March 2016 SLANZA NE summary

SLANZA National Executive met on 12th-13th March In Wellington. Below is a summary of some of the discussions covered at the meeting. This communique is to keep members up-to-date with the work being done on their behalf by the National Executive.  

President Elect

Nominations for President Elect were called for in Term 4, with SLANZA NE nominating Karen Clarke. As no other nominations were received, we are delighted to confirm Karen in the role of President Elect. Karen Clarke (BA ILS., RLIANZA) is library manager at St Patrick’s College in Wellington and the SLANZA Wellington Chairperson. She comes to this role after five years as a National Executive representative on SLANZA and brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to this position. Congratulations Karen.

Strategic Plan

Following on from a brainstorming session at our last NE meeting in October, considerable time was allocated to setting new goals, working out objectives to attain those identified goals and establishing an action plan and activities to help us achieve those objectives over the next couple of years.

Financial and Treasurer's Report

Our finances have been helped by a welcome profit from the SLANZA Conference 2015 in Christchurch. The profit can be wholly attributed to the generosity of the conference venue, St Andrew’s College.

Membership

At this point about 70% of members have paid their membership, thank you. Please note that all membership fees for 2016, $60 per person, are now OVERDUE. Membership needs to be paid by the end of this month, 31 March.

Membership Drive

NE successfully applied to Community Post, a service offered by New Zealand Post where pre-paid envelopes are donated to non-profit organisations to support community projects or events. The envelopes received will enable us to send all  New Zealand schools the SLANZA brochure detailing the role and benefits of joining SLANZA.

The Central region would also like to acknowledge the generosity of Kerry Rich from Konica Minolta in Napier who printed 500 of the SLANZA brochures free of charge.

Online Professional Development

Our popular Connected Librarians courses are online learning modules to extend learning for school library staff. Certificates for the three modules completed last year, Professional
Reading, Social Bookmarking, and Community Connections, will be emailed shortly. The next module being offered to members is Digital Citizenship with an emphasis on the ethical use of information, and attribution. This module will be available early Term 2, with registrations opening soon.

The Google+ Community has grown to 111 members. Community members are welcome to share resources and join in discussions. We will soon be launching our second in-depth monthly discussion on this platform. Our first discussion was based on R David Lankes’ book Expect More: Demanding Better Libraries For Today's Complex World - issues important to our role in schools and how our library serves our school community. We’ll let you know more details soon.  

Collected Magazine

The next issue of SLANZA’s online magazine Collected will focus on new practices, tools, and tasks you have implemented since learning about them at the Christchurch conference. The issue will also include members experiences of the RLIANZA revalidation process, as well as book reviews on books recently published.

Call for submissions will open April 11th and close on 15th May. Please consider submitting articles or reviews, we all gain so much from reading Collected and that can only happen from other librarian’s contributions.

Biculturalism

National Executive is developing a tool-kit of resources aimed at helping libraries operate biculturally. This work is part of our involvement with LIANZA’s “Future of libraries” initiative.

Conference

An Auckland Conference committee is confirmed and have begun assessing venues for the SLANZA Conference in July 2017. In an attempt to keep costs down and camaraderie strong, schools with accommodation facilities are high on the criteria list.

Thank you to all members who attended the Christchurch Conference last year and filled in and returned the Conference Evaluation form. Likewise, thank you to all those members who did not attend yet took the time to complete the Conference Attendance survey. Together, these two surveys will provide valuable information for planning and organising the upcoming conference.

National Library

Elizabeth Jones (National Manager Capability Services for Schools) and Wendy Macaskill (Online Content Services and Products Developer) joined us to discuss the new roles and services within the National Library. To date, 1,200 schools have registered for the new Lending Service.

SchoolsCat will be replaced with Record Manager, a cloud-based platform. Record Manager will allow schools to find records and download them to their own library systems, a key benefit being that Record Manager searches the whole of WorldCat, giving schools access to a wider variety of records than currently available through SchoolsCat. Services to Schools will be communicating with schools to let them know about the changes and what they need to do to use the new services which will go live from 12 May 2016.

The reduced fee courier service offered through CourierPost is available as a school-wide service, not just for National Library book returns. This offer may well be worth comparing to your school’s present delivery service.

The 0800 LIB LINE (0800 542 5463) has proved a critical channel of communication for school librarians - please utilise this service for any National Library issues and services. Likewise, email schoollibraryadvice@dia.govt.nz for help.

Professional Development

National Executive are preparing a survey for our members (and others working in school libraries) around professional development, including Library and Information Studies qualifications. The survey results will be used to inform our future PD, and help shape our relationship with PD providers.

AGM

Early days yet but we have an exciting event lined up for the AGM which will be held the first weekend of the July school holidays, Saturday 9 July, 2016, in Wellington. More information to come as speakers are booked.

SLANZA National Executive will continue to work on your behalf and ensure that the voice of school libraries from all over the country are heard.