PROFILE OF WORKING GROUP The working Group on Multicultural Services of NSW was established in June 1983 by several Librarians working in the field of library services for the CALD community. The Working Group’s role is to promote the provision of library resources and services to clients in a range of community languages. VISION Every NSW library will have access to an excellent resource collection and services that meet the needs of their CALD communities. MISSION To lobby, advise, promote and improve the importance of library services for the CALD community.
Keynote speakers Laurence McDonnell, Oriana Acevedo, Vicki O’Rourke, Shauna Miller, Katherine Zhu, Pauline Chan, Kasia Malicka, Kirsty Plumridge, Kriti Kapoor, Ross Balharrie, Kim White, Sunny Arumugam, Kim Richards, Stephanie Lee, Joelmon Zungar, Kirsty Plumridge, Jadwiga Krejza, Mary Gissing.
Resignation The Working Group thanked Laurence McDonnell for his long service in the group of over eight years. Lawrence retired as the Library Manager Representative and is replaced by Nicole Byrn, Manager of Community and Culture from Cumberland Council.
Strategic Plan The Working Group’s sub-committee met and discussed ideas on how to achieve objectives. Some ideas included running cultural awareness courses at the SLNSW; staff exchange programs; an opportunity for all libraries to discuss the multicultural projects and programs they have been running by adding them as an agenda item.
Review of the Working Group Strategy The Working Group is tracking well against the strategic objectives. Oriana Acevedo has begun work with a Tibetan group which is a new and an emerging community, by supplying relevant information and support. The Working Group was asked by Oriana Acevedo to assist with Objective 4 of the Group’s Strategic Plan to ensure that multicultural services are recognised as an integral part to public library services.
Achievements, Changes and Activities The Terms of Reference for the Working Group on Multicultural Library Services (NSW) were reviewed and updated. At each meeting the Working Group discussed how well the strategic objectives were implemented to the Strategic Plan. The Strategic Plan will be reviewed next year. The Working Group thanked the Chair, Jadwiga Krejza and Secretary, Kirsty Plumridge for their contribution for the past two years.
Tech Savvy Seniors The Working Group members acknowledged the great role of the program to narrow the Digital Divide. The importance of gathering data by trainers and participants was stressed as an integral part of the program and to be collected by filling survey after each training session. Shauna Miller demonstrated how to access the surveys from the SLNSW website and outlined all the questions each survey asks. The website http://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/desktop/ allows tracking the progress of data collection.
Tech Savvy for Seniors Online Learning Modules Oriana Acevedo and Shauna Miller (SLNSW) worked with the ECC (Ethnic Community Council) on how to adapt the face-to-face program into online programs for our CALD communities. They have begun production of 15 minute videos ‘Using smartphones’ in English and translation into community languages. The videos are available on YouTube Tech Savvy Seniors Channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2ePMR_mnuRSGjhnMvnRmuQ/videos The Libraries are able to embed the videos onto their library website. State Library Multicultural Services encouraged libraries to share it across local communities. This method of training has been made available through funding from the Tech Savvy Seniors program.
Community Languages DVDS Laurence McDonnell and Oriana Acevedo met with Paul Fletcher, the Federal Minister of Communications. ALIA, the SLNSW and many other vested organisations have submitted responses to review the legislation around unclassified films in languages other than English. The submission supports the idea of training library staff to classify films, and a decision was expected by August/September of 2020. Many organisations have assisted in raising this issue, including the Ethnic Community Council of NSW, the State Library of Victoria, the State Library of Queensland, ALIA and Nimal Paul – Chair of Mother Language Day.
Co-operative Purchasing and Multicultural Bulk Loans The Working Group provided feedback regarding which languages to be prioritised for purchasing that include more books in French, German, Spanish and Japanese. The group also suggested to purchase junior collection books including picture books. Shauna Miller (SLNSW) has ordered a number of items from overseas including Finnish, Swedish, and Bulgarian but due to COVID -19 the delivery has been slowed down.
Multicultural Bulk Loans Joanna Goh (SLNSW) the team new leader and the team begun work on two new projects to improve the request form and the development of instructions for making requests. The delivery company TOLL no longer delivers the bulk loans. Australia Post is the new service supplier.
Events and Responses to COVID-19 In response to the COVID – 19 pandemic many libraries moved face to face programs to the digital platforms. Bi-lingual online story time sessions were run at City of Sydney Libraries. Kim Richards: Junee Library ran weekly, Conversation English program with video chat and phone calls. The sessions were quite effective as members who were previously shy to participate were taking more active part in the conversations. Individual video chats and calls were made to group members who cannot attend meetings in the library. Library supported participants by printing documents and delivering them to CALD group members. Kim Richards also assisted with letter writing.
Katherine Zhu: Randwick Library: ran online English Conversation classes from June 1st. The library provided the following eResources: eMagazines in Chinese, French and Spanish languages; Online English learning resources; Spanish eBooks available on Indyreads. The Library staff also supported the CALD community by collating information, translations of updates on Covid-19 and promoted it through Facebook and/or link them through their website.
Jadwiga Krejza: Liverpool Library –- supported multicultural community by running Online Storytimes and Conversation Café. CALD community members were able to access online resources such as Clarity English; AMES; Transparent Language Online; IELTS; Muzzy (children) EBooks, newspapers, magazines via IndyReads, PressReader. Online resources can be translated to a number of languages using Google Translate. Another service offered by Liverpool Library was ‘Click and Collect’. The customers could select books online or call the library with a selection of books. Library staff than gathered and packaged them for customers to collect.
