Working group Multicultural services in libraries
Minutes
Location: Hornsby Library
Date: 23 February 2023
Time: 10am
Chair: Sujatha Thadakamalla Minutes: Jadwiga Krejza Liverpool Library
Attending: Oriana Acevedo (State Library), Shauna Miller (State Library), Abby Dawson (State Library), Mary Loveland (Northern Beaches), Venessa (Ryde), Ayse Ersoy (Waverley), Joelmon Zungar (Blacktown), Katherine Zhu (Randwick), Eugenie Ng (Burwood), Matilda Wong (Ryde), Fujing Zhao (Ku - Ring- Gai), Helen Williams Inner West, Angela Kolar (Corrective Services), Irena Tichackova (Hornsby), Jenny Zhang (Sydney).
Apologies: Sarah Wild, City of Canada Bay; Mary Gissing Newcastle, Sharlene Sydney.
The minutes from previous meeting to be accepted and seconded.
Matters arising from previous minutes.
Spotlight on suppliers. Shauna is compiling the list of suppliers. She will ask for expression of interest. The project to start later in the year.
Sujatha suggested to create a directory of suppliers.
It is difficult to share resources as there is difficult to source physical material. There are great resources available online such as, LOTE4Kids, Era Books Online, Clarity English or Transparent Language.
The challenge is to promote the online resources and make it easy to use for Multicultural Community.
Multicultural Community Engagement Conference: Filling in the puzzle: The bigger picture of engagement .
The Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) hosted the first inaugural Multicultural Community Engagement Conference: Filling in the puzzle: The bigger picture of engagement on Thursday, 27 October 2022 at PARKROYAL Parramatta, 30 Phillip Street, Parramatta New South Wales.
Only two libraries were represented at this meet, Lara Pugh from Wollongong City Libraries and Sujatha Thadakamalla from Fairfield City Open Libraries.
Lara presented a paper - Developing a community engagement plan through preliminary engagement with service providers for Wollongong City Libraries’ Learning City Project and Sujatha shared the various resources and service facilities made available from public libraries and in specific at Fairfield City Open Libraries.
One of the sessions discussed was ‘Language Inclusion Index: Capacity, Access and Visibility for inclusive engagement’ Project by, Macquarie University. Fairfield City Council is part of the project for survey, but library was not involved for discussions, which would have been a better place to provide the input on the topic, being engaged with most of the community.
Bulk Loans.
The Bulk Loan Service was created to provide support to the libraries as part of the Multicultural Services.
Libraries can use their own terms to promote the service.
Suppliers' presentation on Wiki.
Shauna is working on the program. She will contact the suppliers.
Partnership with Macquarie University to collect data. The Fairfield Library is participating in the project. It is difficult at times to compare services of one library to another as they serve different communities, and the funding levels differs also.
The project goals are to find out what is available online and how it is balanced. How people with disabilities can use the library websites.
It will take a year to complete the project.
LOTE DVDS collection streaming.
Sujatha asked for the streaming services, and which are used by the libraries.
When subscribing to Kanopy at the Fairfield library the customer is given 10 credits per month and must use it 3 days from downloading.
She found that the providers are offering limited content.
There not many DVDs available for purchase.
Building vendors contact list.
Sujatha suggest a creation of suppliers' directory for libraries to use.
Update from Oriana Oriana has suggested for the libraries to swap their ,eg. DVDs collection.
Sujatha is happy to swap Vietnamese Collection.
ALIA is still looking into community languages DVDs classification.
ALIA Multicultural will work on the project – making collections visible.
Update from Shauna.
Shauna presented children Picture Book written in Brazilian - Portuguese and English which is available for purchase.
New language has been added to State Library Collection - Tibetan.
Shauna provided information on multicultural help website -
Transcultural Mental Health Centre (TMHC) - Transcultural Mental Health Centre (nsw.gov.au)
Meeting ended: 12:25pm.
Next meeting: Korean Cultural Centre, Tuesday, 9 May 2023, 1:00pm start.