Happy Holidays

We'd like to wish all of our customers and readers a very Happy Holiday. Take care if you are travelling, and we look forward to seeing you all in 2012.

Food for Fines Amnesty

During December we will be hold a fines amnesty.

If you have overdue books or existing fines, you can resolve them with the donation of long life food items that will be distributed through the Mayor's Christmas Appeal.

Food items must be in date and in good condition and the donation must equal the approximate value of the fine. To find out more contact you local branch library.

The amnesty will begin on December 1 and finish on December 31.

The Book/Work Project

We've been thinking about running a series on things people have been able to accomplish with the help of a library book as part of the National Year of Reading. Have you been able to complete a project? travel to interesting places? learn something new? change your life? as the result of a book you have borrowed from the Library? Why not share the story. We're looking for short descriptions of your project, the name of the book and a photo/s that sum it all up. Your story will go up on the blog and could be used in displays at our libraries and it's also a great opprotunity to show off your project.

If you are interested in taking part, email your story and photos to Library@campbelltown.nsw.gov.au

To give you an idea, here's some that we prepared earlier.


New Life in the old chair!

With the help of David James "Upholstery a Complete Course" and Dorothy Gates' "The Essential Guide to Upholstery" I got the inspiration and technical know how to re-upholster my 1920's era club lounge chair. While I had done some basic upholstery before, this was a big project, with lots of springs and a range of traditional upholstery techniques. I'm pretty happy with the results!

Before

After

Brewing My Own

Brewing beer has always fascinated me and the Library's collection of home brewing books has mean't I'm now able to brew excellent beer at home. I've even won a few awards! After getting less than satisfactory results from the kits available at the supermarket I found the home brewing section at the Library and I haven't looked back. My two favourite books are Jamil Zainasheff's Brewing Classic Styles and Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing. The beer in the photo is an English Bitter.



An English Bitter and the books that helped me to make it

New Website testing

Council is seeking the assistance of the Campbelltown community in the redevelopment of its website. In order to understand the needs of our website visitors, and to ensure that the new website is user-friendly, Council is conducting a testing program that will help us deliver an effective online information tool.

The activity will take around five minutes to complete, and your participation will help determine how Council's website content should be organised. To be part of the testing, please visit http://bit.ly/nEwQnf

Feast on History during History Week

History week this year will see a fascinating exhibtion of Kitchenalia and historical photographs at the HJ Daley Library.

The Local Information team have conjured an exhibition of antique and not so antique kitchen items that will make you wonder at how hard putting together a meal must have been.

Some of the highlights include a near mint box of Smiths Chips, an original bully beef can-opener and one of the earliest model pressure cookers available. Cooking was never so hard!

The exhibition will be on display until the 11th September.

You can find a sneak peak and more information about other history week events across the Macarthur here.

Customer Survey

Let us know what you think about Campbelltown Library's services and facilities on our online survey - http://bitly.com/dNTYYh .

Your opinions are important and will help us to improve our services and plan for the future.

System Maintenance

Due to power system maintenance this afternoon our Web Opac and other online services will not be accessible after 6pm. Normal service will be restored at 9am tomorrow morning.

As part of the outage, the HJ Daley Library will be closing today at 4.30pm.

We apologise for any inconvenience.

Wrap with Love

Once again we are participating in 702 ABC Sydney's "Knit In" supporting the excellent charity Wrap with Love.

Up until Friday 5 August we will be collecting knitted and squares and completed rugs that will help to keep people warm all over the World. Wrap With Love has been distributing blankets since 1992 and in that time has distributed over 255,000 wraps.

Last year Campbelltown knitters put together over 160 wraps and had a jolly good time at the Knit In at Ultimo. If you're interested in knitting, (or if you're not such a great knitter you can also donate wool) drop into the HJ Daley Library for all the information.

National Simultaneous Storytime is on today!

Don't miss out on a chance to join over 170,000 other people as part of national simultaneous story time.

At 11am, all Campbelltown Libraries will be hosting a story time and reading Rod Clement's Feather's for Phoebe.

You can find out more about Rod Clement and his work by visiting his page at Harper Collins Publishers.

Celebrate Library & Information Week with us!

