As you
will already know from our communication regarding the meeting with the
National Library, the SLANZA National Executive met last weekend and below is a
summary of some of the areas of discussion. These are not full minutes but
rather some of the discussion points to keep you up-to-date with the work being
done on your behalf by the National Executive.
Membership
Our
membership numbers remain strong with an increase to date compared with last
year of new and renewed memberships. The regions are all working hard to
increase members as there is power in numbers – the greater the number of fully
paid up members means the more work SLANZA can do to support libraries and
student outcomes. Talk to the people in your own personal learning
networks and encourage them to consider a SLANZA membership.
National
Executive Meetings: Online or Face-to- Face
Last
year the NE trialled an online meeting using Google hangouts and although this
can come with technical issues, it was still a useful and productive way to
hold a meeting. Because face-to-face meetings can be costly (flights and
accommodation), it was decided that NE would hold just two face-to-face
meetings in 2015 and the third meeting would be online (July). We hope
this will mean that the work of the Executive can be done but in a more cost
effective way, enabling us to channel funds directly into projects for our
members.
Book
Protection Products
We are
pleased to announce that once again Book Protection Products have agreed to sponsor SLANZA professional development in 2015
for $5000. BPP have done this for many years and SLANZA values and
appreciates this ongoing support that they offer our members and school
libraries. As the upcoming conference is our major professional
development for 2015, it was decided to use these funds to sponsor members from
all the regions to attend conference. We are very aware that in many
cases schools will not fund library staff to attend conference and we hope to
make conference accessible to some of these members. Watch for more
information from your region on how you can apply for this sponsorship money to
attend conference.
Ministry
of Education and the Future of School Libraries
Karen
Clarke shared a summary of her research into recent Ministry of Education
documents and their position on school libraries. SLANZA is staying well
informed with the MOE directions and ensures that we not only advocate for the
school library and librarian, but also align our directions with current
education thinking. If you are interested in knowing more in this area,
below are some links where you might like to begin some reading.
National
Library and the Services to Schools Transformation Programme
The
outcome and information of this discussion has already been covered in an
earlier communication. If you haven’t received this please click here.
Collected
Magazine
The
next issue of Collected is due for publication early next term. The theme will
focus on reading and submissions for this issue will close on April 2nd.
Articles on topics other than reading are also welcome and please don’t be shy
about writing an article for Collected – we know there are some great
things happening in school libraries all over the country and Collected
is one way we can share and celebrate the work being done.
As
members of SLANZA you will be the first to receive your copy of Collected
via an email link. It is important that we show how much we value your
membership and Collected will be available for general release a few
weeks later.
Finance
and Treasurer’s Report
The
financial report was presented and we are currently on budget for the 2015
financial year. We have received some income from downloads of full text
articles from Collected and $700 from the Open Polytechnic for an
article submitted by Karen Clarke and Bridget Schaumann who
have kindly donated this income back to SLANZA. The National Executive
are also considering a variety of other avenues for income which we hope will
support initiatives such as Collected and our online professional
development so these initiatives can continue to be free of charge to
members.
Conference:
From the Ground Up: Growing Libraries for the Future
The
conference is shaping up well and we look forward to this event in
September. For current information regarding conference, click here.
Conference
2017
The
National Executive had a lengthy discussion about the future conference in 2017
and the possibilities of alternative ways of providing professional
development. Conferences are expensive, time consuming for our regional
volunteers and a major undertaking for a small organisation. Because the
future of a national conference and the possible alternatives is a major change
for our organization, we intend to ask you, our members about how we can best
provide professional development. After our conference later this year we
will survey our membership and ask for your feedback before we move forward on this
issue.
President,
Immediate Past President and
President Elect
Miriam Tuohy is
currently our President Elect and will take over from Bridget Schaumann in
July (the end of Bridget’s two year term.) Because the AGM will not be
held until the conference in September, this will be a ‘soft’ handover in July
and the reins will pass over officially at the AGM in September. A new
President Elect will be confirmed at the AGM – watch for more information on
nominations for this position.
Online
Professional Development
Our
very successful (and free to members) online professional development is about to get underway again. The format for this will
change slightly. Rather than enrolling for all modules as a package,
members will be able to just select individual modules to complete. We
will let you know when enrolments open as NE are currently looking at offering
this via a new learning platform in order to improve and streamline this
service.
SLANZA
Google+ Community
SLANZA
is about to launch a Google+ community where members can “share resources
and to join in discussions relating to the practical day-to-day running of a
school library. We hope that members will share their knowledge and
skills with each other and provide encouragement and help to those with
questions.”
This
community will launch in the beginning of Term 2 where your request to join
will be processed if you are a member of SLANZA. If you don’t currently
belong to Google+, make it your holiday task to set up your Google+
account. If you are new to Google+ or Google products, click here for some helpful guidance.
Thanks
everyone and congratulations for making it to the end of this very long update
on the work of your National Executive team. As you can see by the scale of issues covered over
the weekend, we are working hard on behalf of you all but also value hearing
from you. Please don’t hesitate to contact your regional representative with any issues or concerns that SLANZA may be able to assist
you with.
Cathy
Kennedy
National
Executive Communications
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