Working Group on Multicultural Library Services (NSW) Meeting Thursday the 12th of February 2014 Canterbury City Library Welcome: The Manager of Canterbury City Library, Michelle Simon, welcomed the Working Group to the library and congratulated them on the work they are doing in promoting multicultural services to the CALD community
Apologies: Kathleen Allen, Stella Tay, Nada Antoun, Jann Debenham, Alec Sissaguian and Laurence McDonnell
Minutes of previous meeting: The minutes were accepted without change by Kemal Serdar and seconded by Wendy Gindi Matters arising from previous minutes:
Strategic Plan:
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Ageing: Improved resources and services for the ageing CALD community
Update MyLanguage website Search for appropriate material. Allocate members of the working group to identify relevant resources in their language and communicate and report back to the working group Develop a contact list of speakers who would be available to talk to CALD groups on a variety of topics Website updated
Comprehensive list of available resources for purchase available
Template available on website Appoint a committee to pursue this outcome held over until next meeting
Action : A committee needs to be formed to follow up on this strategic objective
Page 6 Objective 2 : Benchmarking and to develop a seminar
The following staff volunteered to form the committee to address this matter: Oriana Acevedo, Mirjana Djukic, Wendy Ford, Laurence McDonnell, Shauna Miller and Kathy Yang The committee met at the State Library and discussed organizing a half day seminar to be titled “”Multicultural Services in the Digital Age” It is hoped that both international and interstate speakers will be invited to speak.
Strategic Plan - Objective 3
Strategy 1 Encourage and support the promotion and marketing of services for the CALD community. (SBS Project|)
Oriana has the following volunteers who speak Bengali, Bosnian, Burmese, Chinese (Mandarin), Dutch, Finnish, French, Gujarati, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Polish, Romanian, Serbian, Singhalese, Spanish, Tamil, Urdu,
Oriana is still looking for more volunteers for Arabic, Italian, Greek, Hindi and Vietnamese if you can suggest or recommend someone please keep in mind they must be educated and articulate. The next step is to go back to the beginning and create a press release which will focus on joining and using the library. Another meeting with SBS will be held and the discussion topics will be determined. LOTE Purchasing Information Session 2014
The Cooperative Coordinator is organizing a LOTE purchasing information session for NSW public libraries in March. The aim of this session is to bring together LOTE suppliers and libraries to discuss their needs, expectations and requirements and how best suppliers can assist libraries Action: Feedback and suggestions on how this session would take shape is required. Please email Shauna with your suggestions. Vision Ware- Cooperative Project Tim Dominguez is the Low Vision Consultant for Humanware supplier of Readit Air Humanware has been in business for 25 years and are low vision and blindness consultants. They demonstrated their product Readit Air This product includes software and a scanner which is able to read text in from books, documents and magazines. The software can currently read 24 languages with Japanese, Chinese, Cantonese and Mandarin available later this year. The system is able to change the magnification of the font, you can opt for either male of female voices, the only software and camera package in the world that adjusts brightness, speed control, contrast and changes to the colour. A key board is available with this product. Any document or book can be read in any format, line by line, word by word or a batch scans can be done of the book or document which can be read later. The stand alone cost is $2,400 + the software cost. Oriana will contact libraries with an expression of interest for the purchase of this product. Also available is Stream2 this is portable audio reader which enables the user to down load books to. This is a 3rd of the price of the Air, and is specifically designed for the vision impaired. USB or SD card or notes or recordings can be loaded. The sizes are 32 or 64 gig costing $425.00 each, but a bulk purchase would reduce the cost could be negotiated.. The company can provide instruction sheets for library clients. There is another unit which has larger buttons which would make it easier for the elderly to use. It can be used with Overdrive and Bolinda audio. The handheld reader has a battery life of 20 hours MP3 player, clock sleep timer and a book mark facility. Works well for the delivery of home library services. You can make up a card by genre eg mystery, romance etc and lend it out as such. Harmony Day/Multicultural March Romanian author Michaela Cristescu is able to give talks to library clients in libraries. You can contact her via her email address cT072005@yahoo.com On the 18th of March a presentation will be held at the State Library for the Romanian community Action: Contact Oriana for Michaela’s contact details. Multicultural Movie Club Kathy is considering setting up an international movie club. It is a difficult area due to Copyright limitations. Action: Oriana will investigate this further with the convenor of various film festivals. State Library website: The latest information on the State Library’s Multicultural Services is now on the State Library website. This is still a work in progress as we are attempting to make it easier to navigate the website.. Nepalese collection: The State Library of NSW has purchased a new Nepalese collection. The launch of the collection will be held on the 22nd of March at Rockdale City Library. The new bookmark listing Nepalese will also be available. Disposal of community language books The CRC is interested to know what happens with multicultural collections when they are weeded. Disposal guidelines vary from library to library. The CRC will have to approach each library separately about their disposal guidelines. Action: Oriana to send out a survey to libraries 4 questions. OTHER BUSINESS
CRC Grants- $4 million dollars are available for grants to the community- festivals, cultural activities etc Local government are ineligible to apply. However there are grants for $2,000 which libraries can apply for. The process consist of completing an application form and addressing all the criteria. Oriana is happy to help libraries with their application
Action: Oriana will send out the link to libraries CALD community and ANZAC day for the next agenda
Next meeting 8th May @ Burwood Library
Meeting closed at 12:00