The month of May means the Great Books Festival (GBF) for MidCoast Libraries.
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The GBF involves the library taking nationally recognised authors and illustrators to schools across the Mid Coast region.
The festival has run successfully for almost 20 years and this year it was bigger than ever.
Running for the full week from May 20-24, author, Anna Fienberg, and illustrator, Leila Rudge, were taken to 13 different schools across the region and held workshops with 1500 students.
The GBF is probably the largest children's author and illustrator event run by libraries in NSW and a fantastic example of what an important role MidCoast Libraries plays in encouraging reading.
Which is why we're also very excited to be a key part of the Paint the Town REaD program.
This is a community initiative, now running in 70 locations across Australia.
It encourages the community to read, talk, sing, play and rhyme to children - reading with them from birth so they'll be ready for school.
The great news is that Paint the Town REaD has just been launched in Taree.
Expect to see many wonderful community events held in Taree over the next 12 months and MidCoast Libraries will be a major participant.
Whilst we play an important role in education the library has also just celebrated another feature of our service - volunteering.
Community members are a vital part of many of our library services, some of which would not run without their invaluable assistance.
In Volunteers Week we took the opportunity to recognise our volunteers for the countless hours of help they've provided to us.
Thank you.
If you've interested in what events the library is holding you can rest assured there's plenty happening in the next month.
We have a talk by author Victoria Purman at Taree and Forster, First Friday Flicks at Tea Gardens, an author talk on understanding addiction by Julian Keats at Taree and Forster and another talk by author S. M. Matthews at Taree.
All events are free but require booking.
Please visit our website to find out more and book a place.
Since we've integrated our library collections into one database the community has seized the opportunity to explore the collection to it's broadest with books travelling across the Mid Coast region.
It's a powerful reminder of how important the library is to our community.
One last comment to finish on.
It comes from council's community consultation held at Gloucester recently: Great library - keep up the good work.
Thank you.
See you in the library.
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