Dreamt of the location before the death occured

My sister dreamt she was in a place with a few dams. When she looked back to view this place she realised that she was actually flying. She saw the water in these dams and then she tried to look forward she suddenly felt she got swamped in the mud.

She teaches in special unit where there are Autistic children as well. A week from this dream she got the news that a six year old autistic child who went missing from home on weekend with his dog was later that night found dead in one of the dams. The police only looked in the water after the dog returned home wet, after being missing all day. Apparently the dog loved this child and stayed with him for as long as he could.

This area looks exactly like what she saw in her dream. She was very sad for this very cute child. She mentioned that other teachers and aides, specially the one that looked after this child also kept crying after the news of his death.

HSC Workshops at Coffs Harbour City Library

HSC exams are a serious business. Public libraries try their best to make HSC panic-free for students. The HSC and Education Forum 2008 and Reference @Metcalf seminar, both held at the State Library of NSW motivated us to prepare workshops for HSC students.

The year advisors of local schools were invited to book one hour workshops for year 11 classes, from 22nd of Sep to 26th of Sep 2008. Approximately 60 local students attended the three workshops and others will be attending sessions early next year.

The workshop held at the library included showing features of our library catalogue, databases, HSC related websites, and services that provide online help. The display of items included reference resources, literary works in several formats, study guides and infocus articles.

The databases shown were
Britannica Online
Facts on file - History Online
Facts on file - Science Online
Science Reference Centre,
GreenFile
Bloom’s Literary Reference Online
Literary Reference Centre,
Novelist

The websites highlighted were
CSU’s HSC online
Inside Break
Sparknotes
Infocus
State library NSW HSC English
Legal Information and Access Centre

Online help services promoted were
Yourtutor –service by subscription
AskNow – free virtual library service

The workshop started by brainstorming to make students realise that the pathway to success for the HSC starts with good listening, note making and time management. Study and exams section of CSU’s HSC online website was promoted to help improve these skills.

It was a good time to show a live demonstration of Yourtutor, a service that the library has subscribed to within the last 12 months and is now sponsored by BCU Credit Union. Students were also familiarised with AskNow service so they had wider access to help, especially during school holidays and within school hours when yourtutor is not available.


The highlights of eight online databases were shown, of which three had been subscribed to recently. The students appreciated Britannica online’s web’s best sites, articles from journals and magazines and multimedia files. History online had primary documents to impress students. Science online which includes mathematics also had biographies and science dictionary.

Three literary databases were relevant for Standard and Advanced English. Not only that they provided the synopsis, criticism and biography of the author but also connected works by themes and gave information on genre of writing.

There was so much to cover in one hour. Each database and website was limited to three minutes. To make it more relevant for the students, we chose examples from the HSC syllabus. Showing the features of the library website was important too. Judy Atkinson, Programs officer and I took turns to keep the students stay focused the whole time.

Students were impressed to find that they could ask questions at the Reference desk, study in the reading areas and use free computer bookings for up to an hour for research or recreation. Remote access to our library catalogue, databases as well as Yourtutor and AskNow service enthralled the teachers. “Before you start next term, I want you all to have accessed yourtutor” said Mr Abbott, a local school teacher.

Participating students were given show bags. The teachers said that they will definitely bring more classes next year. Commenting on the workshop, one teacher said, “Oh, there is so much information. I think I will come in school holidays and find out more information myself.”

It was a very rewarding experience for us. Now we promote these databases and websites whenever we get an opportunity while answering reference enquiries. We are confident that the use of our databases will increase and our customers will get value for the money spent.

Surinder Kaur
Reference Librarian
Coffs Harbour City Library
Surinder.kaur@chcc.nsw.gov.au

This article was published in Dec 2008 issue of Incite magazine of Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA).

Chopped hand, grew new but shorter hands

This was the weardest and traumatising dream. Someone chopped my mum's one hand. I was screaming complaining how dare they treat my mum like this but she wasn't complaining. She tried to pursuade me that it was all OK because she ended up with two new hands. I was worried that she didn't deserve to go through the trauma of someone chopping her hand and also that the two new hands were shorter than the original hands.

Regardless of her cool attitude, I was furious at the man who did this to my mother. So I took my mother and went to this guy and asked him why did he do this to her. he told me that mum had an illegitimate baby girl with this man while she was married to my dad. He was taking revenge for her daughter.

A lot of other things happened in between. My husbands cousin came in a 4WD and after talking to me, she picked up a blanket from the ground and drove off. I later found out that the blanket didn't belong to her but to my real middle sister-in-laws son. I was disgusted at her untrustworth behaviour.

Then I saw all the Indian people of my village were having sweets. I wanted those sweets but didn't get served, while everyone else did. Then I took my little two children to the rough steep hill and coming down was really dangerous. I had the girl in my arms and was draging the boy down carefully, trying not to fall and slid far down into the blue water. A boy (my husband?) dived straight down from the top of the rough hill into the calm blue ocean. It was too far down and he wasn't scared at all. I didn't want to fall or get hurt, so I came slowly down.

Dreams and interpretations

Volcano

I dreamt that my husband and the kids were enjoying their morning sleep in the room, on a headland, while we were on a vacation. I came out of the room and was mesmerised by the magical scenery. I was standing on Australian headland looking at the land in New Zealand. Past the calm blue sea were the evergreen tall trees. I ran inside, woke up the family to view the 'once in a lifetime' scene. I asked my son where the camera was, grabbed it and ran out to take a photo and through the lens of the camera, I noticed that something white was bubbling in the sea. It was still pretty, though not like before, so I moved a step forward in a rush to take the picture before the scenery would change, but slipped down as I couldn't see that I was on the edge, because of the white smoke that had quickly spread. I held on to the edge with one hand, looked at my husband who was oblivious to the fact that I was falling, shocked at his indifference, I asked my son to give me a hand, who pulled me up with ease. I saw that the people below the headland had started running to save themselves from the volcano that had erupted rapidly. I felt shocked as the volcano originally appeared close to New Zealand and shouldn't have affected us but it was no time to think but run for safety.

I checked the dream dictionary and found out that volcano means deceit in love. It cautions me to not enter into any new deal or change things for the next four months. I have applied for a new job, should I not worry about getting that. Would it be a big mistake to move? Or is it about my niece's cancer who lives in New Zealand. She comes to Australia for treatment. Or I am wrong that her cancer is not going to affect my life in any way. Or is my husband going to deceive me (unbelievable).