Still grinning!and, a nice sojourn in Canberra

Here I am in Canberra at Old Parliament House accepting the DOTARS national award for Local Government in Youth Engagement for verbYL. That's Dr Jeff Harmer, Secretary, Department of Families, Community Services & Indigenous Affairs on the left- this is the Department that sponsors the Youth Engagement category, and our very proud Mayor Councillor Bill Ludwig on my right. We didn't win the biggie (overall awards for Local Gov.), but nevertheless... a national award...can't complain. And it gave me a chance to enjoy one of the perks of the job - a nice few hours wandering around the National Art Gallery and the new National Museum, a very nice dinner at Old Parliament House, plus a few pleasant hours spent in the air between Rocky and Canberra.

verbYL has been going now for exactly one year last Saturday. Might be time for a deep and meaningful review - what have we achieved library wise using this model of service? yeah, maybe after the holidays...

For those who are interested, I haven't been blogging for a while due to being really really busy...I also haven't read any blogs or blog related emails for a couple of months I'm guessing my bloglines has gone ballistic...apologies to anyone trying to communicate with me...busy doing what, you may ask...well, one thing I did was close (yes close) 6 libraries...not as horrible as it sounds as they all only opened 3 hours a week each - but still, there was some pain involved for the communities affected and some protracted arguments in Council (with me the strongest supporter - of closure, that is). On the bright side, Council is speaking more positively about our new library, and we're getting an immediate stop-gap extension to our current building to tide us over the next few years. We're also looking forward to starting with Yourtutor next year, and have just signed up for Linksplus to (hopefully) enhance our members' catalog experience. (We already have enhanced content supplied by Syndetics.) We're also committed to spiffing up our OPAC next year (currently unchanged from when we bought it off the shelf) to more accurately and expressively reflect our service ethos. Plus getting our verbYL website up...lot's to do.