SW Qld Regional Rep Melanie Mills has been catching up on the latest activities from across the south-east region.
Balonne Shire
After much discussion, our Libraries Strategy 2025-2029 was adopted in May🎉. It is an interesting combination of priorities with Council keen to investigate the possibility of offering other Council services through our branch libraries, the smallest of which is about 25m² – the problem-solving should be fun!
These smaller branches have also benefitted from the RLQ Wage subsidy this quarter, as we have been able to use staff from our main branch in St George to offer training, assistance to run programs, complete stocktakes etc. for much more useful periods of time than was previously possible.
Quilpie Shire
Following and during the Western Queensland flooding event in April, which significantly impacted the smaller communities of Adavale and Eromanga and stations in our shire, the state government Community Recovery Hub was set up at Quilpie Library. For about four weeks, Community Recovery staff, Lifeline staff, Department of Housing staff and Services Australia staff worked out of the library and were able to assist community members with applications for disaster grants and accessing support services. Although space got a little tight with all the extra people and customers, in many ways the library was an ideal space for the hub as community members could access wi-fi, a place to sit and chat and their children could play while they were with the recovery hub staff.
In May, library staff were able to attend SLQ’s Rural and Small Libraries workshop in Blackall. It was a wonderful one and a half days of connecting with library staff from neighbouring shires and touring both Blackall and Tambo libraries.
Western Downs
Western Downs recently held region-wide training for the library team, inviting Awesome Auslan to come along and teach the team a few things. Read the full story here as submitted to PL Connect.
The Western Downs team are also JUST about to launch our Hygiene Packs. Funded by CS Energy, each pack contains every-day hygiene products (soap, laundry power, toothpaste etc) to give to those who are vulnerable in our community. 500 packs in total have been distributed to the 9 library branches.