it's a wrap...

It's been a great year but now it's ended ...
we look forward to MMXI and what it has to offer (and what we can achieve)!

Summer reading club

"This is the scariest Summer Reading Club ever! It is now time to celebrate everything that goes bump in the night. "

That's the official promo...
and now we will be focusing on delivering this program to all children during the school holidays (and into February)!

New furniture

New furniture (chairs, table tops, ottoman, book return table and shelf ends (pic above)) were all delivered and installed just before our Christmas break! That meant a bit of a rush to get them in but the job is now all done...

Christmas bedtime storytime

Lots of children had a WOW! time at Seaford's Christmas Bedtime Storytime event last night. An interactive Christmas story (using a projected iPad app) was a new highlight to the other traditional activities....
and a good time was had by all...

AF collection move

This morning staff and volunteers moved the entire adult fiction collection to the new configuration. All went well and it looks great!

Book sale

Preparation for the book sale (tomorrow) is completed. The stock is now all on site and most has been unpacked...

Memorial

This beautiful sculpture was installed as a memorial to Ferguson Kennedy Simpson in the entrance to the Seaford library.

New air conditioner

A new air con unit was installed in the secure store/comms room yesterday. Now all our network equipment and A/V materials will be in a 'climate controlled' environment - cool!

No network

We had a power outage yesterday that resulted in our network going down. Two (48 volt) power supplies got fried and we lost our uplink and WiFi network. We are now back up (with a temporary power supply unit until we can get some replacements).

Computer changeover

All the staff computers (x 9) in the work room were changed over to new HP Compaq machines (except for Karla - but she got a new screen - BIGGER THAN ANYONE ELSE!)...

Mosaic wall painted

The mosaic wall in front of the library has been painted in a new colour (Sparticus) as part of the maintenance schedule. This blue is brighter than the previous paint colour and certainly 'lifts' the profile of the wall.

Teacher/student surveys

The teacher/student library surveys have been delivered and the data collected and interrogated. The results paint a picture of success with improvements in many areas while also highlighting some areas that need our attention in the future. This result reflects the good work delivered by all staff throughout the year - well done!

Art moderation

Student artwork is on display in the library this week. Art moderation took place on Thursday and the display will be in place until Tuesday next week - leaving plenty of opportunity for exposure!

Council elections

The signs are up - council elections soon!

ClickView

We're changing the way our teachers and students view videos in the classroom by implementing ClickView. We've trialled the product and have now committed to its use for the year ahead!

Survey time...

Teacher and student surveys were delivered this week. Most of the teacher surveys are back already and the student surveys shouldn't be too far behind. Then we have the task of collating the data to see how well we have done!

Energy audit

What is our power consumption? or to use the current parley - what is our environmental footprint? ... well, we'll soon find out. We had a couple of environmental auditors in today gathering information to work this out (and will work on providing strategies to reduce this in the future).

Pause to celebrate

This week we paused to celebrate our achievements over the last year. We took the opportunity to reflect by adding photos and comments to our bragging wall and getting together (where we could) to celebrate - staff, volunteers and friends...

Sophie Thomson event

A great event at the library last night with Sophie Thomson (from the popular ABC gardening program) presenting 'Save the planet with gardening'

The 50...

This is our display for the promotion of 50 BOOKS YOU CAN'T PUT DOWN
There are free guides, staff recommendations, great books on display and FREE books on offer! What better incentive to 'get reading!'

Roadworks

There are roadworks on Grand Boulevard where the installation of a pedestrian (Wombat) crossing is affecting access to the library. While the crossing will improve the safety of pedestrians crossing this increasingly busy road, the disruption is really annoying some library customers!

iPads in use

We are trialing the use of iPads in the library - 2 x for students and 2 x for community users. There is a lot of interest and the 'pads' are getting a lot of use (particularly from the students who are already familiar with Apple products).

Youth Poetry Awards night

As part of POETRY UNLEASHED 2010, Seaford library hosted the Youth Awards night where winners of the Youth poetry prize and the SMS poetry competition were announced. It was a great night of awards, music, art and performance (and, of course, food!).

Book Week

BOOK WEEK had a pretty low profile at the library this year but we did have a FANTASTIC display with all the short-listed books and a great selection of staff favourites!

New printer

Our new (Brother) printer has been installed in the workroom today. It replaces the Kyocera which has served us well for the past 3 years. But fear not, the old printer will not be discarded - it will have a new home at the school where it will print on, and on, and on...

Science Week

It's Science Week and we have a science quiz in place for the students and a great display. Winners of the quiz will get a 'lightning ball' (which is actually quite cool!)

