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The National Executive met after the Otago Regional Conference in Dunedin. 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.
National Executive team National Executive would like to welcome two new members to our team. Long-standing Representative, Auckland’s Trish Webster has made way for Sharon Jackson and Central’s Steph Gibbons has been replaced by Sasha Eastwood-Bennitt. The fluidity of movement into and out of the NE is a natural response to member needs. On one hand, we are saddened by the loss of the knowledge and skills leaving our team, yet, we feel empowered by the views and energy that new representatives bring in. We are fortunate to harness knowledge and experience from a wide range of members, and we would like to acknowledge and thank Bridget Schaumann and Rosalba Finnerty in particular for their continuing guidance and support. Statements and Policies As a National Executive, we are always working on improving our systems and practices. We greatly appreciate your input in forming our updated Vision and Mission Statements - the biggest change we made from your feedback was a change from ‘school librarians’ to ‘school library staff’ which we agree, is a more inclusive term. These are the new statements: Vision Statement SLANZA will empower and support school library staff, and strengthen and promote school libraries in Aotearoa New Zealand. Mission Statement SLANZA provides community, guidance and professional development on library practice and programmes for school library staff in Aotearoa New Zealand while reflecting the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. Further to these statements, we have also been developing policies relating to Te Tiriti o Waitangi - The Treaty of Waitangi as well as one on Equity. Membership Total membership for 2018 is 592 members, down 5% from 2017. Website Update If you haven’t visited the SLANZA website recently, do have a look. We’ve been quietly working away at refreshing the look and content. Conference We would like to acknowledge the phenomenal effort that went into organising and running the SLANZA Otago Regional Conference. The Conference Committee ensured that, even though it was a regional conference, the calibre of professional development on offer was exceptional while the fellowship was marvellous. Our sincere gratitude goes to the Otago team who made this event possible. It was announced at the conference that, next year, we will hold another regional conference, this time organised by the Waikato / Bay of Plenty region and based in Cambridge. Add the event to your budget and note it on your calendar, Friday 27 September to Sunday 29 September 2019. Collected Magazine Thank you to all the members who have submitted articles for Collected magazine. The theme is ‘Encouraging Readers’, although we will be treated to other articles of interest as well as book reviews and business member submissions. Currently in the editing stage, the twenty-third issue of Collected will be out soon. This will be the last issue by our editor Greig Daniels who has stepped down after four years as editor. With Greig’s skilful editing and writing,Collected has developed into a quality publication and we thank him sincerely for his tireless work and dedication. We are excited to announce that Melanie McVeigh, our administration officer, has worked alongside Greig with this issue and will take over the role next year. Connected Librarians Congratulations to all those members who completed the Term 3 Connected online learning module. The topic was Student Care and the Role of Librarians and proved to be a popular choice for learning new techniques and support practices for our students. Connected online courses are free for SLANZA members and are another option for school library staff to extend our learning. Watch out for the next module in Term 1. Google+ Community The discussion topic, Fun Library Activities, is due to start next week. We will be looking at stimulating activities we do in our libraries to have fun with our students and staff. Don’t forget you need to be a SLANZA member to participate. Open Polytechnic Courses The Open Polytechnic are undergoing a transformational change with a strong learner-centred focus. Their new courses in Library and Information Studies are really enticing with updated, relevant content and flexible, collaborative learning. SLANZA is strongly committed to raising the professional standing of school library staff, and we are grateful to Open Polytechnic for continuing to offer SLANZA members fee free study opportunities on two Level 6 papers. We encourage members to take advantage of this amazing study opportunity. NZEI Pay Equity Claim We are supporting NZEI with their pay equity claim for school librarians and library assistants. Achieving pay equity with similar non-female dominant professions will not be a quick or simple task, however, the information gained from the Google+ Community Pay Equity PD, earlier this year, where members collaborated to create a comprehensive database of skills, roles and responsibilities, will assist our cause. SLANZA National Executive would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your ongoing commitment to SLANZA and wish you all a great term 4. We 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 team
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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 SLANZA 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:
Wishing you all the best for this term, Miriam Tuohy President Fifteen years ago, SLANZA was established as an independent national body, representing school library staff throughout the country. Since the beginning, our goal has been “to strengthen and promote the role of school libraries, to enable all school communities to become information literate”.