It's Library and Information week across Australia, so why not came and join in the fun at a Campbelltown Branch Library!

A key part of the celebrations will be National Simultaneous Storytime on Wednesday May 25 at 11am. Every Library will be hosting a storytime for pre schoolers where they will experience "Feathers for Phoebe" by Rod Clement.

As part of LIW The Wiggles have launched the "Make Australia A Reading Nation" programme which is designed to encourage reading and literacy in the home. Its a great initiative and nice see international Superstars, like the Wiggles supported such a great programme. There's even a video.

Tim Ross at Ingleburn Library

Your Tutor

We recently won a national award for our Your Tutor online homework help programme.
You an read more about it here

We're on Twitter

Interested in the latest information about Campbelltown Library? Why not follow us on Twitter! Click on the link below or search for @CtownLibrary.

Happy Birthday Ingleburn

Time flies when you're having fun and this week marks the first birthday of the new Ingleburn Library and community centre. During the last twelve months the new library has seen a phenomenal increase in activity. We have lent 136,736 items, satisfied 10,994 reservations, been visited 99,416 times and welcomed in 3,259 new members. Not bad for a small branch library!

The Mayor was on hand today to celebrate with Ingleburn staff.

Campbelltown Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow

Here's a short video produced by our Local Studies staffer Michael S. using resources from the historic pictures database and the local studies collection.

New Technology

Things are moving very rapidly on the technology front for libraries. We've recently introduced a new type of talking book reader known has the Victor Reader Stream from Humanware, to our home library service. The readers, are basically MP3 players designed specifically from people with a vision impairment and are light, easy to use and can convert printed documents into read documents on the fly.

We've also grabbed ourselves a couple of Amazon Kindles to test and explore how we can use them across the library service.

Kindles are an ebook reader designed to integrate into the Amazon online book shop. Ebooks are considerably less expensive than their hardcopy versions and the waiting time between orering a book on Amazon and its delivery to the kindle is about 15 seconds. That's pretty fast torunaround.

Kindles only became available in Australia in the last couple of weeks and I've been very impressed with the usability and readability of the devices. A lot of libraries in the States are already lending the devices to their members. Hopefully the range of ebook readers available in Australia will start to expand.

Ink Brush Workshop

During the July school holidays we hosted a Chinese/Japanese ink brush painting workshop. Here are some examples of what our young people produced at the workshop. There is certainly a lot of great inkbrush talent out there!

Wendy Harmer

As part of our partnership with the Sydney Writer's Festival, we're proud to be hosting Wendy Harmer at the Ingleburn Community Centre on Thursday 21 May at 7pm.

Wendy will be talking about her new novel "Roadside Sisters". Roadside Sisters charts the trip of three middle-aged women – Nina, Annie and Meredith – who climb aboard the mighty RoadMaster Royale motorhome for an epic voyage from Melbourne to Byron Bay to attend a wedding. The novel is about the friendship they forge along the way – a journey of self-discovery of course.

You can find out more about Wendy and her writing at www.wendyharmer.com

Bookings are essential, please phone 4645 4444.

Don Tate author visit

Vietnam veteran Don Tate will visit HJ Daley Library on Tuesday April 21 2009 to discuss his recent memoir “The War Within”. “The War Within” has been variously described as a brutally honest and a gritty insight into the life of a soldier at war. Don will also screen rare footage of his service in Vietnam during his presentation. Don has appeared on both Channel 9's "RPA programme and the ABC's 7.30 Report.

Don's memoir is ambitious in its scope and a very powerful read. Covering sixty years, from life in Ellen Grove, an impoverished suburb of Brisbane where outlaw behaviour was the norm , to child abuse within the state and private school systems, about being an infantryman in Vietnam - one of the most unpopular wars this nation ever fought- of blatant army incompetence, and medal-grabbing by officers, and then, after being badly wounded, life as a disabled veteran.
Reviewers are saying it is the “voice of a generation, stilled for forty years”.

You can find out more about Don and his book at his website http://www.dontate.info/

Bookings can be made on 46454444

Holiday Lending

During the Holiday period double loans and double loan periods are in operation. The Holiday loans will continue until January 26th 2009. If you have any questions pelase call the library on 4645 4436

Have a safe and happy holidays!