Central region’s Term 3 professional development event saw us descend upon Whanganui Intermediate School’s library.

After the travellers had fuelled up on coffee, Miriam Tuohy (with a little help from clicker-gurl, Sandi Faulconbridge) talked us through her “Dream Library Collection” and how we could build our own. Key points were that building good collections is actually time consuming, but to remember that collection development is only a PART of our job, and PEOPLE should be at the heart of what we do. As usual, much discussion was provoked throughout the presentation and we are hopeful that this will translate into positive actions across the region.

Cathie Calman then allowed us to nosey through her beautiful library, answered our copious questions, and graciously accepted our envious comments. Thank you, Cathie, for hosting our event - we are grateful to have accommodating members throughout our region that allow us to “spread the word” in different locations.

Next we visited the library of Sue Goldsbury and Linda Lamb at Whanganui High School. This big, bright, airy space encouraged more envy. Many of us were particularly taken with the gallery of student artworks. Display ideas will definitely be appropriated and I, for one, was overwhelmed by the fantastic condition of the book stock!

A big thank you again, Sue and Linda, for taking time out of your weekends to allow a group of “curious” librarians to roam in your space. Feedback from participants tells us that it is these opportunities where a lot of learning takes place and we appreciate that we could not do it without the support of our members.  
The day ended with a casual lunch at a local cafe. As usual, there was lots of sharing, laughter and discussion of plans for world domination - or school domination, at the very least! Thanks to all those who travelled from near and far to join us in our day. We love the fact that you make the commitment to do that in your own time - and it is always so energising spending time with you all.

If you are a member of SLANZA’s Google+ community you can access this session’s slideshow in the professional development section. If you are not already a member but would like to become one check out the SLANZA website for how to do this. And if you are interested in seeing the “tweet notes” Steph Ellis took during Miriam’s presentation, you can see these here.

A 'Virtual Tour' of our day will be up on the Google+ community soon.  Thank you to Cathie and Sue for giving us permission to photograph your fabulous spaces and allow us to share these images on the SLANZA community.
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Saturday 9th April saw a small group of dedicated librarians meet at the amazing newly refurbished Palmerston North Girls' High School library.  WOW!  It is stunning :-)

We started off with an interesting and thought-provoking discussion about labeling our collections which turned into a discussion on how to shelve our collections as well it included some impromptu hands-on changing of Miriam's shelves.  This was followed by a Book Covering workshop led by Miriam where participants got to have some hands-on practice of covering a variety of books.  We picked up quite a few tips from this one.  And we finished up with a discussion about the new National Library lending service - how those of us that were using it have been handling our books and suggestions for those who have yet to try it.

Thank you to Steph G, Jackie and Sue for coming all the way from Taranaki.
Thank you also to Steph E & Sandi for coming all the way from Hawkes Bay.
And a big thank you to Miriam for hosting us and showing us your fabulous new library space :-)

Tuesday April 5th was a fun-filled and informative evening for book lovers in Hawkes Bay.

Paper Plus Taradale hosted our first SLANZA Central PD event for the term.  A group of approx 20 librarians, school staff and Paper Plus customers gathered to listen to book recommendations from some of the publishers reps, and we all got to go home with a bag of goodies.

Tammy from Harper Collins had a great selection of current picture book and fiction to show us.  One of the notable trends in picture books is 'Retro Publishing' ... all the gorgeous old Dr Seuss style and other books from that era are being revived.

Irene from Scholastic gave us a teaser of some up-and-coming fiction and lovely picture books with Te Reo versions.  Some we only have to wait a month for but others will be mid-year.  You are such a tease Irene :-) 

Thank you to Toni and her team at Paper Plus, and thank you to Tammy & Irene for giving up your time and book-knowledge for our enjoyment.  Thank you also to the reps who were not able to attend but who provided books for us to take home and enjoy.

Our Term 3 PD day and AGM was held on Saturday 29th August at Palmerston North Intermediate Normal.  Thank you to Judine for hosting us in your lovely library.

This was a great chance to catch up and network with other librarians.  Of our 12 attendees, 4 came down from Napier and 1 traveled all the way over from New Plymouth - Awesome!

We started the morning with our AGM.  We easily reached our Quorum of 10% of our membership base.

This was followed by the Stocktaking session which was presented by Miriam.  A huge thanks to Steph E for creating the PowerPoint presentation.  There were a number of good points and issues raised which led to a number of really interesting conversations.

Sandi led a hands-on reporting workshop using the free Easel.ly visual platform.  This is very straightforward to use and generates some amazing visual reports for your school management, or for your students to use to present their own information.


Oh yes, and we have to make special mention of the BOUNTIFUL Morning tea that was provided.  A-Ma-Zing! :-)


We followed up our PD morning by having a lovely lunch in Palmy.  A great opportunity to continue our networking.

Congratulations to Vickie Clarke of William Colenso College, Napier.  She is the recipient of the Central regions conference grant.  A big WooHoo to you!

We look forward to seeing you at conference, and hearing all about your experience in the next issue of Collected magazine.