NSW PUBLIC LIBRARIES MULTICULTURAL WORKING GROUP MEETING

Thursday 18 November 2021

Online via ZOOM

Start time: 10 am

Chair: Jadwiga Krejza, Liverpool

Minutes: Jann Debenham, Canterbury Bankstown

Last Meeting Minutes:

CALD Tech Savvy information dates to be changed to 2021-22; also, the letter ‘A’ shouldn’t be there (Katarzyna Malicka, Burwood); a mix-up with the apologies for the August meeting: Sarah Wild and Vicki O’Rourke. Abby Dawson to update.

Apologies for today: Nicole Byrn, Cumberland; Kathy Yang, Ryde; Katherine Zhu, Randwick.

Oriana Acevedo: Strategic Plan 2021 – 2025 for Library Multicultural Services

The Action Plan – Strategy 1: Develop strategies to support new arrivals.

Objective 2, Strategy 1: Facilitate training and professional development – SLNSW to organise a seminar focusing on the benchmarks – quality and success of marketing – quality of Service/Collections – Promotion and marketing – Evaluation.

Collections – circulation and age.

Spotlight on Multicultural Services.

Collections – how do you maintain them? Who is your target group?

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Oriana to work with members to develop a framework – what is your library and your social environment? To take place early in 2022 for approximately 1 hour.

January - Spotlight on library service - Joelman from Blacktown, Jadwiga from Liverpool, Sarah from Inner West Oriana and Shauna from SL NSW to meet up in January to discuss develop framework for presentation.

February - from Sarah, Ayse from Waverley, and Eugenia Ng from Burwood, are invited for a meeting to develop a framework in early 2022.

April – Helen from, Vicky from Wollongong, Vanessa from Ryde

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• Oriana encouraged members to publish articles in journals and ethnic newspapers – Renata Rekiel’s article in the State Library’s eNewsletter about Cantenbury/ Bankstown City’s ‘Let’s Go’ cultural celebrations was really interesting, focusing on the long-term migrants of Canterbury Bankstown.
• Encourage people to apply for the Multicultural Excellence Award.
• Lending of unique collections such as Marathi (Campbelltown), Kannada, Khmer. Held at some public libraries. Discussed barriers for collaboration. There are no barriers at Campbelltown. Liverpool can send by mail. Khmer at Fairfield can also be lent. The collaboration exists and libraries are always good at networking.
• Vicki O’Rourke from Wollongong asked if anyone has Swahili – Blacktown has Swahili (Joelman Zungar). A Swahili supplier is based in Engadine. Joelman to give Vicki the contact details. They also have Nollywood DVDs.
• Increase public library staff knowledge of CALD resources.
• We could have a seminar on Indyreads in different languages.
• A Fairfield staff member is running online training in Chinese.

Jadwiga Krejza from Liverpool: The Annual Report

All are advised to read the Report. It contains achievements and activities at Libraries.

Promoting resources during the lockdown – it has been difficult to obtain online resources in languages such as Arabic. We have been looking for online LOTE books in the public domain.

The Multicultural Glossary – this has been discussed with Oriana – requests can be made for translation – languages change and sometimes translations aren’t always good and need to be updated.

CAVAL in Melbourne is sponsoring the Multicultural Excellence Award.

The SBS Cultural Atlas has excellent cultural information, also about the cultures of new migrants coming to Australia.

CALD Tech Savvy Seniors.

As planned.

Abby Dawson from the State Library of NSW: Bulk Loans

The Bulk Loans are operating now.

Friday 10 December is the deadline to put in your requests.

Will be restarting Bulk Loans service on 10 January 2022.

Indyreads: a Portuguese collection published in South America (Brazil) is now available; now working on adding Polish and later Russian. Volunteers asked to be on the panels.

The new State Library catalogue is in development – language scripts used for ‘Vernacular Title’ e g Russian, Hindi. For searching, type in subject, etc and then select language from the dropdown box.

Oriana: You can put your orders in for SLNSW bookmarks for Books in Your Language – don’t forget your Branches.

Underperforming language collections.

Helen Williams from Inner West:

• What can we do with under-performing language collections?
• Are there any suggestions for boosting their profile and circulation?
• Vicki O’Rourke (Wollongong) suggested looking at Katherine Zhu’s (Randwick) report and survey on LOTE collections.

Oriana: Look at the age and size of the collection, the variety of topics, talk with the community, try not to assume the community knows about the collections.

Are the collections in the right spot?

