AGM Announcement

Apologies for the late notice but we need to hold our regional AGM this term! Therefore it will be added to next Saturday’s PD event, Building a Quality Collection which covers all aspects of developing a great collection for your school library, everything from selecting books to promoting them.

Providing local Professional Development for school library staff, the SLANZA Te Tai Tokerau committee meets four or five times a year to plan, implement and action these events. Committee members are expected to attend and contribute at meetings which are usually scheduled to follow on after a PD session. Petrol money to attend committee meetings is available, as is the ability to connect by Google Hangouts or Skype. As a team, there is not a lot of work.

We really need new people to get involved and share their ideas. We need people with enthusiasm for school libraries, who are prepared to help out. We also need a succession plan of people moving through the committee and gaining an understanding of their region and members’ needs, and that may include progression to representing their region on the National Executive.

Please consider joining our committee. Currently only three or four of us meet to plan and organise events for the whole region and that is not ideal. It would be wonderful to welcome some more people on board.

Liz Christiansen has kindly agreed to continue in her role as Treasurer which she took on last year. Thank you so much Liz. I am happy to remain as the Chairperson but I encourage someone to be involved in the committee who would consider this position in a shared role or to take over next year. We also have the following positions available:

Secretary - take notes at meetings and write up, share with committee and save on SLANZA Te Tai Tokerau Google Drive account

Communications - receive communications from Chairperson and/or Secretary, and repost (no editing involved) out to Te Tai Tokerau members and onto blog. The job is to keep the members informed of meetings and events at a regional level

These two positions could well be amalgamated although it is helpful to share tasks around. Our AGM itself will only take 15-20 minutes on the Saturday 25, and if all willing, we will continue after the PD session Building a Quality Collection with a committee meeting to brainstorm and plan the Term 3 and 4 events either at school or in a café in town.

Please support local SLANZA to help bring useful Professional Development opportunities to our members.

Any questions, or to register for the Building a Quality Collection session, please email me

Term 2 event - Building a Quality Collection

This term’s event will be a friendly and useful discussion around all aspects of developing a great collection for your school library, everything from selecting books to promoting them. The more people who come and contribute to the discussion, the healthier that will be and the more we will all learn.

Please RSVP to me by Friday 17 June.

Building a quality collection - from selection to promotion and everything in-between

SLANZA Te Tai Tokerau Term 2 event

Saturday 25th June, 10:00am-12:00pm

Kerikeri High School Library,

Building a quality collection, from selection to promotion and everything in-between

Cost: Free to SLANZA members, $10 for non-members

To register, please contact Julia Smith at Kerikeri High School Library

Professional Development Survey

I am writing on behalf of the SLANZA National Executive to ask for your help.

As you know, helping to build a confident and knowledgeable school library profession is incredibly important to us. We believe that our communities deserve the very best school libraries possible, and it is one of our strategic goals to improve the professional standing, working conditions, and qualification levels of the staff who work in those libraries. Enabling access to a range of professional development opportunities is a vital part of achieving this goal.

In 2012, SLANZA surveyed school library staff about their Professional Development needs. Around 200 people responded to that survey, and as a result of what we learned, our Connected Librarians online PD modules were developed and introduced the following year.

Fast forward four years, and as part of our ongoing work in the area of Professional Development for school library staff, we are asking for your input again.

This time our survey is focused on work and qualification profiles - your library situation, employment, and continuing professional development including library & information studies qualifications.

The survey is open to SLANZA members and non-members alike, so please forward the survey link (below) to any library colleagues - SLANZA members or not, school library staff or not - who would like to participate. All the responses we receive will provide crucial information to guide our professional development strategy and our relationships with other professional development providers.

Please follow this link to access the survey:

http://goo.gl/forms/yMuvyJTLa6wh7e1i2

The survey will remain open until the 31st of May.

We really appreciate you taking a few minutes to have your say.

Thank you,

Miriam Tuohy

President

School Library Association of New Zealand Aotearoa

LIANZA Hikuwai Weekend School - professional development opportunity in Whangarei

I wanted to promote the LIANZA Hikuwai Weekend School, 28-29 May in Whangarei. 

Lisa Salter has been heavily involved in planning and assured me they have worked hard to keep the price affordable. If you check the programme you will see a children’s and young people strand – perfect for us.

