Inspired by Stephen Abram

Posted by Christine on 3 October, 2007 in Public Libraries

from Christine

We have been fortunate to have Stephen Abram in our part of the world, he presented a workshop for CAVAL as well as addressing the participants of the Learning 2.0 program at the State Library of Victoria on Monday, 1st October. His fascinating insights into the future of libraries provide us with much food for thought. You can listen to his talk here.

We have had interstate visitors yesterday and today, mainly interested in our strategic procurement model. Obtaining shelf ready materials using supplier aided selection enables us to receive our materials in a timely and efficient manner and has provided us with the resources to develop an Outreach Department. Sharon Robertson and Anita Catoggio wrote a paper for the ALIA Perth conference last year that describes the process.

Our RFID tagging is proceeding, we are implementing the Bibliotheca Bibliochip system and expect to complete our retrospective tagging early in the new year. We are going to 100% self service checkout and I am really looking forward to having it all up and running. This is going to free up our staff to do much more interesting and valuable things.

We were featured in our local paper last week - the front page sported a belly dancer in one of our branches, with “Libraries unleashed” splashed across it! We had a double page talking about library 2.0 and how public libraries are changing. We were chuffed!