The National Executive work to develop relationships and a wide range of resources that will help us achieve this. Regional committees in turn provide grass-roots support to the National Executive, volunteering their time and other resources to support the work we do, by offering networking and professional development opportunities for members. The National Executive’s ongoing programme of work is made possible by your payment of SLANZA’s annual membership fee, and a huge amount of primarily volunteer input. Currently, this allows the National Executive to:
Your membership fee also enables SLANZA to provide financial support to members each year in the form of study grants, and in alternate years through conference grants. We have plans to provide further resources and professional development opportunities that will support our members to provide excellent library services and programmes for their school communities. In the past year, the National Executive has been able to reduce its costs by replacing face-to-face meetings with online meetings, but this is not sustainable in the long run. In order to be able to continue to provide this range of services and resources, it is necessary for SLANZA to make a small increase in its annual membership fee - the first in 7 years - from $50 to $60 effective 1 January 2016. This will enable us to be more responsive to members’ needs, sourcing more professional development speakers, creating new resources, making better use of the affordances that changing technology allows, and appropriately managing the workload involved with all of these things. At the same time, the National Executive will be investigating a range of funding options which we hope will help to provide a sustainable income stream for our organisation, alongside that generated by membership fees. We must also acknowledge the support of Book Protection Products, who have very generously sponsored SLANZA’s professional development for many years. We consider that the $60 annual fee represents real value for our members. We appreciate your continued support of the work we do to advocate for the role of the school library and the professional standing of library staff, and to provide resources that support your work and continuing professional development. If you wish to raise any questions or comments regarding this change, please address them to either president@slanza.org.nz or admin@slanza.org.nz Regards Miriam Tuohy President There has been much going on in the couple of weeks since my last update. It’s a busy time of year for all of us, with most school library staff doing their annual stock-take, and senior sign-out for high schools. I’ve enjoyed seeing so many invitations to SLANZA end-of-year celebrations going out recently too, I wish I could go to all of them! Here’s the latest news from National Exec: Conference proceedings updatedA final large batch of presentations from our Conference has gone up on the SLANZA website. Alongside these, we also have some additional material - a document prepared by Steph Ellis with follow-up readings, links and information about the apps and ideas presented by each of our keynote speakers. Many thanks to Steph for creating and sharing this document. All these files are available now from the conference proceedings page. Collected magazineThe next issue of Collected magazine is starting to come together with many submissions already received. Thank you to those who have written articles for this conference themed issue, and also to our team of proof-readers who assist Greig (our Editor) with getting the magazine ready for publication. You can still submit content for this issue, too. The final date for articles or book reviews to reach us is this coming Thursday, November 19th. Information about writing for the magazine is available on our website, and you can email articles, photos, or book reviews directly to collected@slanza.org.nz Professional Development discussionThis week Sandi (PD Team Leader) has kicked off the first of our regular PD discussions in SLANZA’s Google+ community. Our chosen text for the inaugural discussion is R David Lankes’ free eBook “Expect More”. David presented a keynote session at LIANZA’s conference last week, and you can watch the video of that presentation (and others) online. To take part in our discussion group, you’ll need to join the G+ community first - over 100 of our members have joined so far. There has been some really interesting sharing and commenting already, relating to the first couple of chapters of Expect More. It’s not too late to join us, if you’d like to be part of this stimulating and thought-provoking conversation! Ongoing workMembers of the National Executive are continuing to participate in various fora:
We are also working on our strategic plan and the resulting work plan, our budget for the coming year, and preparing to open nominations for our next SLANZA President - I will have more info to share about these next week. Contacting National ExecutivePlease do get in touch with me (president@slanza.org.nz), or with your local representative on the National Executive if there is anything mentioned here that you'd like to discuss, or if there are any other matters you'd like our help or input with. We'd love to hear from you!
Miriam Tuohy This coming week is a short one, and for secondary schools it's the last full week with seniors at school before they go on study leave. I know this is a busy time for you, and wish you all the best with those end-of-year processes that are getting under way now. Here's a quick round of up what the National Executive were doing last week. Study grants awarded for 2016We have awarded grants of $600 each to four of our members. We wish them every success in their upcoming studies:
Strategic Plan review 2015-2017At our October meeting, the National Executive began the process of redeveloping our strategic plan for the next few years. We are now in the process of pulling the information from that exercise together and identifying how the various goals and objectives will feed into our ongoing work plan. A draft of the revised strategic plan will be shared with members later this term. Conference feedback reviewJulia Smith has been reviewing the feedback from our recent survey. The information from this will be incorporated into the feedback received from those who attended conference - including vendors - and this will inform how our next conference shapes up. Submissions open for 2015 Conference edition of Collected magazine Submissions for our Conference themed edition of Collected magazine are now open. More information is available in Greig’s blog post here. Conference proceedings available nowOur 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. Update to National Library service changes for 2016National Library Services to Schools have published an update to their website about the service changes for next year. We've fielded some enquiries about the update through the School Library email list. Remember that you can contact Services to Schools about the transformation using their dedicated email address s2stransformation@dia.govt.nz Contacting National ExecutivePlease do get in touch with me (president@slanza.org.nz), or with your local representative on the National Executive if there is anything mentioned here that you'd like to discuss, or if there are any other matters you'd like our help or input with. We'd love to hear from you!
