Annual Library Budget

At the Board meeting last week our budget for 09/10 was approved to be advertised. A copy is available at all branches if you would like to look at it as well as an online copy. There are 28 days for the public to comment on it.

The main new initiatives for the coming year are a new position to work with young people in our region, a Youth Services Co ordinator. We are doing some wonderful things with young people, in particular the Finding MY Place program (based on the Western Australian program) with 6 secondary schools and a Living and Learning Centre. The program involves a series of 8 - 10 workshops aimed at Year 9 - 11 secondary students at risk of disengaging from secondary school. We have successfully run this program in partnership with Hume/Whittlesea Local learning and Employment Network for the last 2 years. We also run Youth Week programs, and I talked about the very lively program a couple of blogs ago. We are putting wiis into our branches and Lalor library is doing great things with video games. The new position will work with branch staff to engage young people and encourage them to use the library as well as build partnerships with community organisations to offer activities and programs.

The purpose of the role is:

to form high level partnerships with the Youth Departments of member Councils, community organisations and agencies, government departments and local schools;
train and support library staff in relating to and working with young people;
facilitate and identify programs eg literacy, zines, reading, intergenerational computer skills, that will be run in branches;
advocate for young people in the library service;
encourage young people to use the library, ensuring we identify and meet their needs.

The other main initiative is to update our website, which has not been done for a long time and is well needed. We are exploring some very exciting options for that - stay tuned!

Please let us know if you have any comments on the budget document.