Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award winner

Congrats to Shaun Tan

2011 is proving to be a good year for the Melbourne author, illustrator and film maker Shaun Tan. After taking home an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film (The Lost Thing) a few weeks ago, he can now add to his CV a prestigious Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. .

The award is for promoting interest in children’s and young adult literature around the world, which Shaun Tan has done through his excellent books. .

If you want to see what the fuss is about, you can find his work in our picture story, children's fiction and teen fiction collections. .

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Round 1 round-up

Phew!

I was so glad to see the end of pre-season. What with the #nickyleaks affair, the incident outside the fish shop and the one on the beach (sorry about those), I was looking forward to the premiership season. Pity my side started with a 1 point loss.

In the Blogalogue footy competition, muddy60 must have tipped the Cats, along with all the other winners (although everyone got a win for the draw), because he aced it with an 8.

There are 38 tipsters this year, with a good mix of Frankston City Library workers and community members. We've created a page for you to see the ladder.

Nicky Saint

Opps, we did it again

Bad weekend notices

There's been another glitch in our messaging system. We accidentally sent out some notices at the weekend. Please ignore them.

We've been experimenting with automating our notices, but the computer appears to have run amok on Saturday and Sunday, generating untimely and nonsense emails and texts.

We apologise for the inconvenience and any stress this may have caused.

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Vision Australia may need your help

Currently recruiting for research

Vision Australia are conducting a research project to identify the current and future information-based opportunities for people who are blind or have low vision.

If you or someone you know are blind or have low vision and do not use Vision Australia’s information services and are interested in helping, please read the linked document for more detail. You can select full screen or magnify the text using controls at the bottom of the page.

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Read It 2011

Your Twitter reading group

Read It 2011 is an Australian book group that you don't have to join, doesn't have meetings and is free. It's online.

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Each month has a different theme. This month it's speculative fiction (fantasy, paranormal romance, alternative histories, Utopian and dystopian fiction) and in April it's ANZAC themed books and also any titles by Australia and New Zealand authors.

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Late each month, readers can share their thoughts on the theme via Twitter, using a Twitter hashtag unique to that month's theme. The March Twitter discussion starts at 8.00pm, 29 March and uses the hastag #specfic.

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Did you get a debarral notice?

Are you one of the lucky few?

Dearest borrowers, as wonderful as the team at Frankston City Libraries are, occasionally our technology and our fingers let us down.

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Today, we sent out a Library Debarral Email. We don't usually do this. It was sent in error. Please disregard this notice.

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We are very sorry for any inconvenience.

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April School holiday program

Easter themed events
This April, school holidays coincide with Easter, so eggs and bunnies feature in our holiday program:

• Easter Eggsperience Show, Tuesday 12 April


• Under the Big Top, Wednesday 13 April


• Tiny Tots Storytime, Thursday 14 April


• Wii challenge, Friday 15 April


• Easter craft, Tuesday 19 April - Fully Booked


• Tiny Tots Storytime, Wednesday 20 April


• Easter craft, Thursday 21 April

Please follow the links for more details. Bookings start Wednesday, 30 March.

You can find more local holiday events for kids on the Council's website and at the Youth Resource Centre.

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February 2011 customer feedback

All shades
of opinion

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Here are the written comments left by our customers in February, 2011, for the Frankston and Carrum Downs libraries.

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AFL footy tipping - last chance to join

Prizes to be won!
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Remember when Aussie Rules was something played on a grassy oval and not in a hotel room? Well, this Thursday, the game returns. There's a new team, the Saints are rattled and Hirdy's back to challenge the Magpie ascendancy.

To test your footy knowledge, here's your last chance to join the Blogalogue's very own footy tipping competition. It's free and the winner gets a $50 Rebel Sport gift card. Second place wins a couple of movie tickets. The prizes aren't big, but that's not what it's about.

To register and start tipping against the library team and customers, go to footytips.com.au. To be eligible for the competition, you have to join before the start of the first round.

Donny Watson

The Wheeler Centre

Our City of Literature centrepiece

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The Wheeler Centre is the hub of Melbourne's literary community. Located within the State Library of Victoria, the Centre is home to several of Victoria's key writing institutions, including the Melbourne Writers’ Festival and the Victorian Writers’ Centre.

