Help Promote Reading @ Love2Read Cafe

46% of Australia can’t read newspapers, follow a recipe, make sense of timetables, or understand the instructions on a medicine bottle.

On Saturday January 21st the Love2Read Cafe opens at the State Library of WA. For five weeks there will be an outdoor reading room with  free events and activities including giant scrabble, music gigs, yoga classes, chalk art, word games, baby rhymetime, family storytime, school holiday activities, author talks, book signings and more.

To help promote literacy and be part of this fun event volunteer at the Love2Read Cafe.

For more information, leave a response here or contact volunteers@slwa.wa.gov.au

Ethnic Communities Council of WA (ECCWA) Book Fair on Saturday May 7 2011

There are only two days to go until the Ethnic Communities Council of WA (ECCWA) book fair on Saturday 7th May!

The fair will be at 20 View St North Perth, from 10.00 am to 4.00 pm.

There are almost 4000 books as well as magazines, DVDs, CDs, videos, cassette tapes and jigsaws available.

Entry is by gold coin donation and all books and other materials are free. All donations go towards the ECCWA Literacy and Reading Program.

I’d like to thank everyone who has donated books and other materials to this event. This support proves that people are concerned about those less fortunate than ourselves and are willing to do somthing about it.

I’m looking forward to seeing you on Saturday. Please contact me on 9227 5322 if you have any queries.

Regards,

Ananda Barton (Mr)

Coordinator – Literacy and Reading Program

ananda@eccwa.org.au

http://www.eccwa.org.au

National Year of Reading 2012

Engage, discover, learn from and enjoy books! It’s count down to the National Year of Reading 2012 and the State library is proud to be one of the partners in this exciting initiative. “Australian libraries and library associations have got together to turn 2012 into the National Year of Reading, linking together all the great things that are already happening around books, reading and literacy, and giving them an extra boost, with inspirational programs and events taking place across the country.”

Do you have a favourite book you’d like to tell us about? 

Has a book ever changed your life?

What good books have you read lately that you think others would enjoy?

Print vs Digital… or is it?

Many librarians I know are listen to Radio National, (RN being the nearest thing I know to a free University Education – stimulating brain food piped directly into your ears!).  Avid listeners to last Sunday’s Ockham’s Razor may have picked up this story: Is the Book as we know it dead?.   Peter Macinnis (word herder, science communicator) discusses what he did when researching his latest book – how technology such as Project Gutenberg is invaluable for the original research which is needed to produce good books; and how those research skills can be best taught, not by computer boffins or English teachers but by Teacher-Librarians.

The vapid politicians who carry on about Australian history, meaning dead-white-male history, are also the ones who most commonly bleat about ‘literacy’, by which they mean simplistic reading and writing skills that can be tested. These enemies of education with their foolish lists are yesterday’s men. True literacy bubbles and froths with joy, even when a dead political hand is placed on it, and the new literacy will, teachers willing, sweep their foolishness away.

But who will teach this new sort of literacy? Not the teachers of English or computing or science: they lack the skills and the time. Among the professionals of education, only one group can do it. Oddly enough, they are the very people most at threat from those who say the Book is Dead.

Some call them school librarians, but they’re really teacher-librarians, people trained both as teachers and as librarians. Rather than getting rid of them and their libraries, we need to fund them better, far better. We need more, not fewer, libraries, more, not fewer, teacher-librarians.

 You can find more of Peter’s writings in our library catalogue!