Friends AGM

The Friends group met last week for the AGM and successfully filled all the 'office bearer' positions...
so we look forward to their continued support in the year ahead and their collaboration in delivering great services and events!

Reward

We're quite proud about the customer service we provide to our library customers and do not expect any 'reward' as such...
but it is wonderful when our efforts are recognized... and especially when a customer goes out of their way to let us know.... YUM!

iPads

The iPads have arrived at the library...
once we have figured out how to load the applications we want on them and how they will be circulated, we will have them available for our customers!

Sharps

The sharps collection containers have now been installed in the toilets! This will ensure?/encourage? people to dispose of their 'needles' in a safe manner (we hope)...

Armchair travel

Yesterday we successfully took a number of our senior library customers on a world-wide travel experience - all from the comfort of their armchairs! All this travel was quite tiring so there were regular breaks for 'tea and scones' and all were happy with their afternoon adventure.

NOTE: No we don't have Louis XV chairs in the library...

Emergency evacuation

Yesterday we had external contractors audit our emergency evacuation procedure. How did we do? Pretty well by all accounts - let's hope this serves us well should we have a real situation...

Maintenance completed...

It's been a big week for maintenance! There has been painting, removal of pin-up boards, painting, internal cladding and picture rail installation, plumbing, door and lock maintenance, painting, a complete lighting change-over, strip and seal of vinyl floors and (did I mention) painting! JOB DONE...

Painting

The paint colour of the teenage area has gone from 'passion purple' to 'blue iris'...

Maintenance works...

Maintenance works are continuing throughout the school holidays. Work includes: installation of picture rails; internal wall cladding; painting; and the really big job - changing over all the lights!

School holiday events

The dogs and libraries events were delivered at Seaford today with 'Dog Safety' in the morning and 'Sketch your pet' in the afternoon - that's why we had dogs in the library today!

Nice displays...

Staff energy is going into the displays throughout the library and they are all looking very impressive!

Work Experince Placement

Lachlan has taken up an opportunity to do work experience at Seaford library this week. He has teamed up with various library staff to experience a wide range of work practices, systems and procedures and quality services. A week is not a long time to experience the scope of things that occur in a busy joint-use library but Lachlan will have some appreciation of the work delivered by staff. Who knows, he may choose this as a career...

Power supply installation

We are ensuring that our customers have a (safe) power supply for their laptops (and other electrical devices) which they use to access library services!

Shelving clean-up

It was a BIG clean-up day! All the surplus shelving stored in the school's shed needed to be moved to the council's storage area (at Aldinga). We got the library van, then Nathan and I did a couple of runs to get the job done. Now we have to plan what happens to it (and all the other library materials) once the temporary storage time expires.

Library and Information Week

Library and information week has almost come to an end for us (at Seaford). We had the National simultaneous story-time event, library trail and word of mouth program (to promote it). It was fairly low key (for us), with the main event at Noarlunga library last Friday (and probably just as well with the number of staff we had available...)

Photo display

The '24 photos in 24 hours' photographic competition entries are up on display in the library. Now all customers of the library have an opportunity to vote for their favourite!

History Week

History Week events begin at the library today and continue into the week ahead. Now all we have to do is put in place the Library Trail activity together with the 'History of Winemaking' information, and we're set...

New staff

Our new team member Rachel commenced yesterday and is undergoing her 'induction'. Now, when the rest of the staff come back from leave we will have our full compliment!

Recladding 7

Fin!

Recladding 6

The cladding is all up but the job is still not finished. Apparently there are a few panels that are not quite right and need 'repositioning'! We are almost there...

Recladding 5

The recladding is progressing and we get a view of the 'new' colour - an impressive and vibrant blue!

Recladding 4

The front facade has been (pretty much) completed and now they are working from the rear of the building. Completion was planned for the end of this week but it looks as if this target will be missed. Maybe next week?

Recladding 3

Progress is now being made as some of the new panels are now 'up'. The new panels are blue in colour but are covered in a protective plastic wrap (so now we are a giant advertising billboard for the manufacturers). The contractors will break for the Easter weekend and begin again next week (school holidays).

Recladding 2

The recladding began in vain today. The old panels were removed from one section at the front of the library (revealing her beautiful bones). A new panel arrived for fixing but...
no go!
At the end of the day the poor old girl was left... exposed!

New layout...

We have changed the layout of the children's library to accommodate the new sports equipment (now available for loan). The toys and sports equipment (all for loan) are now together and this collection will now be called the recreation library!