If this was normal life in Australia every week parents and grandparents would be walking their young children and pushing their baby strollers to Library Story Time and Rhyme time sessions.
Unfortunately because of Coronavirus, Libraries are shut to the general public and only open to staff so there won’t be any Library story time or rhymetime sessions you can take your kids to for several months.
Fear not for many libraries have innovated and are recording video streams of their children’s librarians doing Story Time sessions and they’re all available online for free.
Maribyrnong Library Service was an early starter so they already have over a week of Story Time Online available for your children to watch on Youtube. Their promise is to publish a new video every weekday.
Some New South Wales Libraries are also participating such as Sandy the Librarian from Cessnock City Library who is streaming on Facebook.
Australia’s two territories may not have a huge population but some of their Libraries are also participating in Story Time online. City of Palmerston Library in the NT is using Facebook and ACT Libraries are using Vimeo.
Welcome to Online Storytime with Libraries ACT from Libraries ACT on Vimeo.
Livingstone Shire Library in Queensland gets bonus creativity points for including animals in their story time streamed on Facebook.
Walkerville Library in South Australia is streaming their Baby Bounce story times on Facebook.
Geelong Regional Libraries are also participating with Storytime @ Home sessions available on Youtube.
Last but not least our friends in Western Australia are well represented by the Shire of Harvey Library which is going to publish Story Time on Youtube.
There are lots more Australian Libraries across all States and Territories publishing Story Time video sessions online during this time of COVID-19 disruption to life.
To see a list of them all updated with new additions as more Libraries join in visit the Australian Library and Information Association which is sharing links to all these Australian Story Time online sessions.
This has been amazing. Eastern Regional Libraries (Victoria) have also been streaming on Facebook. The only complaint is that the videos are in portrait mode (ha ha).
Yeah I prefer landscape mode videos
But younger people prefer portrait