 🙂

 

 

Stadtbibliothek 100m that way

 

Me and Jukka Pennanen are now in Berlin, designing and preparing the Cycling for libraries -event next summer. We rode a rental car from Copenhagen to Berlin via Nykøbing-Falster, Rostock loads of Danish and German countryside to get a general idea what we are facing here. This has proven to be really good idea, not only is it very useful to get some first hand experience of the journey and meet local colleagues, but also these places are absolutely, absolutely stunningly beautiful!!

My camera and photographic eye does no justice, but i’ve put some photos online for you to see and also for ourselves to remember. Please do enjoy! There’s about 120 photos at the time, and from my photostream you’ll find more photos which are not necessarily so related to this event. I’ve split the photos into a few sets, and will add proper metadata later. And catalog the photos into MARC21 too maybe xD not

Jukka has a much better camera and also a video camera and that material is coming online later. And there’s a plenty of it. But take it from me: Danish and German countryside is fascinating and totally inspiring, there’s plenty of restaurants and cafés everywhere for tasty food and the bicycling route is very good too. And it is needless to say that both Copenhagen and Berlin are awesome places to ride bikes in (especially in good company).

Special thanks to all the fantastic people we have met this far and who have shown their support and taken good care of us: Sonia, Mikkel, Michel, Jan, Robert, Beate, Thoralf and everyone else. You know who you are!

Photos of Borås→Göteborg Cycling for libraries and IFLA 2010 are up

Thank you friends!

I organized and catalogued my photos from IFLA 2010 and our Cycling for libraries -tour from Borås to Göteborg. My whole IFLA -experience is a Flickr -collection with some subsets. One contains photos from our ~70 km cycling tour with Claudia Serbanuta, Timo Tuominen and Jukka Pennanen, and another from the actual IFLA conference with thousand of librarians worldwide.

Direct links to slideshows respectively: Cycling for libraries Borås to Göteborg and IFLA 2010. Enjoy! (I sure did!!!)

Our little 70 kilometers was a warm-up for our main event, which will be 650 km from Copenhagen to Berlin, early summer 2011 and you are invited!