This will be a great professional development opportunity right in our back-yard. Earlybird registrations close end of April!

SLANZA Collected magazine - open for submissions

We  are  now open for submissions to Collected  18

The theme for this issue is  "What SLANZA Means to You". 

We will have articles on the various services and advantages SLANZA has for members. But we would also like to hear from you about your  experiences with SLANZA and our profession.

We also need articles on other matters that may be of interest to your fellow  SLANZA members. This could include book reviews, articles about awesome PD you’ve attended or provided or anything you may think will be appropriate

Our deadline is May  15. Details about submissions, images and the magazine in general can be found at slanza.org.nz under the Resources tab under Collected.

We look forward to receiving your submissions. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me at slanzacollected@gmail.com

Greig Daniels

Editor, Collected

Registration Open for Connected Librarians Digital Citizenship module

We are pleased to announce that Registrations for module #6 (Digital Citizenship) of the Connected Librarians course are now open.  Digital Citizenship covers a very large range of topics - for this module we will be concentrating on the ethical use of information and its attribution - otherwise known as Referencing and Citation.

Applications close on Thursday 5th May, and the course will be starting on Monday 16th May. 

This course is designed by New Zealand school librarians, for school librarians - those just starting out with online tools, who are ready and willing to try new things. 

The course is free for SLANZA members. 

Please visit the Online PD page on our SLANZA website for further information and to register.

Sandi Faulconbridge
Professional Development team leader

Engaging Book Talks - Term 1 event

Unfortunately, due to insufficient interest in the SLANZA Professional Development opportunity planned this Saturday, the event has been cancelled.

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.

Engaging readers with engaging book talks : Term 1 2016 event

Calling all school library teams and teachers who like to promote books to students...

Are you wanting to help students connect with the "right book", increase reading mileage and enthusiasm, get the books off the shelves and into hands and hearts? 

Come along and hear the lively and inspiring library team from Westlake Girls' High School - Megan Davidson (Teacher librarian) and Paula Walters (Librarian), as they demonstrate the art of book talking.

They show you how they approach book talking fiction in their library - how many books, how many students, how long it takes, what they promote and how they do it...  They will give you handouts with tips and suggestions for effective book talking, and give an actual demo of how they do it.   This session will be suitable for teachers of students at ALL levels, not just secondary.

I've seen the results of Megan promoting books in variety of ways, so quick and energetic, finding the hook to make the book interesting and intriguing, resulting in students LEAPING out of their seats at the end to grab the books that piqued their interest - such a rush, like the first day of the Harrods sale!

Also on the programme will be a catch up about what SLANZA is up to at the national level from our Regional Representative, Julia Smith, and also a short report back from people who attended the SLANZA conference last year in Christchurch- there were lots of highlights and resources available to draw to your attention...

Date: Saturday, 2nd April 2016
Time: 10.00am to 12.00 noon
Place: Kamo Intermediate School Library, Whangarei  (many thanks to KIS and TLR, Trudy Norrish, for the hospitality)

Costs: SLANZA and LIANZA members $10, non-SLANZA members $20
If a school has a SLANZA member, then all people from that school can attend at the membership rate.

Programme :

10am - Welcome, SLANZA National Executive feedback
10.10 - SLANZA Conference feedback from primary and secondary school library staff who attended
10.35 - Morning tea
11.00 - 12.00 - Engaging readers with engaging book talks - Megan Davidson and Paula Walters

To register, please contact Julia Smith on jsmith@kerikerihigh.ac.nz

Please share this with others in your school who you think may be interested, and do come along - these events need participants to make them fly!

Welcome to the 2016 School Year

I do hope you’ve been able to have a restful break over the summer, and are now looking forward to the day-to-day business of working with students and staff in your school in what I am sure will be a busy and interesting year.

First some good news: Karen Clarke has been elected unopposed (no other nominations were received) to the position of President Elect. Karen was nominated by the National Executive, and brings to the role a great deal of experience and passion for working on behalf of all school library staff. Karen has served many years on the National Executive, including most recently acting as SLANZA’s treasurer. We know she has the best interests of you all, and our organisation, at heart and will do a fabulous job of leading SLANZA when she takes on the role of President from July of this year.

