MINUTES MULTICULTURAL WORKING GROUP
Thursday, 24 November 2022, Macquarie Room State Library NSW
Start: 9:30am
Chair: Sujatha Thadakamalla, Fairfield Libraries Minutes: Jadwiga Krejza, Liverpool City Libraries
Present: Oriana Acevedo (SLNSW), Shauna Miller (SLNSW), Abby Dawson (SLNSW), Thanh Luu (Canterbury/Bankstown), Mary Gissing (Newcastle), Angela Kolar (Corrective Services), Sharlene Louey (Sydney), Helen Williams (Inner West), Vivien Chung (Willoughby), Katherine Zhu (Randwick), Mary Loveland (Northern Beaches), Ayse Ersoy (Waverly), Irena Tichackova (Hornsby), Julie Parkinson (Sutherland), Eugenia Ng (Burwood), Fujing Zhao (Kurri Ngai).
Apologies: Vicki (Wollongong), Lilian (Campbelltown), Jenny (Sydney), Joelmon (Blacktown).
Matters arising from previous minutes: training session run by Ellen on how to use the wiki completed. The minutes from the previous meeting were accepted by Shauna Miller (SLNSW) and seconded by Thanh Luu (Canterbury/ Bankstown).
Introduction of Angela Kolar, who is a Librarian at Silverwater Correctional Centre. The Centre houses over 1000 inmates, many of them are from the Multicultural Community. Library is well used.
Yearly report by Sujatha: Sujatha included number of images in her report to showcase our achievements during the year.
Link to report: rev_annual_report_2022-working_group_on_multicultural_library_services_nsw_.docx
Korean Cultural Centre
Shauna attended a tour of the Korean Cultural Centre, located on Elizabeth Street, CBD. The Korean Cultural Centre has extended an invitation for us to host our meeting at their centre next year.
Young Mentors Program
Vivien Chung (Willoughby Library) spoke about a successful program run by the library. The library partnership with the local High School from which students volunteer to be part of The Young Mentors program. The length of the program is 4-6 weeks. The program was run with students partnering with seniors. The students are trained by the library staff before starting the program. Library staff asked the Senior participants to prepare the questions, and any problems they would like to work on together with the students. It is helpful for Seniors to attend Tech Savvy Seniors first before participating in Be Connected program.
https://www.dss.gov.au/communities-and-vulnerable-people-programs-services/seniors-connected-program
Excellence awards
Canterbury/Bankstown won the Excellence award for 2022. Library prepared a very large program in which more than one community was represented. Sujatha, Joelmon, Mary and Jadwiga were nominated from the individual awards. For the individual awards anyone can nominate a person. This year there were numbers of entries form metropolitan and country libraries for the Multicultural Excellence Award. Oriana spoke about the difficulties in judging the metropolitan libraries and country due to different level of funding, staffing etc. It has been suggested that we should ask smaller suppliers to contribute financially to another award for country libraries. At this moment CAVAL is sponsoring the main award.
ALIA Multicultural Group
Oriana was contacted and asked to establish a national group. Oriana asked Victorian librarian Mare Maticevski, learning Librarian RMIT University to work with her on the project. The role of the group is to encourage: • Cooperation between libraries • Showcase different libraries • Connect libraries • Train future representatives at multicultural services • Not additional membership fee is required to join the group • Promote that the members of the group being able to attend industry meetings and conferences.
The Group launched on 22 November 2022 with a great guest speaker Joseph Lo Bianco AM, Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne. Oriana stressed there is still a lot to do: • Collect the completed questionnaires • Look at the results • Select what is the most important to the group. Oriana will resend the questioners.
https://multicultural.alia.org.au/
Research
Working together with Macquarie University to collect the data on: • Usage of collections • Online usage effected by changing interface • Outdated user guides • Use free translation, e.g., Google Translate or lack of it • Disability access. All members to participate.
Suppliers
Shauna/Abby suggested to create short presentation prepared by the suppliers and to be available on the State Library Multicultural Wiki page.
Oriana retirement
With great sadness Oriana advised the group that she will be retiring in June 2023.
General Business
Vicky from Wollongong Library asked if libraries would be willing to share a list of ESL resources for the CALD community. vorourke@woolongong.nsw.gov.au Sujatha presented a new resource, suitable for ESL collection – Lingomagic.
Dates for next year meetings
Dates and location for next year:
23 February 2023 – Hornsby Library
25 May 2023 – Korean Cultural Centre
24 August 2023 – Fairfield Library
23 November 2023 – State Library NSW
Meeting closed 12pm followed by visit to the Multicultural Bulk Loans work area.