National Executive Communique

SLANZA National Executive met on 9th-10th July 2016 at St Patrick’s College 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.

Handover to new President

National Executive is proud to announce Karen Clarke (BA ILS., RLIANZA) as the new President of SLANZA. Karen is library manager at St Patrick’s College in Wellington, was the SLANZA Wellington Chairperson, NE President Elect and Treasurer, and has had five years as a NE representative. She brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to this position with a positive, practical approach - here is an introductory video of Karen.

On that note, we sincerely appreciate the work Miriam Tuohy undertook in her time as President. We all greatly applaud Miriam’s technology skills but as a leader her soft-spoken, calm, considered views were highly regarded. Miriam now moves into her role as Immediate Past President to support Karen and maintain continuance through the National Executive.

Bridget Schaumann, as the outgoing Immediate Past President, came to the end of another long innings with the NE - we thank Bridget for her integrity, her passionate advocacy of school libraries and, of course, her humour.

There are four other changes to the National Executive: we welcome Clare Forrest who joins us as the new NE representative for Wellington; Nick Vincent stepped down as the NE rep for Waikato/Bay of Plenty region; Sally Stanley-Boden, Aoraki representative, will take on the role of Treasurer; and Greig Daniels, who has been with us for six years, has stepped down from the position of Otago rep but will retain the editorship of Collected magazine into 2017, we gratefully acknowledge his workload and sage advice.

The AGM was postponed due to insufficient numbers of members to meet the quorum and this will be held later in the year.

Membership

Membership presently sits at 587 members, slightly down from this time last year as expected in a non-conference year. SLANZA membership entitles members to a variety of professional development opportunities including conferences, online courses, Google+ community discussions, network meetings and events, the eBook library, and Collected magazine. In addition, membership is an acknowledgement of the critical role of SLANZA as New Zealand’s organisation for support and advocacy of school libraries and library staff.

Pinterest and the Reading Website

National Executive are pleased to announce we are currently creating SLANZA Pinterest boards, organised in the same topics as on the Reading Website. Migrating our content to Pinterest gives members another platform to use when accessing the reading lists - we hope you enjoy the visual representation as much as we do. Fifty-three boards have been created to date, do  have a look and follow us, remember this is a work in progress. At the same time, updating and beautifying the Reading Website is underway. Roughly half the Year 9-13 reading lists have been updated to include cover images.

Professional Development

Our new eBook library was launched last month with a tremendous response and uptake by members - all the professional development books were borrowed within hours! NE will continue to buy more eBooks to populate the library. We wish to thank Wheelers for their support in providing our ePlatform for free, as well as giving us some additional titles. You may register here anytime - this opportunity is only available for members of our organisation.

The Term 2 Connected Librarians online learning module was on Digital Citizenship with an emphasis on the ethical use of information, and attributions. Congratulations to all those who participated and completed the course. These online courses are free for SLANZA members and are an opportunity to extend learning for school library staff. The next module being offered to members is  Content Curation, find out how you can best support your students and staff by providing great digital resources. Course registrations are open until the end of July, with the course running for two weeks from Monday 15th August, Week 4 and 5 of Term 3.

Last term saw the publication of the eighteenth issue of SLANZA’s online magazine Collected. With a theme of What SLANZA Means To Me it is chock full of affirmations of how SLANZA membership can have a positive effect both personally and professionally on it’s members, as well as the usual selection of thought provoking articles, book reviews and business member submissions.

The next issue of Collected will focus on eBooks and ePlatforms, as well as a selection of interesting articles and reviews of books recently published. The call for submissions will open September 15th and close on October 15th. Please consider submitting articles or reviews, we all gain so much from reading Collected and that can only happen from other librarian’s contributions. In addition, we have space available for advertising and are happy to accept business members, please contact Greig Daniels at collected@slanza.org.nz

The Google+ Community has grown to 116 members. Community members are welcome to share resources and join in discussions.

Study grant applications will be opening again in early August, with a closing date of Thursday 22nd September.

Professional Development Survey

Thank you to all those who responded to our recent PD survey. The information you’ve given us is important in guiding NE’s efforts to make continuing professional development accessible and affordable for all our members.

Bicultural Toolkit

National Executive is developing a toolkit of resources aimed at helping libraries operate biculturally. We are looking for members from throughout New Zealand who would like to help shape the toolkit, particularly those members whose libraries already reflect our bicultural communities. If you would like to add or share input to the bicultural toolkit, please get in touch with your regional representative - it would be wonderful to have one person from each region supporting us in this endeavour.

Conference 2017 - Fiery Futures

The Auckland Conference committee, led by Elizabeth Atkinson as convenor, is on track with organising the 2017 conference. This will be held in the second week of the July school holidays, Sunday 16th July to Wednesday 19th July 2017. The venue of King’s College, Otahuhu, has been finalised which provides excellent on site accommodation options and all meals. At this stage negotiations to secure two outstanding, international, library key-note speakers is well underway. The conference committee hope to have their website live by the end of the month, we’ll let you know when that happens. Make sure you save the date for an excellent professional development opportunity.

National Library Services to Schools

Some discontent is being voiced by members over the present service. The 0800 LIB LINE (0800 542 5463) is still proving to be the preferred 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.

The ongoing effects of the transformation and the impact of this on our members is of concern for SLANZA. We are looking at ways we can support and advise our members around developing collections - both print and digital - that will best meet the needs of their school communities.

Our suggestion to members is to try the service, if it doesn’t work for you then gather data to present to the Principal and Board of Trustees to ensure adequate funding in your library budget to purchase new resources that are no longer being supplied by National Library. If you are not sure how to go about this, or where to source quality resources, please contact your local National Executive Representative. SLANZA is here to support school libraries and library staff - the network meetings, events and other professional development opportunities will help with your collection management.

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.

Julia Smith

Communications