Auckland Region's Term 3 Event

EPIC Databases training with Paula Banks

Student expectations are high.  As librarians working in a digital environment we are expected to empower our students and school community with tools which will enable them to search, evaluate and retrieve information that they can understand and use in the right context for their inquiry learning.

EPIC - Electronic Purchasing in Collaboration - is the national e-licensing initiative that provides access to electronic databases free to all New Zealand school libraries, funded by the Ministry of Education.  On Saturday the 29th August over 40 school librarians, and teachers, met together at the National Library building in Parnell, Auckland, to be updated on EPIC database usage by Paula Banks, the EPIC manager. Participants came from all parts of Auckland, as well as Hamilton, Thames and Christchurch.

Paula's presentation was excellent, she captured our attention and enabled an easy flow of questions and answers between us all.  She introduced us to many new features now available from EPIC including how to use EZproxy URL's and search widgets (search boxes that can be embedded on any web page that allow users to conduct a search directly).

Ruth, from Thames High School, said "that usually if I can take one thing away from a workshop it is good, but today I will take away a lot more".

A PDF copy of Paula's presentation can be found here  and she is presenting at the upcoming SLANZA National Conference in September.  We highly recommend her workshop.