Working Group on Multicultural Services (NSW) 9:30 am Thursday the 22nd of November 2018 State Library of NSW Macquarie Room
Minutes
Apologies: Kaye Johnson (Sutherland), Nada Antoun (Parramatta)
Confirmation of previous minutes The previous minutes were accepted with a small change by Kasia Malicka (Burwood) and seconded by Pauline Chan (Parramatta).
Welcome Oriana welcomed attendees to the State Library and to the AGM.
Annual General Meeting The Annual Report was provided to all attendees by Vicki O’Rouke, and there was a brief discussion regarding Multicultural Seminar, the Inclusive and Cohesive seminar, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Competence Course, the Cultural Competence training and the multicultural banners purchased through the State Library for individual libraries. Oriana let the group know that libraries interested in purchasing a banner would be able to do so again next year, she will let staff know via email when this opportunity will be available.
A copy of the Annual Report will be forwarded to all of the members of the group and on the pln_multicultural elist.
A call for volunteers for Chair and Secretary of the meeting were put to the group: Jadwija Krejza (Liverpool) will be the new Chair Kirsty Plumridge (Cumberland) will be the new Secretary
Tech Savvy Seniors Oriana is currently looking after the Tech Savvy Seniors, and let the group know that most of the CALD TSS evaluations should now be done online. These surveys are found online at https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/public-library-services/services-older-peoples-services-tech-savvy-seniors/online-survey The online surveys aren’t yet available for Vietnamese and Greek, therefore paper forms should be used for those languages. There was a discussion about class sizes, with some of the group saying that they were getting extra people coming along to the class that hadn’t booked. Oriana advised that if that was occurring to notify her, and it would probably be possible to book additional classes, and that 10 should be the maximum for each class.
Oriana also briefly mentioned the Be Connected https://beconnected.esafety.gov.au/ initiative, stating that she was having a meeting with the conveners this week.
Bulk Loans Kieran addressed the meeting regarding the Bulk Loans service and notified the group that the service would be suspended from 7 December to 7 January. This cessation will allow the team to perform a stocktake, to weed the collections and allow them to process new items for the service. If any bulk loans currently held by libraries have a due date during this period, they are welcome to contact Kieran to get an extension of the loan, or to return them now. There was a discussion about the shift in returning bulk loans via Australia Post, with an emphasis that this is the way that all bulk loans should be returned, they are not to go with the other InterLibrary Loan items collected by Toll. When sending out the bulk loans, Kieran includes a return address which is specific to that box, please use this return address when returning items. For extra items to be returned, it is possible to also use the general return address ‘templates’, if libraries would like a copy of this template they should contact Kieran and he can email it through to them. We discussed statistics regarding bulk loans and Oriana asked if all libraries could please send through their statistics to regarding individual loans; for example if you borrow a box of German books, Oriana would like libraries to collect statistics on how many times the items within this box go out on loan. These statistics will be calculated by financial year, therefore if each library could please send these statistics to Oriana at the end of the financial year.
Multicultural Purchasing Co-operative This service has evolved in the last few years, with fewer libraries now purchasing directly through the State Library. Oriana said that the State Library is there to help if libraries would like to purchase LOTE DVDs, which are difficult to source please contact her.
LOTE DVDs The issue of the classification of LOTE DVDs still has not been resolved, with the hope now that it can be changed at a Federal level, with a change to the Classification Act and an exemption for libraries. Some libraries are adding details to their cataloguing records to the effect that ‘this dvd has not been classified in Australia’, and some libraries are labelling their DVDs with this information. There was some discussion about suppliers of LOTE DVDs, with the added detail that it is genuinely hard to source some language DVDs. Oriana stated again you can to contact her to see if they can assist you.
There was a discussion about Kanopy, specifically regarding classification, as some libraries felt that the platform was unable to filter via ratings to ensure age appropriate materials were borrowed. There was a general discussion about Kanopy’s content and its ability to be used as a means of screening movies to the public. Update: Sujatha from Fairfield investigated the issue regarding classification and reported back that Kanopy has parental controls that allow individual users to restrict what juniors are allowed to view via the platform.
Highlights from Multicultural Programs Wollongong – spoke about their oral history program ‘Illawarra Stories’ https://illawarrastories.com.au/
Canada Bay – spoke about their recent project called ‘Greek Stories’, where they were collecting oral histories in Greek
Fairfield – have opened a recording studio in the library so individuals and local businesses can record video clips, and they run courses in how to use the equipment. They have launched a Workery Space, a place where people can build their business and skills. They also run a Smart Bar, which is a place where patrons can get one-on-one assistance with their own devices in their own language.
