Ballarat Library Group Dinner

On Thursday November the 1st, 35 people from Ballarat and surrounds gathered at Gee Cees in Ballarat for dinner. What a fantastic evening. There were representatives from Ballarat Health Services Library, University of Ballarat, ACU National – Aquinas Campus, University of Melbourne - School of Forestry Library and another handful from different primary and secondary schools in the region. It was a super night. We were extremely lucky that the University of Ballarat paid for the private upstairs room so we had a great gathering away from everyone else. I had previously nabbed some ABC “The Librarians” bookmarks from Margie Anderson, Victorian Local Liaison Officer for ALIA, so each person got one of these, plus a few extras scattered about. The team at SMB (University of Ballarat) had also printed off some Librarians’ posters from the ABC website so these were intermingled on the tables too, plus the provided us each with a little bag of fine chocolates from our boutique chocolate shop (once again, many thanks to UB – they went down a treat the following Friday afternoon whilst at work!). I also had four ALIA shopping bags and placed hidden ALIA stars under seats as lucky prizes. Plus one contained an ALIA book journal too! Many thanks to Margie for these. But, the best thing was just meeting and chatting to everyone from the different library. There are some great people out there and there was much excitement behind the idea of starting a local library group for next year. Naturally I stayed until the end, but guess what – I was home within 10 minutes! Big difference to that long drive back up the highway!