The Wild Rose Shanachie Tour

In April and May 2010, the Shanachies visited public libraries in Alberta, on the 2010 Wild Rose Shanachie Tour.

Final Update, May 12, 2010: Wow! that was a great visit.  Thanks so much, Jaap & Erik, for your energy, ideas, enthusiasm, modesty, and charm.  They were all on display during the Wild Rose Tour, from the difficult early days in London (via video, emails, texts, & Skype sessions), to your weather-impaired drives around Alberta, and great times at the Alberta Library Conference at Jasper Park Lodge.  We all had a great time.

Cool video from the Wild Rose Tour is now showing up on the web.  Watch episode #8 of This Week in Libraries, recorded in Jasper (and pictured to the left), and check out the latest episodes at shanachietour.com or vimeo.com.

UPDATE, April 23, 3 p.m.: Yes! Erik & Jaap are on board a flight from London that arrives in Calgary this afternoon.  We're scrambling to include as many libraries as possible from our regularly-scheduled group.  The Shanachies will be at Calgary Public Library on Saturday, April 24th; at Red Deer Public Library on Monday the 26th; and in Edmonton & Sherwood Park on the 27th & 28th.  After the Alberta Library Conference in Jasper, they'll visit libraries in Central Alberta, and the headquarters of Parkland Regional Library, where they'll connect via video-conference with Chinook Arch Regional Library.

UPDATE, April 19, 9:00 a.m.: Erik & Jaap are still stuck in the U.K.  The Ash Cloud continues to block all flights from London, and the earliest the Shanachies can make their way across the Atlantic looks to be Friday, April 23rd.  So we'll have to scrub the first week of the Wild Rose Tour, or postpone it at least.

If Erik & Jaap indeed make it to Calgary on the 23rd, we'll start them off in Edmonton, with our scheduled visits on April 26-28 in the Capital Region.  Then they'll make their way to the Alberta Library Conference in Jasper, where their presentation will include their amazing Ash Cloud Adventure as well as the library tours they manage to squeeze in.  

Following the Conference, we're exploring whether they might be able to get in some of the library tours from the first week, rescheduled to the first week of May.  We will post the most current information on this page.

In the meantime, check out new improvised-in-the-UK posts about The Wild Rose Tour and new episodes of This Week in Libraries.

UPDATE, April 15, 3:15 p.m.: Erik & Jaap are stranded at Heathrow Airport in London because of the Ash Cloud from an Iceland Volcano.  Once the airspace over the UK is reopened, it will be a while before they can catch a flight to Canada, but we're hoping they'll be in Alberta in time for their first library tours in Lethbridge on Monday, April 19.  However, they will miss meeting up with Alberta Librarians at the TAL Board Meeting in Calgary on Friday afternoon, April 16, and we won't be able to film an episode of This Week in Libraries then. 

Watch this space for regular updates, or follow the saga on Twitter: #WildRoseTour and #Shanachietour.

Watch the Wild Rose Tour Trailer at the Shanachietour site.

The Shanachies are two Dutch librarians, Erik Boekesteijn and Jaap van de Geer who work at the innovative DOK library in Delft, Holland. In 2007 they travelled from New York to Monterey in an RV along with friend & sound-man Geert van den Boogaard, visiting & filming libraries along the way.  One of the results of this tour is their book/DVD set Shanachie Tour: A Library Road Trip Across America.  Another is their website shanachietour.com, which documents their US trip, and subsequent trips to Jamaica, France, Australia, and Ireland.   When Erik and Jaap met Alberta librarians at the Internet Librarian International Conference in London in 2008 and 2009, a plan was hatched to bring The Shanachies to Canada.

The Alberta tour is about to become reality.   Erik and Jaap will fly from Amsterdam to Calgary, arriving on April 16, 2010, and will spend the rest of the month visiting Alberta's public libraries, in search of Best Practices to document on video.  They'll end up at the Alberta Library Conference in Jasper on April 29-May 2, 2010, where they will present some of their experiences on the road in Alberta.  At the Netspeed Conference in Edmonton in October 2010, you'll get a chance to see the finished Wild Rose Shanachie Tour video, and perhaps get a chance to chat with Erik and Jaap via videoconference from Delft.  After Jasper, the Shanachies will drive on to Vancouver.  Following the Canadian tour, the Shanachies' next step is a trip see New Zealand's best libraries.

Showcase Your Library

The Wild Rose Shanachie Tour is made possible by funds from Red Deer Public Library and the Alberta Public Library Electronic Network, which will pay for all expenses for the Tour.   If you're with a public library in Alberta, this is your chance to meet the Shanachies, and document all the great things you're doing.  Do you have a new library building that you're proud of, or an innovative program that connects your library with the community?  This is your chance to tell the world.  We'll post videos of every library visit on the tour, both here and at www.shanachietour.com

If you would like the Shanachies to visit your library, or for more information on the Tour, please contact Karla Palichuk, APLEN Coordinator, or Dean Frey, Director of Red Deer Public Library.  We will post the schedule of library visits on this page as it emerges.

April 8, 2010:  Our schedule is coming together has fallen apart.  As of April 23, it's likely that Erik & Jaap will be in:

• Lethbridge & Raymond from April 17-19
• Calgary on April 20
• Lacombe & surrounding communities on April 21
• Red Deer on April 22-23
• Calgary Public Library on Saturday, April 24
• Red Deer Public Library on Monday, April 26
• Edmonton on April 27
• County of Strathcona on April 28
• Jasper for the Alberta Library Conference on April 29 to May 2
• Parkland Regional Library & libraries in Central Alberta on May 3 (with a videoconference link to Chinook Arch from Lacombe)
  

Learn More About The Shanachies

Check out the videos and blog postings from previous tours of the U.S., Jamaica, Greece, and Ireland at www.shanachietour.com.  Follow their Twitter feeds: @shanachietour -  @erikboekesteijn - @jaapvandegeer - and Facebook.  Buy their book/DVD ShanachieTour: A Library Road Trip Across America.

And watch the first episodes of Jaap & Erik's This Week in Libraries.