Antipodean Books Against Floods Drive!
The inestimable Sharron of former Fandom High fame and all-around geekily awesome person is currently experiencing some of the worst parts of the Queensland Floods. Thankfully she and her kitties evacuated but her two story townhouse has been completely submerged by the flood waters. Which means a loss of everything, but most importantly to a geek, her books. All her books. 2070 of them. (Seriously just thinking of that is making me shiver in horror)
Luckily for us, she has some of those OCD tendencies that most of us share and has catalogued her entire collection on LibraryThing. I doubt this was the purpose when she did, but it gives us a fantastic place to start.
What we'd like to do is try to re-collect Sharron's books, and we'd like to take up your offers on Twitter to help. Used books are perfectly fine. Those in her collection are preferred, but if you run across something she needs to have, that'd be awesome too.
Books can be mailed to Emily's house for shipping on to Australia (with all credit given to those who collected the books). Why Emily's house? It's moderately central in the US, US people can send the books via media mail instead of paying for overseas shipping, and Emily can get a discount on overseas shipping through her work. The books will then be collected and stored by Ang until such time that Sharron is able to move back into her home. If you live elsewhere in the world and would like to send your donated books directly to Australia, they can be mailed to Ang's house. If you don't have the time or inclination to go hunting for books, you can absolutely donate to the 'overseas shipping fund' through PayPal using the address stargaterpg@gmail.com.
The ideal time frame for this is to collect the books to send off by mid-February. If you would like to send books, please comment to this post and we'll send you a screened comment back with the mailing address of your choice (US or Australia).
As books are received, we're going to keep track of which books are checked off the list here. If you would like to claim a book that you know you have and can send, please let us know and we'll mark that on the spreadsheet. If we receive a duplicate, one of them will be redeemed at a local used book shop and another book purchased with the money.
Are there any questions? Anything we didn't think of? Anything that needs to be covered?
***
Information About the Queensland Floods
Queensland, a state in Australia, has had widespread flooding for the past 3 weeks. There was recently a flash flood in the town of Toowoomba that's being called an inland tsunami because of the severity and suddenness of the water flow. This has led to flooding in the Brisbane River system from Toowoomba to Ipswich and down to the state capital, Brisbane, located on the Pacific Ocean. Flood waters reached 85 feet in some rural areas, 65 feet in Ipswich (completely sinking the entire city) and 54 feet at Sharron's place in Redbank halfway between Ipswich and Brisbane. Brisbane city was completely shut down and the city's downtown area looks abandoned. Power is out and unlikely to be restored for some time. Supplies are running low. To understand the vastness of this flooding problem, 75% of Queensland has been declared a disaster zone. That's twice the size of Texas and 5 times the size of the United Kingdom. They had to tie down crocodiles at Australia Zoo to make sure they didn't swim away and a bull shark was spotted in the flood waters inland. Below you'll find some footage and photos of the flooding.
http://twitpic.com/3pavn3
http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2011/01/10/3109884.htm
http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausflood_01_03/a22_26271921.jpg
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/01/australian_flooding.html
http://yfrog.com/h7oye3j
http://www.mobypicture.com/user/sollygc/view/8467882
http://yfrog.com/h56e6rj
http://twitpic.com/3pbkz3
http://resources0.news.com.au/images/2011/01/12/1225986/287876-floods-readers.jpg
http://www.news.com.au/pictures/gallery-e6frflv9-1225980728997?page=1
http://yfrog.com/h7mm5bsj
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIppZOYyAQg
******
ETA: Sharron just texted a picture of her house as the floodwaters recede. Barely. That's a two-story house there just managing to peek out over the water. http://plixi.com/p/69615463
Luckily for us, she has some of those OCD tendencies that most of us share and has catalogued her entire collection on LibraryThing. I doubt this was the purpose when she did, but it gives us a fantastic place to start.
What we'd like to do is try to re-collect Sharron's books, and we'd like to take up your offers on Twitter to help. Used books are perfectly fine. Those in her collection are preferred, but if you run across something she needs to have, that'd be awesome too.
Books can be mailed to Emily's house for shipping on to Australia (with all credit given to those who collected the books). Why Emily's house? It's moderately central in the US, US people can send the books via media mail instead of paying for overseas shipping, and Emily can get a discount on overseas shipping through her work. The books will then be collected and stored by Ang until such time that Sharron is able to move back into her home. If you live elsewhere in the world and would like to send your donated books directly to Australia, they can be mailed to Ang's house. If you don't have the time or inclination to go hunting for books, you can absolutely donate to the 'overseas shipping fund' through PayPal using the address stargaterpg@gmail.com.
The ideal time frame for this is to collect the books to send off by mid-February. If you would like to send books, please comment to this post and we'll send you a screened comment back with the mailing address of your choice (US or Australia).
As books are received, we're going to keep track of which books are checked off the list here. If you would like to claim a book that you know you have and can send, please let us know and we'll mark that on the spreadsheet. If we receive a duplicate, one of them will be redeemed at a local used book shop and another book purchased with the money.
Are there any questions? Anything we didn't think of? Anything that needs to be covered?
***
Information About the Queensland Floods
Queensland, a state in Australia, has had widespread flooding for the past 3 weeks. There was recently a flash flood in the town of Toowoomba that's being called an inland tsunami because of the severity and suddenness of the water flow. This has led to flooding in the Brisbane River system from Toowoomba to Ipswich and down to the state capital, Brisbane, located on the Pacific Ocean. Flood waters reached 85 feet in some rural areas, 65 feet in Ipswich (completely sinking the entire city) and 54 feet at Sharron's place in Redbank halfway between Ipswich and Brisbane. Brisbane city was completely shut down and the city's downtown area looks abandoned. Power is out and unlikely to be restored for some time. Supplies are running low. To understand the vastness of this flooding problem, 75% of Queensland has been declared a disaster zone. That's twice the size of Texas and 5 times the size of the United Kingdom. They had to tie down crocodiles at Australia Zoo to make sure they didn't swim away and a bull shark was spotted in the flood waters inland. Below you'll find some footage and photos of the flooding.
http://twitpic.com/3pavn3
http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2011/01/10/3109884.htm
http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/ausflood_01_03/a22_26271921.jpg
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/01/australian_flooding.html
http://yfrog.com/h7oye3j
http://www.mobypicture.com/user/sollygc/view/8467882
http://yfrog.com/h56e6rj
http://twitpic.com/3pbkz3
http://resources0.news.com.au/images/2011/01/12/1225986/287876-floods-readers.jpg
http://www.news.com.au/pictures/gallery-e6frflv9-1225980728997?page=1
http://yfrog.com/h7mm5bsj
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIppZOYyAQg
******
ETA: Sharron just texted a picture of her house as the floodwaters recede. Barely. That's a two-story house there just managing to peek out over the water. http://plixi.com/p/69615463