Helen: to raise the awareness and connect with the community.

Joelman Zungar(Blacktown): has a Language Ambassador – invite organisations and communities and show a video for networking. Blacktown has a Committee with about 30 members – we sourced them through Community Language Schools.

Sujatha Thadakamalla (Fairfield): a staff member promotes the collection and has a brief conversation with the customer. They have promoted their services at Costco; Bunnings will host a library promotion in December. Word-of-mouth in the library is the best.

Jadwiga Krejza (Liverpool): Speak with the customer – we need to get books they are interested in. Use signage. Have community language book displays. A promotion on Macquarie Mall Screen (CBD): “Hello” in different languages by the library staff.

Oriana: display new community language books.

Sujatha Thadakamalla (Fairfield)

Hindi book collection. Hindi book supplier has bilingual children’s books on many Indian subjects, e g Delhi, Taj Mahal, Indian music, festivals, etc. Information to be attached to the Minutes. Sujatha suggested we share this information with our Children’s Services Teams and Collection Development Teams.

General Business and Information Sharing

2022 Multicultural Working Group Meetings: 3rd Thursday of the following months –

February, May, August, November. Jadwiga to send the dates.

• Election of Chairperson and Secretary – Jadwiga to send out the Nomination Forms – you need to have approval from your Manager to accept the role.

• Fijian books (Jadwiga Krejza, Liverpool) were purchased and donated by Fiji Diespora Women Group through New Zealand suppliers; there is also a tourist shop in Nadi, Fiji, with books in Roman script. The collection will be called ‘Pacifica’. The video of book being donated to the Library went on social media and engaged 450 people. A short video clip with a story about the coconut tree to go on Liverpool Library’s website, about how important a coconut is in life of Fijian people.

• Vicki O’Rourke (Wollongong) – Wollongong has created a new page on their website for multicultural communities – the language can be changed using a Google translate feature – there is also a new form that can be translated online for ordering bulk loan community language books, there has been a big and immediate uptake of this – staff have been promoting it. Also, the Inclusive Libraries page was added with function to translate languages.

• Sarah Wild (Canada Bay) – Sarah was approached by a private Spanish Library in Sydney asking if Canada Bay Library would like a bulk loan of Spanish books.

• Pauline Chan (Parramatta) – Covid-19 lockdown put all their programs online (Diwali, craft, etc) – all were well-received by the community. Podcasts have been provided on their website in different languages: Health information in Cantonese on depression, anxiety and healthy body and healthy mind. These are also in Hindi. They have very good facilitators. They will have Arabic podcasts in December. They are helping the community with finding a job, and with reading and writing too.

• Joelman Zungar asked what other libraries are doing with their English Conversation groups?

• Ryde: Yes, online for intermediate level, a small group.

• Bankstown: face-to-face and online English; presenting two face-to-face CALD Arabic My Aged Care sessions with reduced numbers and Social distancing) at the end of November, a big waiting list for these.

• Ryde: Korean and Mandarin vaccination talks in partnership with mygov.au and Centrelink.

• Liverpool: they are having a meeting with NAVITAS to discuss how to deliver English groups and use the collection. On Monday Liverpool is going back to normal operational hours.

• Parramatta: They have worked with NAVITAS for many years, they are fantastic – they listen to the needs of the participants NAVITAS will also deliver a job-seeking workshop.

• Wollongong: They have partnered with a multicultural Illawarra group – this has been very positive.

• Newcastle – Mary Gissing: Does anyone have a Welcome program for new settlers – explaining the role of government, people’s role and agency with their citizenship, the place of Aborigines and their custodianship in the community? Mary is working with Council’s Governance Team – to deliver in old Council Chambers and new Council Chambers – an Aboriginal person to speak and share about their rights and their custodianship.

• Bankstown (Jann Debenham): We are rolling out Citizenship classes; these began before this year’s Covid lockdown; we are planning to start them again next year at a number of our Branches.

• Bankstown: We have an English Conversation Group volunteer teacher who has been trained and is employed by a legal organisation. He provides very good presentations on Migrants’ and Refugees’ Rights in the Workplace. His name is Daniel Parkinson. His contact email is as follows: danparkinsonjr@gmail.com

The meeting ended at 12.09 pm

Oriana wished us a happy and healthy new year and a good holiday.

Mary Gissing question - don’t forget your local MRC – Migrant Resource Centre.

Eugenia Ng (Burwood) said that the Migrant Employment and Legal Resource Centre can provide talks and information.