Burwood – Spoke about the Language Festival that they hosted at the end of July – they had over 100 people attending, and they talked about languages, shared food and had good feedback from the participants.
Blacktown – developing a collection of books from every country in the world, spoke about International Mother Language Day, in which they organised a Harmony Walk with over 1,000 people attending.
Randwick - run children’s activities in 6 languages which are well attended and spoke about their connection with a Korean cultural centre.
Willoughby – talked about series of talks in Mandarin including talks by Centrelink and about Superannuation ACT – talked about introducing bilingual storytimes and said they would welcome input from the group on the running of these sessions.
Multicultural Excellence Award There has been less participation over the past few years in regards to applications for this award, and Oriana spoke about the importance of it continuing as a means of highlighting the range of programs that are run by Multicultural staff in libraries. Oriana asked for volunteers from the group to form a committee to encourage participation and Laurence McDonnell, Wendy Ford and Oriana volunteered to be members of this committee; they will meet next March. There was discussion about the individual category award, as to whether this should be something awarded instead by the MWGM, which is something that will be discussed by the newly formed committee.
Local Government Multicultural Network Oriana is part of this group, and it involves workers from a range of fields who work directly with the Multicultural communities. The purpose of this group is to network, identify areas that need a consolidated approach amongst professions and then to provide resources to assist workers.
Health Information in Your Language There was a discussion on the importance of providing health information in CALD languages, and to be aware of this when doing selection work for collections. Oriana mentioned the poster that was designed as part of Multicultural Health Week, and suggested that libraries could use this as an ongoing display feature, and said for libraries to contact her to ask for a copy of this poster if they haven’t already received one. There was a discussion about the Multicultural Health Communication Website http://www.mhcs.health.nsw.gov.au/ and also about the importance of having displays in community languages. There was a reminder that the State Library has a glossary that can be used to assist with displays https://www2.sl.nsw.gov.au/multicultural/glossary/
Compiling a Multicultural Events Calendar There was a discussion about the usefulness of having a calendar available for staff to be able to use to assist with program planning and promotion and some major dates in the CALD calendar. It was decided that this information would be placed on the new MWGM wiki, which is currently being designed and will form a valuable resource for staff.
Recording stories of the MWGM members Oriana would like to start collecting stories from the members in the group, as a form of videorecorded interviews.
Guest Speaker – Ellen Forsyth Ellen spoke about a new initiative that will hopefully be introduced next year involving Local Studies recording kits to facilitate collecting stories of under-represented sections of our communities. This means that it will be targeted in particular towards collecting stories from the CALD and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. It is planned that the kits would include a simple to use video recorder and portable scanner, and training is also planned for next year as a way of skilling staff towards going out and collecting stories. There was a discussion about collecting stories in other languages; whether this would include a mix of other languages and English, or whether the interviews would be conducted entirely in another language. There was also a discussion regarding transcriptions and whether it would be necessary to provide a transcription into English, with Ellen stating that this would be flexible and dependent of the needs of the library. Once the stories are collected, Ellen encouraged staff to think of ways that it could be added to the library’s Local Studies collection, as well as added to Trove. She also spoke about the opportunities that existed with this type of project as a means of collaboration between Multicultural and Local History staff. There was a discussion about the difficulties that can arise when collecting Aboriginal Oral Histories, and the ways in which staff need to be sensitive about approaching these communities and where the stories are stored after collection. There was a question from the group about the Amplify Project, https://amplify.sl.nsw.gov.au/ with Ellen stating that the intention will be to extend this project out to other libraries, but that they don’t have a timeframe for this extension. There was also a discussion about the value of collecting ‘ambient sounds’ within communities, with the suggestion given that the kits could be used to facilitate this project.
Training Oriana detailed about the Cultural Competence Training https://cultural-competence.com.au/home and said that the State Library still had more subscriptions available and that she would put the call out again to staff to see who would like to enrol.
Other business Parramatta will be celebrating its 60th Anniversary on the 29 November and Pauline extended an invitation to anyone who would like to come along and join the celebration.
Meetings for 2019 28 February – Hornsby Library 16 May – City of Sydney (Green Square Library) 15 August – Concord Library 21 November – State Library NSW