Beyond The Lavender Keeper Reading Map

We did it! Jo and I continually advocate for (intra and interlibrary) collaboration and staff development in reader services as a result of our research project. To support Fiona McIntosh as touring author for Get Reading! to three Queensland libraries, five of us got together to create the Beyond The Lavender Keeper Reading Map. It's available online now through our libraries and on our blogs. View it online or download the pdf to print.
I think the Get Reading! guide online should have a link to Trove like we have the catalogue links so that people could see if their libraries have each book. 
You can download the first chapter of The Lavender Keeper to read via GR! 

Thanks so much Sally Pewhairangi (Waimakariri Libraries), Jo Beazley (Toowoomba Regional Libraries), Louise Pieper (Gold Coast Libraries) and Tina Cavanough (Moreton Bay Region Libraries). I enjoyed working with you all, and I hope your communities love the reading map!

We collaborated on Googledrive and email.

 I've also added the books to our library's GoodReads account so there is another way to  discover the titles. 

My favourite story so far was Kate Morton's The Secret Keeper. The quote I used perfectly encapsulated the story and the theme of betrayal for me: 'The pair of them huddled together and Dolly listened as Vivien said, 'Go to the railway station and buy yourself a ticket. Get on that train and ride it all the way to the end of the line. Don't look back.' '

I love these comments about our previous reading map:

(Cath Sheard) Wow! I love what you and Alison have created. It’s informative and visually exciting. 

(Paul Brown) ..There is even a Trans-Tasman partnership happening at the moment between a New Zealand and an Australian librarian in the construction of a highly visual and engaging Reading Map.

Are you one of the many who have enjoyed The Lavender Keeper and its sequel The French Promise? Are you inspired to go beyond these with our map? Happy reading!

Booktalks and reading maps: Beyond Chocolat

QR Code link on back cover of
all books from Beyond Chocolat
(idea via The Swiss Army Librarian)

Sally Pewhairangi and I created a sumptuous reading map in May to support a booktalk program and future book discovery. That was such a positive experience we're doing it again.

Read about our Beyond Chocolat program at projectREADja  and here at Finding Heroes.

Fiona McIntosh, author of The Lavender Keeper and this year's must-read The French Promise, will be touring Queensland in September. Our reading map program is designed to extend the value of Fiona's visit for our communities. Her tour will be popular and we'll then have a lot of people keen to read The Lavender Keeper (if they haven't already), read her other books (we have 20 in the collection), and... then what? 

Invoking our developing contextual reader services knowledge, we're creating a way for people to get the best reading experience from TLK by following its tangent themes. 

The best thing about this new reading map though, is that we have three more librarians and libraries joining us in a collaboration.  That's five of us working together online, developing collection knowledge, creating resources for our communities to support their reading, and providing direct promotion for our collections (and getting to know each other better too).

If you've read The Lavender Keeper and have some ideas on which themes and books people would enjoy next, let me know! We could include your titles in the map.