In other news:

·         The results of our 2015 Reading Survey have been collated by Trish Webster, and shared with you via the School Library Email List. The information is also available on our Reading website, along with the 2014 results.

·         Last week I signed SLANZA’s attestation in support of  the application to NZQA for the revised sub-degree level Information and Library Studies qualifications to be listed on the qualifications framework.

·         2016 SLANZA membership invoices have been sent via email. If you have not received an invoice and you were a current member as at the end of 2015, please get in touch with Jacky Reid (admin@slanza.org.nz). If you are not yet a SLANZA member, you can find the membership application on our website here.

·         Your regional committees will let you know about upcoming events in your region. Help organising these events is always welcome - please get in touch with your local representative if you’d like to be involved, or find out about joining a committee. Contact details are on our website here. We must also thank Book Protection Products for their ongoing support of our Professional Development events.

Wishing you all the best for this term,

Miriam Tuohy
President

President Elect nominations now open

As you may be aware, when I assumed the role of SLANZA President in July my decision was to serve in this position for a term of one year only. Now that we are almost halfway through my term as President, it is time to begin the process of deciding who will take up that position from July 2016. Accordingly, nominations are now sought for the position of President Elect.

This position requires an in-depth understanding of the workings of SLANZA and its stakeholders so it is preferable that this person should be either a current member of the National Executive or someone with previous National Executive experience.

• Nominations open November 30th 2015.  
• Nominee applications are due by 5pm, Wednesday December 16th 2015.
• You can nominate yourself or another SLANZA member, using the nomination form here.
• Candidate(s) will be announced following the application closing date, in mid-December.
• If more than one nomination is received, an election will be held with online voting, in February 2016.

Miriam Tuohy

President – School Library Association of New Zealand Aotearoa

Online PD Term 4 - Inaugural Discussion Topic

One of SLANZA's goals is to provide a variety of Professional Development options for our members.

Our Online Connected Librarians courses have been fantastically successful with a large number of our members participating over the last two years. However, we are only able to work with a small group at a time, and they require a lot of time commitment from all parties.

Over the past year we have been looking at running a discussion group that any of our members can participate in. We feel that Term 4 is the perfect time to kick this off as an alternative to holding another Connected Librarians Online course, and it will be an opportunity for you continue your PD in a more relaxed way. We know that secondary schools are currently in a crazy busy time of year, at least until seniors leave, and that all schools are still working right up to the very end.

We hope that holding this discussion group over the final five-week period of term (starting in week 5) will be a fun way of rounding your PD out for the year.

To find out more information, and to take part in our inaugural discussion topic - Expect More: Demanding better libraries for today’s complex world (R. David Lankes), please join our SLANZA community on Google+  https://plus.google.com/communities/117910246097309761328 where the discussion details will be listed under the ‘PD Monthly Discussion’ tab.

We look forward to seeing you online and sharing our own thoughts and ideas with you.

Sandi Faulconbridge

Professional Development Team Leader

School Library Association of New Zealand Aotearoa

Conference presentations available

Our Conference proceedings web page now has a number of presentations and other information available to view or download. More will be added to the page as we receive presentations and other resources from our presenters. 

We are very grateful to those who shared their conference experience through Twitter, it adds value for those who were there and (like me!) weren't taking notes in all the sessions. And for those who couldn't attend conference it will give you much to read and follow up on - almost as good as being there! I would particularly like to acknowledge and thank Steph Ellis who tweeted prolifically during conference, and has now created Storify collections of the Twitter stream relating to all our keynote speakers. 

Miriam Tuohy
President

Life Memberships 2015

The SLANZA National Executive is delighted to announce the Life Membership awardees for 2015.  These were first announced at the SLANZA conference in Christchurch.  This year's recipients are:

Kaaren Hirst (Auckland) and Barbara Murison (Wellington)

You can read about their ongoing work on the SLANZA blog.  The National Executive congratulates Kaaren and Barbara for their achievements over many years.