Kirsty Plumridge: Cumberland Council ran two online ‘Ramadan Storytimes’ and began online English Conversation Classes via Zoom.
Eugenia Ng: Burwood Library provided ‘Mandarin’ phone support for the community, at designated times throughout the weekdays. Library’s staff guided people on how to access online resources.
Pauline Chan: Parramatta Library ran ‘Chinese Information Expo’ in September 2020. The expo comprised of short ten minutes presentations in Cantonese and Mandarin from Centrelink, the Police and Health Information – selection of government and non-government organisations. Parramatta Library created successful Podcast series health awareness during COVID – 19 in Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean and Arabic. https://parralibcald.podbean.com/ Library also ran sessions of Tech Savvy Seniors via Zoom in Mandarin, Korean, Hindi and Cantonese and online stories and rhymes in Korean and Chinese
Kathy Yang: Ryde Library hosted two information sessions in Mandarin and Korean on the Jobseeker and Jobkeeper Allowances via Zoom. These workshops are part of Library partnership with the Settlement Services International. They also conducted Tech Savvy Seniors sessions in Korean and established two online English Conversation classes per week, which attracted an overseas participant.
Mary Gissling: Newcastle Library ran a parenting class for Mandarin speakers via Zoom. These session were promoted using WeChat and were very successful with great feedback from participants. Newcastle also rans a four week creative writing course, that encouraged new migrants to tell their story. A local author delivered the program using Zoom.
Multilingual Glossary The Working Group reviewed the existing list of words/phrases listed on the SLNSW website. An extensive list of new phrases were suggested.
Multicultural Excellence Awards COVID - 19 has made it easy for the SLNSW to identify who is providing excellent services for the multicultural community, as all of our work has been moved to an online forum.
Docuwiki The Working Group has a presence on the State Library of NSW Website. The Agenda and Minutes and additional information is now available from the State Library of NSW Wiki. https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/public-library-services/wikis-and-blogs
Development of new language collections Canada Bay Library has added the Bengali language in their collection.
Public Library CALD Services Survey Katherine Zhu from Randwick Library prepared the report in response to drop in loans for the Randwick Library community language collections, to confirm the trend across NSW libraries as a whole.
Cultural Competence Training The Cultural Competence Training was offered and three hundred responses of interest were received. Covid-19 has provided staff more time to complete training. Oriana Acevedo is looking at establishing a sub-group to discuss the marketing strategy.
Working Group Guest Speakers 2019 27 February 2020 Guest speaker – Kriti Kapoor - Konova Pty Ltd Konova Pty Ltd are an Indian languages supplier of books, magazines and audio CDs and DVDs, in over 35 Indian languages. They supply items for all levels including children, and junior bi-lingual material. They can supply items shelf ready with MARC records, or simply supply items with an index card containing the English translation. Libraries can customise their processing requirements, and MARC records can be specified to the requirements of the requesting Library. Konova have contracts with all of the big publishing houses in India ensuring the goods are not pirated or copied, and are of good quality the best quality. Konova is a Melbourne based company.
28 May 2020 Guest speaker – Ross Balharrie – State Library NSW Ross Balharrie gave a presentation on the IndyReads e-platform to be rolled across the state to all public libraries. The platform features independently published, and self-published titles, including LOTE materials in Chinese, Vietnamese and Spanish. The promotional materials and training guides for IndyReads can be found from the SLNSW website – under Public Library Services. Ross will be investigating the possibility of attaining LOTE promotional materials. He will also be looking at placing the language filter in a more prominent space on the page.
27 August 2020 Guest Speaker – Kim White - Camden Library Kim White spoke about her experience delivering ‘Tech Savvy for Seniors’ online. The Camden team began by piloting a school holiday program for young adults and it was a great success. As a consequence they decided to roll out ‘Tech Savvy’ and contacted Chris Fulham from Fairfield Library for support. He is a great asset if you have any questions regarding online learning and workshops. The workshops were presented using MS Teams. Library advertised for interested participants to book. Once a small pool of participants, individual were contacted for a pre-session consultation. This one-on-one session enabled Library’s staff to determine what device each participant was using, and to assist them in navigating it, in preparation for the group sessions. It also helped to establish what each participant was wanting from the session and what their motivation for learning was. Group sessions were limited to small groups of up to 3 people and every step was taken very slowly, so that the presenter could check that all participants were keeping up. Participants were provided with handouts so that they could refer to these too. Kim White advice regarding housekeeping rules when running online meetings. Kim advocated for one-on-one training as this is the best way properly support people who are new to technology.
27 August 2020 Guest Speaker - Sunny Arumugam - LOTE Storytime Pods provide digital screen solutions for children with a wide variety of digital books, math games and coding games. This year the team have been working on a LOTE digital book platform for children called ‘LOTE ONLINE FOR KIDS’. This would be a great asset for libraries trying to service CALD communities. With a range of over 300 digital books in 15 languages, children can easily navigate to their selected language and listen to a range of stories read out in English or their selected language.
Jadwiga Krejza Chair Working Group on Multicultural Library Services (NSW) 24 November 2020