Tech Services , IT Dept. and Tween gaming @ Livingston

Another big day for us. First stop was at Tech Services. CML have their own Tech Services (TS) Dept. and 27 staff in this area- 7 cataloguers. They have a budget of around $4 million and around 2.2 million items in the system.


All items that are purchased for the branches is done here , there is a group of staff who are in charge of ordering and each person is responsible for their section. Every fortnight the team go out to branches to weed the collection.


Branches send most items that need mending to Tech Services and any overstock. TS then decide which branch to send overflow to. Any discs that are scratched are fixed here, there is a $14,000 machine that can clean around 50 discs in under 5 hours and look brand new once done.


CML do not cover books but some items are jacketed. Donations are excepted as long as the publication date is not over 5 years. Any other items are send to the Friends Of the Library and sold through booksale.



The serials department is run by 8 staff members who all contribute to the processing of magazines through a rotating roster. There is a 24 hour turn around and serials are distributed to all branches the following day after items have arrived from the supplier. Just under 3000 items are processed each month.


Tech Services has a great system there is a 24 hour turnaround for all new items that get sent to the branches.


The IT department consists of 16 staff and is divided into 2 groups. The systems administration group who are in charge of the pcs, servers, networks etc . The help desk group are the support team who are in charge of pc maintenance, help desk for staff and organsing software training. CML have their own library management system which is 25-30 years old, but the functions are very user friendly and do the job.

They have 50 MB connection to all branches and 200 MB for internet bandwidth, there are about 2000 pcs system wide , 700 staff computers and the rest for public use. Some amazing stats:

2.5million sessions last year on public pcs and
on the wireless 4000 users and 12,000 sessions.


Livingston Branch



We visited the Tween Gaming event at the Livingston branch. This branch is a little bigger than Yarra Plenty's Rosanna Branch. We were there after school and it was very busy, it reminded us of our Branch, Lalor. Tween gaming is between the ages 8-12, they average 15 tweens to this program and is run once a month.



The branch also had their homework help session running. There were children everywhere! This was inspiring and would be great to try at our Branch.