National Library Technicians Day at the Darwin Sailing Club last night.

Top End library identities celebrated National Library Technicians Day at the Darwin Sailing Club last night.

William McInnes at Nightcliff Library

Very popular in a booked out session this morning at Darwin City Council's Nightcliff Library was

Dave at Mindil

Number one son Dave arrived this morning at 2.30 am so after sleeping in a bit we attended all the markets, finishing at Mindil Beach this evening.

We had a LOUD SHIRT DAY Today

We had fun today with some of us VERY LOUD in our shirts

Rosario

Emma

Stephen

Steve

Claire

Judith

Mindil Beach and Fannie Bay

Jeanette, a friend from Alice Springs is in Darwin to do some classes at the University, so I met her tonight, a quick bite to eat at Mindil Beach and a walk around where we saw this indigenous artist

then a sunset drink at the Darwin Sailing Club.

Melbourne trip

I had a brief trip this weekend past to Melbourne to attend a seminar at the State Library of Victoria to hear how Victorian and other public libraries are handling the hard to reach clients,including people from the Horn of Africa. Malcolm Anderson accompanied me to the seminar, which was well worth attending.


Thirteen percent of Victorians have been identified in Libraries Building Communities Report 3: Bridging the Gaps who could benefit significantly from the use of their public libraries, but are not users for a variety of reasons – the ‘hard to reach’ group. See the reports here

The Connecting with the Community research took those findings a step further and focused on five target groups to investigate barriers to use. The resulting report has highlighted a lot of great initiatives Victorian and interstate public libraries have implemented to engage with community members and groups considered ‘hard to reach’. The research targeted five groups: Indigenous Australians, disadvantaged young people, Horn of Africa communities, low income families and vulnerable learners. The latest Report is available here.

I met Shane Cathcart from the City of West Torrens who was a great speaker and someone who I have been communicating with over our own hard to reach clients!
His library team have been working with Sudanese refugees and their efforts have won won awards. See his paper here

The seminar was quite welll attended with I understand 86 attendees. The catering and organisation was great as was the the fact it was free to attend!!

It was good also to take a look around the SLV building and displays especially
The Medieval Imagination exhibition

A favourite excursion

Sunday morning at Camberwell there is a great flea market run by the local Rotary Club of Balwyn. It took a train and a tram to get there from Devon Meadows via Cranbourne.



Its so full of stalls with a huge range of things, tools books clothes collectibles and buskers.

A quick trip to Melbourne

After leaving Darwin at 2.30 this morning I was met by Malcolm Anderson, former colleague and team member form CDU. We met a lifelong friend of his David Murray-Smith and we enjoyed a breakfast at Fitzroy


David mentioned that just down the road there was mural by the late graffiti artist Keith Haring that Malcolm then took me to see.(see this website for more information) and also this 2004 article from The Age

This shot is tilted as I had to put the camera through a locked gate!


There is even an official website for kids see this link