If you want information about such things as:

Food Additives

Consumer attitudes to foods

Food recall notices

Labelling

Seafood standards

Listeria

Then take a look at Food Standards Australia New Zealand.  This Government agency administers the Food Standards Code to allow the enforcing of food safety within Australia and New Zealand.  Hospitality and Commercial Cookery students, as well as those needing information on health and safety and food poisoning will find this site useful.

This week take a look at Worldhum an e-zine for those travellers who like to understand the ethics behind ethnicity and want more out of travel than umbrellas in drinks!

The site contains travel stories, blogs, pod and videocasts and pictures from travels around the world.  Beware however of the US bias, one writer bemoans the expense of food in Sydney, comparing his travels to the inexpense of South America!

Firstly – CONGRATULATIONS on getting through the first term of 2009.  We hope that we here in the library have been able to help with your success, but if you need that bit extra guidance with your studies, please pop up and see us and we will try and help where we can.

The library will be closed on the public holidays - Good Friday and Easter Monday (10/04 & 13/04).  For the two weeks commencing Tuesday 14th April we will open with non-term time hours:

Mon – Thurs 9am – 1pm and then 2pm – 4pm, Friday 9am – 1pm.  We will be closed on Saturday.

We will re-open normal hours on Monday 27 April.

During these two weeks there will be no out-of-hours access to the Learning Centre.

These opening hours reflect the TAFE holidays, University of Newcastle students will commence second term on 20 April.  If you as a uni student need after hours access to the learning centre from the 20th, please contact Andrew at the library via e-mail nciportmacquarielibrary@tafensw.edu.au to discuss options.

It is with good news we can advise the Port Macquarie TAFE Student Association have purchased – for the use of SA Members, new laptops, digital camera and digital video camera.

The laptops will have the exact same build as the pcs in the library.  Association members will be able to borrow this equipment from the library when it is ready – at this stage hopefully after Easter, but we will keep you posted on this site!

Thanks to Meredith, Ben and the members of the board for continuing to provide services such as this to the TAFE and Uni Students at Port campus.

What is happening out there in the world of Fashion? – Do you think you are an individual?   When you take a look at the website of Ari Versluis, a Rotterdam-based photographer and stylist Ellie Uyttenbroekhey you will see that together they have travelled the world looking at the dress codes of social groups – take a look here.

Also what is the Fashion of Australia?  Is there such a thing?  Take a look at the Commonwelath Government’s Culture and Recreational Portal here and look at the fashions – do you agree?

Take a look at the Reference Material website.  Although it is primarily targetted at primary school children, it has some excellent links to online dictionaries, maths sites, encylopedias and other literacy webpages.

During this week it’s Valentines Day unfortunately we havnt got a romantic website to share, but one of a more practical nature.  Take a look at hodu.com a website that provides tips for effective communication in business and socially.  Although this site is supported by advertising, if you wade through it and use the menu bar on the left hand side of the page there are some very useful articles to be found. – One useful tip: to avoid getting lost always come back to the main page to restart your searching.

This week’s WOW is Online Books.  Here you will find a variety of books on a variety of topics.  There are over 30 000 book titles listed some in .pdf and some in plain text.  Many of the book are linked from the Project Gutenberg site others from repositories around the world.  Note there are some limitations on accessing some of the books (ie only US IP addresses).  Take a look and see if you can find anything useful!

Hello everyone and welcome back for 2009.

2009 will commence with a bang!  Library staff are ready to show new students around the library, how to access databases, where to find the best information for assignments and how to use the available technology.

• Book in for a library orientation session as soon as possible to get best results in your assignments.
• Teachers: talk to library staff about specific information literacy needs for your students
• Come and see what new resources are on display in specific themes
• Borrow a laptop and sit in a bean bag while you type up an assignment
• Browse the daily newspapers and see who made it into the latest Port News…
• Check out the useful weblinks on the library homepage for your study area

Most of all have fun and if you dont understand, or are unsure please ask!

During term time we will add a WOW post to our blog – Website Of the Week.

Visit regularly and see if the site chosen will help you with your studies – alternatively let us know of sites you find useful and think other students and teachers should know about.

This week take a look at The Paper Boy.  This site provides links to over 6300 newspapers around the world, so if you are interested in what is happening in Valetta, Malta you can take a look at It-Torca  or if you want the news from Ho Chi Minh City take a look at the Vietnamese News.  There are over 160 Australian papers listed and you can even search for papers published in different American States.  One thing to remember thought is that not all the papers will be in English!