Librarian Katherine Mitchell‘s experience at Parramatta Library from 1960s as a library staff member. Interview was recorded in 2015.
So I just wanted to tell you a little bit about this collection - it's a student collection HSC and junior school. So Parramatta Library was actually the first library to have not exactly a designated, but have a collection that was a special collection. Most libraries in the past had special areas of collection, and back in the day we had something that was you know fairly irrelevant like physics and we decided that because of that demographic that we should have a more appropriate collection because we have so many schools and Parramatta is such a hub, so that so many students pass through Parramatta. And so we decided that we would put money into establishing a multi copy text book collection, and study guides that are related and prescribed - that is to novels that relate to the HSC. That was our very first collection back in 1995, and with it we have a complementary program of lectures, workshops and things to help students specifically year 11 to 12. Then later on we extended this collection to include from K right up to year 10 which is what we now have in Parramatta Library. And in fact it was the very first special collection in the whole of New South Wales. I think students come from all over Sydney to access this resource because of the excellence of it. And I mean that is really due to the fact that council had the foresight to give this library the resources to do it. The sort of programs that we do, for example this week we've got our workshops for English topic area discovery and we've been doing that for years also you know physics, chemistry, sciences, maths and this particular week it's chemistry and English. So that's the sort of programs that we run to complement the HSC collection. But the exciting thing is now we have really good resources for primary school collections and in particular really popular things for selective schools and NAPLAN resources to help you know supplement the students in our demographic and the people who can't always afford to buy a lot of expensive textbooks. So I think Parramatta Council and the library are very proud to be able to provide that service.
Neera Sahni, Research Services Leader, Parramatta Heritage Centre, City of Parramatta, 2021