Adult Literacy | Western Downs Libraries

Mar, 2020

Let Lynda be Your New Favourite Teacher

By: Vanessa Ernst | Tags: Lynda | Comments: 0

As a member of Western Downs Libraries, you have unlimited access to thousands of online video courses on Lynda.com! Not sure what Lynda is? Then you’ve come to the right place! Lynda is home to one of the largest databases of online training videos and courses. On this magical website, you can learn new skills from business to photography, software programs to design and creative skills. If you’re studying in school, Lynda has an entire library dedicated to primary, senior and tertiary educated students. Click here to explore everything Lynda has […]

Mar, 2020

The benefits of listening to audiobooks are extensive…

By: Janette Quince | Tags: bell, Chinchilla Library, dalby library, Early Literacy, education, first five forever, Jandowae Library | Comments: 0

Available online for free through BorrowBox or RB Digital Audiobooks are immersive, educational, instructional, entertaining and they’re perfect for the time rich and the time poor. Audiobooks can also change the way we listen, read and learn, improving the literacy of young readers and those for whom English is a second language. There are plenty of benefits to regularly listening to audiobooks, including: Increasing reading accuracy by 52% Increasing reading speed, expanding vocabulary and improving fluency Teaching pronunciation Improving comprehension by 76%; and Increasing test scores by 21% when engaged in multi-modal learning. […]

Mar, 2020

Encyclopedia Britannica free and online

By: Lisa Harth | Tags: | Comments: 0

A one-stop, concise, authoritative, user-friendly source of reference materials is now at your personal disposal – all you need is your Western Downs Libraries membership card. Watch the video to get started.

Feb, 2020

Debut Australian Authors

By: dalbywordpress | Tags: Australiana, author, books, dalby library, great reads, Historical fiction, New Releases, reading | Comments: 0

Sink your teeth into one of these debut novels from Australian authors! We highly recommend: Beneath the mother tree “Beneath the Mother Tree plays out in a unique and wild Australian setting, interweaving Indigenous history and Irish mythology.” Sign “A captivating novel full of strength, courage and the struggle to overcome silence.” The Van Apfel Girls are gone “Blackly comic, sharply observed and observed and wonderfully endearing, this is Picnic at Hanging Rock for a new generation. A haunting coming-of-age story with a shimmering, unexplained […]

Jun, 2019

What were Australian’s Reading in the Victorian Era?

By: dalbywordpress | Tags: australian history, books, History, libraries, literature, public libraries, reading, reading habits | Comments: 0

Whilst reading The Guardian Australia our library team came across a very interesting article. The Australian National University has conducted a study analysing the borrowing habits from a selection of Australian libraries between 1861 and 1928. They have a created a entire database where you can filter Australian reading habits by age, occupation, gender, and library. The data found that males were the predominant borrowers, mining the biggest occupation, and that fiction vastly outweighed non-fiction in borrowing choices. Quite a few of the popular titles are still in circulation in […]

Mar, 2019

Your Library At Home

By: dalbywordpress | Tags: books, borrow box, Digital, eaudiobooks, ebooks, elibrary, home services, ipad, library, magazines, mobile, online, rb digital, reading, storbox, tablet | Comments: 0

Did you know you can borrow and read our books without even visiting the library? Western Downs Libraries is subscribed a number of eLibrary apps so that all you need to get started is your library card! Simply download the BorrowBox app on any Android or Apple-made device, enter your library ID, and PIN and you’ll have access to a huge range of eBooks and eAudiobooks! If you love magazines and Audio-books sign up online to our RBdigital App and you’ll have access to eAudiobooks and eMagazines. For the children we have […]

Feb, 2019

Rosie and Don are back

By: dalbywordpress | Tags: Australiana, books, dalby library, education, great reads, New Releases, review | Comments: 0

Lovers of The Rosie Project and The Rosie Effect will be happy to see that Graeme Simsion has released a third book The Rosie Result featuring the unlikely couple of Rosie and Don Tillman. Rosie and Don have moved back to Melbourne after a decade in New York and their son Hudson is now 11 years old. Hudson is struggling at school: he’s socially awkward, not fitting in and his parents suspect he has Autism. Don, having spent a lifetime trying to fit in and manage his own idiosyncrasies, embarks on The Hudson Project in […]

Feb, 2019

The Lost Man – Jane Harper’s new release her best yet

By: dalbywordpress | Tags: australia, Australiana, Book, books, crime, Jane Harper, library, mystery, outback, reading, relationships, review | Comments: 0

Jane Harper has provided the Australian Mystery & Crime genre with another fantastic story set in the very heart of the outback. Based on a fictional outback station near, a town strikingly similar to Birdsville, two brothers attempt to come to grips with the unusual death of their third brother, and attempt to unearth how it this tragedy occurred. Their brother Cam has been found dead beneath an old stockman’s grave at an isolated spot on the 30,000 acre property. His brother Lee, already an outcast from the closest town, […]

Nov, 2018

Silence can be deafening

By: dalbywordpress | Tags: books, dalby library, great reads, New Releases, patriarchy, reading, women | Comments: 0

“Jean McClellan spends her time in almost complete silence, limited to just one hundred words a day. Any more, and a thousand volts of electricity will course through her veins. Now the new government is in power, everything has changed. But only if you’re a woman. Almost overnight, bank accounts are frozen, passports are taken away and seventy million women lose their jobs. Even more terrifyingly, young girls are no longer taught to read or write.” Vox is the debut novel by Christina Dalcher and a great book to read […]

Nov, 2018

Milkman takes the prize

By: dalbywordpress | Tags: author, dalby library, great reads, reading | Comments: 0

“A novel that is at once unlocated and profoundly tethered to place is surely a novel for our times.” Milkman is a tale of gossip and hearsay, silence and deliberate deafness; a story of inaction with enormous consequences and decisions that are never made, but for which people are judged and punished. It is the 2018 winner of the Man Booker prize. Set in a society divided against itself, Milkman explores the insidious forms oppression can take in everyday life. Middle sister is the protagonist and we follow her as she navigates her way through […]