Welcome to the world of Read Watch Play: a library lover’s digital playground and the modern librarian’s best friend!

This themed reading group operated between 2011 and 2018. It was coordinated by the NSW Readers Advisory Working Group designed to reach beyond the physical library walls and engage our communities with reading through the many channels of social media.

There are many useful resources on the blog, so you can use them when you are thinking about library displays and reading groups.

The following information was written as promotional information about this group.

Whether your preferred social media outlet is Facebook, blogging, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, or Instagram there is a Read Watch Play account to connect with where you will find ideas to borrow, discussions to join, and resources to adapt and use in your own library communities. Each May, after great discussion and deliberation, twelve monthly themes are selected to guide Read Watch Play activities and content for the next year. The themes are chosen to cater to a wide variety of interests and showcase a cross-section of library resources, whilst still being open and adaptable to local community needs. Librarians across NSW, and many from much further afield, then create and share ideas and RA resources built around the monthly themes for use by librarians everywhere. Of course, many libraries also use these ideas and resources inside their libraries too with collection displays, newsletter pieces and promotional events all built around the same themes. Why not explore our collection of social media content and see if you can make use of it for you library community too. Or better still, join the collaborative efforts and share your own ideas and content with other librarians everywhere. Please promotethe blogdirectly to your community. Ideas for how you can do this at your library will be added to this page.

Want to know more? Read on

There are no walls: reading online across borders, paper Elisabet Brynge, Holly Case, Ellen Forsyth, Gary Green, Ulf Hölke,IFLA Public Libraries Satellite:Public library futures in a globaldigital world12-13 August 2014,Library of Birmingham, UK

Global tweets: A reading group in Australia, Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore was presented at Redefining and refining information literacy and reference services in the digital age.

You can look at the presentation here 25590065

and read detailed information about the twitter reading group. This was presented 16 August 2013.

Here are the links to both our presentation and the full paper for the Twitter Reading Group, Best Practice for Library Programming Collaboration.

Twitter Reading Group Best Practice for Library Programing Collaboration, presented at Imagine the world Public Libraries NSW Conference 24-26 July 2012

Twitter Reading Group 2012 Best practice paper for Library Programming Collaboration Imagine the world Public Libraries NSW Conference 24-26 July 2012

Really easy ways to promote this reading group to your community

If your library has a twitter account you can set up tweets for the rest of the year to promote this. Using a tool like Hootsuite you can write tweets and then select the time when the tweet goes live. For each month use the relevent link from the themes page, use some catchy wording to tell the twitter followers of your library about the theme for the month, include the link to the description for each month (from the themes page), add the hashtag for the discussion #rwpchat, and the tag for the month as well (available from each of the month theme pages). You can set all of this up for the rest of the year, today. For example the tweet for the first of the month could be something like "the theme for the twitter reading group this month is #[insert relevant hashtage here] #rwpchat [include link to relevant month http://readwatchplay.wordpress.com/monthly-themes/]" An example tweet for the last Tuesday of the month could be "join us tonight to discuss your #[insert relevant hashtag here] #rwpchat [include link to relevant month http://readwatchplay.wordpress.com/monthly-themes/]" Each library really only has to do two tweets a month, one to go live on the first of the month and one for the last Tuesday of the month. Using your library twitter account, follow the @readwatchplay twitter account. You can use Hootsuite to preset Facebook posts using the themes in the same way you can preset tweets. You could set up the tweets and facebook posts for the rest of the year in less than 30 minutes. If your library has a blog you can use the information from the theme pages to write your own posts. If your library has a Pinterest page, you can follow the Readwatchplay pinterest account, and promote it you your community.