Jenica Rogers - Reality-based Librarianship for Passionate Librarians

It was with great expectations that I travelled down to Whangarei Tuesday afternoon to listen to American librarian Jenica Rogers. Jenica is to be a keynote speaker at the LIANZA Conference next week in Wellington, but she had been persuaded to "practice" her talk up North. This was a wonderful opportunity for us to to learn from such a motivated and indeed, passionate, librarian.

Jenica's session, Reality-based Librarianship for Passionate Librarians was fabulous. Her focus was on  how to implement a new project within your library, whether it is a new technique, technology, event, change or concept, the process is the same. Her projects she conceptualised as mountains or hills, and she discussed how we must be completely committed, passionate enough to climb those mountains and achieve our goals. Jenica talked about naming your passion, identifying your goals and professionally organising, planning and managing towards achieving them. Embrace the process she said, even if you have to compromise on the way, it is all about focusing and following your passions, achieving those goals, creating a better environment or service. But that you can't do it alone, so build a support network, look for allies or flock mates, utilise the power of community.

Jenica also made us consider failure and how to deal with it, when to recognise that this project will not be achievable and climb back down the mountain. "Success requires some tolerance for failure" she stated, and challenged us to plan ahead about things that may go wrong and how we would handle it. 

Jenica reminded me of one of our own passionate advocates for libraries, Donna Watt from Invercargill, (check Donna's blog), they speak the same language with the same message - they really need to be flock-mates! 

Thanks to Corin of LIANZA Hikuwai  for organising this inspirational session for us. And thank you, Jenica Rogers, for exceeding my expectations and presenting an inspirational reality-based session.

To learn more about Jenica Rogers, start with her blog Attempting Elegance 

Term 4 event - Dr Hilary Greenebaum

One more chance for a get together in Term 4 and to be inspired by a guest speaker...

We have invited Dr Hilary Greenebaum from Softlink to give us her presentation "Do you swim with sharks or dolphins ?!" which she gave at the SLANZA conference in Auckland in July.

This presentation will explore how traditional senior management often thinks about libraries, and will offer concrete, action-oriented steps school library teams can make to change that thinking.

Considering finite resources such as time, energy, information and money, Hilary will explore ways to successfully collaborate, advocate and communicate with school staff and leaders about the library and student learning.

Hilary’s abiding interest is learning, and then supporting student and staff learning in schools - especially in a Web 2.0 context. During her 20+ years in the field of education, Hilary has been a primary school teacher, a Literacy Resource Teacher, a Teacher Librarian, an Intermediate School Principal, University Lecturer, and Technology Consultant. Hilary joined the Softlink team as an Educational Sales and Training Consultant and is excited to be able to support student and staff learning using their robust web based product.

Hilary has kindly agreed to do two meetings for us to make the event as accessible as possible.

Wednesday 16th November at Taipa Area School Library
and
Thursday 17th November at Whangarei Boys' High School Library

3.45 for afternoon tea, and Hilary's presentation from 4.00- 5.00pm.

The intended audience is school library teams - TLRs and library staff.

It will be a free meeting for SLANZA members though a donation towards afternoon tea would be welcome, and if you are not a member here is the link to join with a downloadable PDF http://www.slanza.org.nz/join.html which will be for 2012 too.
We are charging for a meeting for the first time this year for non-members - though only $5 - as a way to try to cover costs but mainly to encourage membership!

It would be helpful to have an idea of numbers, so please RSVP to jeannie.skinner@dia.govt.nz

There are no school library network meetings this term, so this could be our last get together for the year. There is some talk of going out for a bite to eat after the Taipa meeting - maybe a pizza at the Waterfront Cafe in Mangonui ? Anyone interested ? and Whangarei ?

Look forward to seeing you at Taipa or Whangarei.