Book cakes!

Entries on the Cake Wrecks blog are usually reserved for “when professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong”, but they occasionally feature some very impressive cake designs, like these book-themed ones:

More can be found here.

Christmas trees and School groups

Christmas is creeping up on us with ever-increasing speed and the main Library focus for school groups in 4th term was Christmas trees, along with a smattering of launches into outer space for the International Year of Astronomy.

Several classes from local schools and kindergartens visited the Library to hear about the history of Christmas trees, read stories and participate in the creation of our Community Christmas trees.

The aim of the Community Christmas trees was for children to create a leaf on the tree using a tracing of their hand. Each leaf was decorated and the children wrote their message for the community. Some of the messages included “Be nice”, “Be peaceful and kind”, “Enjoy Christmas everyone”, “Love, share, care and have a Merry Christmas” and many more.

Come into the Library to see the trees, or view our flickr pages (just click on the link on the lower right of this page)  to see more images of the children’s trees.

He’s mad, and he’s mean…

He’s the Bunyip!

36 classes from local primary schools visited the Library to see our children’s living book performance of Emily and the Big Bad Bunyip, based on the book by Jackie French, illustrated by Bruce Whatley and published by Harper Collins. (Thanks to them all for giving permission to perform the work!)

You can see photos of the cast and performances on our flickr site (just click on the link on the lower right of this page). There are also photos of the fabulous thank you letters sent to us from students at Modbury West,  who saw a performance.

There will be another chance to meet Emily the Emu, the Bunyip and their friends during the school holidays – book your space now for the Christmas Living Book Performance.

Photos from Library events

Photos from several of the events in the library over recent months have been uploaded to the blog.  Simply click on the ‘More Photos’ link under the three photos on the right hand side of the blog page.

You can see pics from author and poet visits, including Jill Wherry, Jeannette Rowe, Ken Vincent and Stephen M Irwin. There are also images from Children’s Book Week, which had a Safari theme this year. Many of the posters designed by school classes are able to be viewed. A highlight is the photos from the Living Book performance by our Childrens and Youth Services team, of Captain Crabclaw’s Crew…aaarrrgh me hearties!

19th Century Photographs

Did you know photography was not made commercially available until 1841? It is commonly believed that the photography process has been around for much longer, but Graham Jaunay was at the library last Wednesday to tell us otherwise.

An experienced family historian and lecturer in genealogy, Graham conducted a workshop in the Learning Centre to explain some of the best ways to find out when the photos in 19^th century albums were taken. Many people think that the best way to determine the date is to examine the subjects of the photograph, but it actually proves more accurate to look at what form the photo is in and how it has been presented. Using the correct methods,  it is possible to narrow the date down to a particular decade or even year.

As well as learning the difference between their daguerreotypes and calotypes, the group of budding genealogists who attended the workshop also left with an understanding of how to best protect old photos from damage. The four main types of damage that cause deterioration are environmental, chemical, physical and biological. If stored appropriately, photos will be protected from all damage and will last for many years to come.

Interested in finding out more? Try these titles available in our collection…

Preserving your family photographs by Maureen A. Taylor

Photography: An illustrated history by Martin W. Sandler

Dating nineteenth century photographs by Robert Pols

Better Photographs

Local resident and retired professional photographer Howard Cuffe is giving a workshop on the basics of taking better photographs. The workshop aims to cover some of those industryhints and tips which result in more professional looking photos! It doesn’t matter if you own a digital or film camera as Howard will talk about angles, perspective, the rule of threes, lighting and a range of other photo taking skills. Monday May 4th in the evening, details and booking info is available from the website.

Spy kids … October school holidays

Nathan

Love to share some piccies of some of the many local children who participated in our Spies and Detective theme activities in October.

 

Joel

 Making spy identikits, magnifiying glasses, torches, and dressing up for character photo shoots.

 

 

James Bond, Inspector Gadget, Maxwell Smart and ’99′ all made an appearance too!

Liam

Grace

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summer school holidays will be just as fun, with prizes to be won and games to play.