St Joseph's Library 2.0

Hi everyone and welcome back! If you though we had a busy year last year, wait until you see this one!

Our theme for Book Week this year will be "Across the Story Bridge" and the whole school will be contributing displays for it. Families and friends will be invited to attend a varity of functions during Book Week to view all the great work.

The big news for our library this year is we are saying goodbye to our old library management software, Alice, and hello to our online library management system Oliver. This now means that our library catalogue will be available for searching from home as well as school, for both staff and students. There will also be lots of potential for interaction with the libray throught the new interface.

We are doing some minor remodelling in our libary. We now have a new wall between the computer lab and the book shelves. Our junior fiction shelves will be replaced with book boxes which will make it easier for the littlies to access the picture books. Feel free to pop in and have a look.

As the United Nations has designated 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity and International Year of Youth, we would really like to hear more from our young people. We are hoping that when our new library interface is up and running we can start running a few competitions and get find out a few more opinions as to what books and websites our students would like to see more of.

Also, let us know if you come across any cool videos, like this one....

CBC Bookweek 2009

The Children's Book Council have announced their shortlist for this year's best books. Log onto http://cbca.org.au/ to check out their selections. These books are the best of the best of Australian children's books, but sometimes the choices can be somewhat controversial! You as the parent or carer of your child are the best judge of what is most suitable for them and the best way to do this is to read the book yourself.

We are fortunate in that we already have many of the shortlisted titles. Over the next few weeks we will purchase the books not already in our collection. Feel free to come into the library to check them out!

The theme this year is Book Safari and what better way to get children interested in reading than to make it into an adventure! Whatever age your child is, get them involved with reading by either reading to them, discussing the books they are reading and also reading their books.

Mums and dads, don't forget our parent section. It is there for you to borrow from.

School Holiday Movies

Wondering what movies to take the kids to over the holidays? It can often be a difficult choice. The Raising Children Network now has a webpage that rates movies according to a child's age. Click on the image to go to the site.

This site is only a guide as ultimately, the choice is yours!

Book Babble

We can never stress fully enough the importance of literacy in today's world. Information literacy is the catch cry in every facet of life, so it's important that we remember that the foundation for all literacy is in the ability to access and read a good selection of fiction and non-fiction books.

Here in St Joseph's Library we have a great range of books suitable for five to twelve year olds. We are always looking at new publications and adding quality material to our collection.

Popular with the littlies at the moment is the new Bob Graham book, Dimity Dumpty. This is the story of Humpty's little sister and what really happened when he fell off the wall!

Andy Griffiths continues as the most read author with our older readers. He has a couple of new titles coming out soon, so expect to see them on our shelves soon!