One of the best things about The Wheeler Centre is its public events. Their calendar features panel discussions, author talks and the provocative Lunchbox/Soapbox speakers' corner series. If you can't get to the city, you can watch the events on video.
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It's like a year-round writers' festival.

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Indie Awards 2011

Independent booksellers' fave Oz reads

Australian independent booksellers have announced their favourite Australian books from the last year.

The winners included:

• Best Fiction - Bereft By Chris Womersley
• Best Non-Fiction -The Happiest Refugee by Anh Do
• Best Children’s Book - Mirror by Jeannie Baker

The overall winner as favourite was The Happiest Refugee. Little wonder it has oodles of reservations.

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Fixing a catalogue bug

The case of the missing buttons

If you use certain versions of Internet Explorer to access the Library's catalogue, you may have noticed that some of the button links are partially erased from view. This is a mis-communication between the catalogue and Explorer.

You can fix this by clicking on Explorer's compatibility button next to the website address. That's the one with what looks like a page torn in half.


If you're having this problem but can't see the broken page icon, you can manually tell Explorer to automatically apply compatibility view. To add sites you want to view with Compatibility View engaged, go to the Tools menu, click on the Compatibility View Settings option and copy in the library's catalogue address (http://catalogue.frankston.vic.gov.au/) where it asks to Add this website. There's even a View all sites in Compatibility View option, which might prove useful.

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Library toolbar updated

More access from your toolbar

We've updated the Library's browser toolbar, deleting the lesser used features and adding extra functionality.

You can now search all the library’s content (including the catalogue and online databases) in a single search without having to visit the Library’s website. To use this search, download the toolbar and select All library content from the search box’s menu.

Other toolbar features include direct access to the Library's Twitter feed, a Facebook app and the popular digital radio gadget.

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Australian Womens Weekly archive

Re-live the Weekly

The National Library of Australia has published an online archive of the Australian Women’s Weekly. An icon of advice, recipes, fashion and human-interest stories to generations, the magazine has charted the changes affecting Australian women for nearly 80 years.

The archive starts with the first edition, published in 1933, and runs through the 1982. However, some editions are missing. If you have any of the errant copies, please contact Julie Whiting at the National Library: phone 1800 059 097 (free call) or email jwhiting@nla.gov.au.


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PS: Happy International Women's Day!

2011 hasn't started well for some libraries

Floods, earthquakes and looters

While most of the libraries in the recently flood affected areas of Victoria and Queensland dodged the worst, elsewhere libraries have not been so lucky. In Christchurch, New Zealand, most of the libraries are closed due to earthquake damage. In Cairo, Egypt, two community libraries were trashed by vandals who stole and burned the contents and left the buildings in ruins.

Queens Library is America has launched an appeal to help rebuild and re-stock the damaged Cairo libraries. If you can at all help, it would be appreciated.

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Picture the Mechanics Hall

Built in 1880, rebuilt 1915,
refurbishing now

The Frankston Mechanics Hall (also known as the Mechanics Institute) has been a landmark since 1880. In that time, it has served Frankston a number ways. It's been a place for education, public meetings, talks and functions, it housed Frankston's first public library, has been used for theatre and dances, as a kindergarten and as Frankston's war memorial.

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The picturesque hall of 1880 (just visible above) was replaced but a blunter looking structure in 1915, the front of which is being retained during the current refurbishment.

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As a reminder of how the building looked, inside and out, in years gone by, take a look at the Mechanics Hall trail in Picture Frankston.

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Library offline 5 March

Unplugged Saturday
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On Saturday, 5 March, the Library's website, catalogue and public PCs will be unavailable due to work on the Council's computer network. The team at the Carrum Downs Library will be unable to process Council customer service work (dog and cat registrations, etc) and the Council Shops at Langwarrin and Seaford will be closed.

We apologise for the inconvenience.

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Ventana Cultura

Ventana el festival de la biblioteca

Between 3-27 March, the Ventana Festival comes to Frankston Library.

Ventana Cultura is a series of events celebrating Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American cultures and people. Highlights include Spanish and Portuguese language storytimes, book presentations and a Paraguayan harp concert.

See our Ventana Cultural events page for dates and times.

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