Bridget Schaumann

Immediate Past President

SLANZA

2016 SLANZA study grant recipients

I am absolutely delighted to announce the recipients of SLANZA’s Study Grants for 2016.
Our warmest congratulations go out to these successful applicants:

• Brett Moodie (Wellington College)
• Debbie Airey (Hebron Christian College)
• Janine Holcroft (Trentham School)
• Kristal Montrose-Arnold (James Cook High School)

We all understand that working and studying takes quite some commitment. So it is especially gratifying to know that many SLANZA members are continuing their learning in the field of Information and Library Studies. SLANZA is committed to helping make this undertaking easier where we can, as we believe that it will benefit not just our members as their library careers unfold, but that the students and staff in their schools will benefit too, from working alongside a librarian with a deep understanding of their field, and a personal commitment to life-long learning, continual improvement and innovation.

Best wishes once again to all our grant recipients!

Sandi Faulconbridge
Professional Development Team Leader

National Library Services to Schools update

Yesterday the National Library have updated their website with some new information about their services. You can find new information about the lending service model here: 

http://schools.natlib.govt.nz/about/service-changes-2016

We are pleased to see some adjustments to the lending service, including a greater number of books available to larger schools, and loans in Terms 1, 2 and 3 rather than only Terms 1 & 3.

Please note that this is an interim update - more info will be going out to schools via National Library's usual communication channels (including Gazette ads/articles, MOE bulletin message, direct mail to principals etc.) in mid November.

If you have comments or questions about the update, remember that you can contact National Library directly using their email address s2stransformation@dia.govt.nz

Thanks,

Miriam

 Miriam Tuohy

President

School Library Association of New Zealand Aotearoa

SLANZA Collected - submissions open

Conference is  over and  Term 4 has begun and the new issue of Collected is being prepared.

Our theme is  “From the Ground  Up Conference 2015”  We want reports and photos of events and gatherings. We would also welcome articles on, and responses to workshops and key notes that inspired you.  You might also share your impressions of conference, and the importance of networking. There was so much to inspire us and I know our readers will have taken this inspiration and planned to put it into action. Let us know what you took away from this inspiring event.

We will also accept other articles of interest and book reviews. Our deadline for this issue is November the 19^th. Submissions and questions can be directed to me at collected@slanza.org.

Submission Guidelines can be found on the Collected Page at slanza.org.nz.

Looking forward to hearing from all of you.

Greig Daniels

SLANZA Collected Magazine

Conference Evaluations

Conference is all done but the sharing continues!

What a great 2.5 days of networking and learning and it’s not too late to catch some of the great professional learning that took place.

Hello everyone,

I hope you have all had safe holidays and journeys home from conference and are now ready to jump into the last term of the year with renewed energy.  Thank you to those who made it to conference and contributed to an amazing time of networking and learning.  If you were unable to make it to conference, there are still lots of opportunities to catch up with professional learning over the next few months.

Workshop Presentations

The presentations that are available to us will be added to the SLANZA website just as soon as we can, so you can catch up with any you missed or get the notes and links from those you attended.

If you presented at conference and are happy to make your presentation available, please send it to Mandy (mandy@conference.co.nz), preferably as a pdf or a web link.

A very big “thank you” to those who presented workshops and giving your time and knowledge so generously – this willingness to share our professional knowledge is the most valuable asset we have!

Conference Evaluations

If you didn’t get a chance to complete your evaluation form at conference we will send this to you electronically so we can gather your feedback.  This is an important part of conference for us so we can ensure that future professional development meets your needs.

Thank You from the Conference Committee

A special thank you to all for supporting our conference in Christchurch this year.  It was great to see everyone networking, sharing, learning, and just the general buzz as you caught up with colleagues made it a successful event!

Thank you to our sponsors who made conference possible and I encourage you to continue to support these businesses who were willing to give their time and a financial commitment to be there.

‘Till we meet again!

Cathy Kennedy

Conference Committee Convenor and your Aoraki Conference Committee

Ban lifted on Into the River

The Film and Literature Review Board have announced their decision yesterday, regarding Ted Dawe's book Into the River.

The book has had all restrictions removed, and can be placed back on library shelves today. There are no age restrictions in place.

Full details of the decision - and the dissenting opinion of FLRB President Dr Don Mathieson - can be found here:

http://www.dia.govt.nz/Into-The-River-decision

Quick interview on Morning Report this morning:

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201774690/banned-book-back-on-shelves

 Miriam Tuohy

President

School Library Association of New Zealand Aotearoa