The Smallest room, Spydus and Simultaneous Storytime!

It’s all happening at the Library this week! The builders have started work on the new project at the Library. A disabled toilet including baby change facilities will be constructed in the space where the existing toilets are, thanks to Federal Infrastructure funding. However, this means that the Library won’t have any toilet facilities until the project is completed. The nearest public toilets are in Hunter Park, or behind Target, in the carpark.

Our computer software upgrade took place last week, and we’re gradually finding our way with the new version of our library management program, Spydus. For our customers, the biggest change is to the catalogue website. The website has a new look, but it is still under construction. Please bear with us while the links and information are completed. For customers who have already set up a PIN number at the Library, so that they can reserve books from home; the place to login is the Log In box on the top left hand corner of the page.

And finally, this is Library and Information Week, and to celebrate, we’re participating in National Simultaneous Storytime. On Wednesday 27 May at 11am, we will join organisations from Broome to Hobart, reading the picture book “Pete the sheep” to more than a quarter of a million Australian children. Our special guest reader is Mr Ian McCutcheon, who, along with his wife, Dianne, has done some great work with youth in Gilgandra over many years. Mr McCutcheon is also a farmer and grazier, and may have to forget his knowledge of the wool industry and suspend his disbelief considerably to read this story to our children!

“Pete the sheep” was written by Jackie French and illustrated by Bruce Whatley. It tells the story of Shaun, a new shearer in town, who has a sheep sheep instead of a sheep dog- Pete. Pete wears an Akubra and the sheep really like him. Instead of the conventional short back and sides, Shaun creates some wonderful new “dos” for the sheep he shears. Eventually, even the sheep dogs get in on the act!

So you can see that we are looking forward to a fun week at the Library. Hope you are enjoying whatever you are reading this week, as much as we enjoy “Pete the sheep”. As the book’s author, Jackie French, said recently: “Just think, at a certain moment hundreds of thousands of people all over Australia are going to be saying 'Baa! Baa!' How can life ever be the same?”