Working Group on Multicultural Services (NSW) 10am, Thursday 16 August 2018 Wollongong Library Minutes
Apologies: Vivien Lee (Willoughby), Nada Antoun (Parramatta), Danju Wong (City of Sydney), Sharlene Louey (City of Sydney), Wendy Ford (Manly), Vanessa Ong (Inner West), Joelmon Zungar (Blacktown)
Welcome: We received a welcome to Wollongong Library from the Library Manager Mark Norman and a recognition that we were meeting on the land of traditional owners, both past and present.
Confirmation of previous minutes: The previous minutes were accepted unchanged by Vanessa Maino and seconded by Pauline Chan.
Business arising from previous minutes: Tech Savvy Seniors Shauna reported that the Tech Savvy seniors funding has increased in the next round, and will have a focus on running more CALD sessions.
Multicultural Health Oriana spoke about Multicultural Health Week (3-9 September) and handed out postcards on Consumer rights about beauty products. The State Library will also be producing bookmarks, and libraries are encouraged to borrow books on health for Health Week.
CALD Oral History projects Oriana will email library managers to encourage a focus on CALD oral history projects.
Agenda Items
Guest Speakers Vimala Colless – Community Development Worker Multicultural (Wollongong Council) Spoke about Wollongong’s Living Books project, which has been running for 10 years, and has a diverse range of volunteers who speak at community events about their life experiences. Roughly 5,000 have participated in listening to the Living Book stories, and Vimala spoke about how they run the service and encouraged any library to contact her if they have queries about setting up their own project of Living books. vcolless@wollongong.nsw.gov.au
Hilary Powell – Team Leader Librarian – Local Studies (Wollongong Library) Spoke about the Illawarra Stories Project, which is their collection of Oral History Stories. These stories have been collected by staff, as well as volunteers who go out and interview participants, and they created a website to store the stories. https://illawarrastories.com.au/ The collection is accessible via this website, as well as through their library catalogue. Hilary spoke about how this was set up, permission issues, and the State Library Amplify Project which provides transcripts of Oral History recordings.
Bulk Loans Shauna spoke about problems libraries have still been experiencing getting their bulk loan deliveries and stressed that the State Library ships requests within 24 hours, therefore libraries should contact the State Library if they haven’t received their books within a reasonable timeframe. It is hoped that soon there will be an increase in staff in the Bulk Loan section, which will ease this part of the work load on the current staff in the team. It was queried as to whether we could return books in Non-State Library boxes and Shauna said that this would be fine. Oriana spoke about the importance of keeping statistics for the bulk loans, just the number of boxes received and the number of items that go on loan per language. Keeping these statistics is going to be an essential part of the bulk loans service going forward.
Multicultural Excellence Awards All libraries were encouraged to apply for the award, that if there has been an interesting/innovative project that they have undertaken, then they should submit that. Entries close 28 September.
Local History Project Oriana discussed her recent presentation in Melbourne about My Stories Matter. She queried with the group as to whether they would be willing to be interviewed about their professional life, and then discussed how it could be used as part of the ‘Renew our libraries’ campaign. Lawrence and Oriana will raise this at NSWPLA meeting, with an idea towards researching funding sources.
LOTE Feature Film Classifications This matter still has not been resolved, currently the State Library is working with libraries across the country to see if this can be resolved at a Commonwealth level. Shauna let us know that libraries can purchase DVDs as ‘alternate formats’ through the State Library and to contact Shauna if they would like to do this.
Information Exchange
Blacktown Library Currently launching new language collections and are aiming towards having at least a small collection in all requested languages. Next month they partnering with a hospital to present information on health in Tamal, Tagalog and Punjabi for Muliticultural Health Week.
Parramatta Library Hosting Preparing for Australian Citizenship Talk, a talk on the dangers of choking for young children by The Parentmedic Movement, and a detailed program on health in partnership with ACMA. In the ACMA talks doctors volunteer to talk about specialist topics, and libraries can contact ACMA if they would like to form similar partnerships.
Canada Bay Library Hosting New Residents talks in Chinese and English for newly arrived migrants with a partnership with the ATO, the Department of Fair Trading, the Fairwork Ombudsman, DHS and local council representatives. You can contact Sarah if you would like to run similar talks with these government agencies in the library. sarah.wild@canadabay.nsw.gov.au
Burwood Library Hosted a Chinese talk on teaching children different life skills through play which was very well received.
Bayside Library Hosting fall prevention talks in English, Spanish, Cantonese (and other languages) including personal safety and exercises. They also provide Settlement Services through CASS.
Other Business
Tech Savvy Seniors – The majority of the next round of Telstra funding will be for CALD Tech Savvy classes and libraries can consider putting on additional classes / languages. Shauna said that this training can operate externally to libraries, e.g in nursing homes, in a men’s tech shed or other locations.
LOTE withdrawals Shauna said that withdrawn items in very good condition could be sent to the State Library, who will then try to re-home them. Please contact Shauna before sending any of these items.
CALD suppliers Shauna and Oriana recently went to visit CALD suppliers Lost in Books and Sydney Cine Filipino. Lost in Books specialises in children’s books 2/40 Harris Street Fairfield 9727 3928
Sydney Cine Filipino, Musika, Athp. Shop 3, Station Arcade 24 Main Street, Blacktown, 2148 8678 5589 0425 306 583 Mariatua@gmail.com
Co-operative purchasing A query was made regarding amounts for Co-operative purchasing, and Shauna asked libraries to contact her and let her know the budget amount they would like to spend for each language.
Next Meeting The next meeting will be at the State Library on 22nd November.