Miriam Tuohy Welcome back to Term 4 everyone! It's been a busy week for your National Executive. Here is a round-up of what we've been up to this week which will also give you an idea of some of the extra projects we'll be working on in the coming months. Film and Literature Review Board decision made on Into the RiverOn October 14th the FLRB released their decision to lift all restrictions on Ted Dawe’s award winning young adult book Into the river. As one of the parties to make a submission to the recent review, SLANZA was pleased to be able to pass this news on to our members. Miriam Tuohy spoke on Morning Report on October 15th about the decision and what it means for school libaries. Representation on NZEI’s Support Staff Joint Initiative reference groupMiriam Tuohy and Kaaren Hirst will be participating in this group, representing school library staff in the discussions which are led by NZEI’s Support Staff Joint Initiative workstream group. Areas of interest include innovative practice, career development and pathways, professional learning, digital and information literacy. LIANZA’s Future of Libraries summit - follow up meetingKaren Clarke represented SLANZA at this gathering of library sector stakeholders, who met to discuss key issues identified at LIANZA’s recent Future of Libraries summit. Topics included:
Endorsement of BWB Publishing Trust's 'Books in School Libraries' programmeThis week Miriam Tuohy has written to the BWB Publishing Trust to again offer our support of their wonderful "Books in school libraries" initiative. The Trust has plans to make further distributions to secondary schools. If your school has received donations from the Trust, they would love to hear from you too - your feedback and letters of appreciation are very helpful to them in securing ongoing funding. New Administration OfficerCarole Gardiner has now handed over the role of Admin Officer to Jacky Reid from St Pat's College in Kilbirnie. Many thanks to Carole for her dedication to the job these past several years, she has been a huge support to the National Executive. We welcome Jacky into the role from Monday, and look forward to working with her. If you need to contact Jacky please use the email address admin@slanza.org.nz If you'd like to get in touch with the National Executive...You can find contact information for all our regional representatives here on the SLANZA website. You can also use president@slanza.org.nz or admin@slanza.org.nz to get in touch with us.
The School Library Association of NZ Aotearoa (SLANZA) is surprised by the invoking of the Interim Restriction Order on Ted Dawe’s award winning novel Into the river. Having submitted our opinion as part of the Office of Film and Literature Classification’s recent review of the book, (which contributed to the age restriction being removed), it was shocking to see that the reclassification has been overruled by the President of the Film and Literature Review Board, and an order put in place which effectively constitutes a total ban on the book.
Libraries are now required to remove the book from their shelves and make the novel unavailable to their communities. Individuals who own the book are not able to loan it to any other person, and book sellers are prohibited from displaying or selling it. SLANZA believes that this unusual step by the Board of Review is not necessary, and that denying the book it’s intended audience is draconian. Removing young people’s access to literature which has been written specifically for them is a drastic step, and possibly one which works against the intentions of any restriction. This book has been recognised by a panel of experts with the highest award possible in New Zealand, for a book for young adults, when measured against all others in the year of its publication. To not allow young people access to this awarded novel does them a disservice. We believe that it is important for students to read about the world they inhabit, and for some students the world depicted in Into the river is, unfortunately, very real. For others, it offers different cultural perspectives and experiences that are far removed from their own. We believe there is considerable value in texts like these that allow students to appreciate other points of view and develop an understanding of what it means to be part of a culturally diverse society. For some students a book like Into the river provides a way of connecting with text that appeals to them, and may be an entry to the world of books. School libraries should have procedures and policies in place to guide them when selecting books. This may include input from students, staff, and parents. School librarians develop collections that work for their communities, and this includes books that might challenge and extend readers, and that reflect the reality and diversity of our students’ lives. School library staff bring a professional approach and mindfulness of their school’s unique character to that collection development. School librarians understand the needs of their community; they are knowledgeable about literature for young adults - including local writing - and know that enabling young people to make their own reading choices from a range of texts plays an important role in motivating them to read widely. When school library staff recommend books to students, they take into account different abilities, interests, age groups, cultural backgrounds and so on. They can personalise those suggestions as appropriate rather than being bound by rules such as formal classifications, which although they may provide a degree of ‘protection’ for some, unnecessarily restrict access for many others. Families who wish to restrict their children’s access to specific texts, or types of texts, must make those wishes clear. At the same time, those restrictions should not impinge on the rights of other students to make their own decisions about their reading. Likewise, members of the school community are able to raise concerns about library texts, or texts used in class instruction, directly with the school and have those concerns investigated according to school policy. SLANZA reiterates its opposition to the Interim Restriction Order issued by the Film and Literature Review Board and would like this resolved rapidly. We welcome debate and reviews about what literature is available to NZ school children, and believe this can be achieved without such measures as banning an item as has happened with Into the river. This move is contrary to our philosophy of providing a diverse and open supply of literature and resources to young people in our schools and communities. Individuals who feel that they are being disadvantaged by Into the river not being available are able to make a submission to the Film and Literature Board of Review. You can direct these via email to Julie Wall at the Department of Internal Affairs (Julie.wall@dia.govt.nz) Forthwith a bit of an update relating to the Interim Restriction Order placed on Ted Dawe's novel Into the River:
I haven't been able to confirm whether or not this was done, but it seems to me to be a not very satisfactory way of getting the word out, and this is something SLANZA may take up with the Censorship Compliance Unit or through the Film and Literature Review Board. My understanding is that the FLRB will meet in October, and at that point some further action will happen - it may be though that no decision is made but perhaps another review process begun... we shall see. If you'd like to listen to the audio of Radio NZ this morning, this is the link to Morning Report: http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201769721/school-libraries-association-defends-banned-book And here for Nine to Noon: http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/201769748/row-over-banned-book And there may be further, related, news in the next day or so with more discussion about issues relating to school libraries' selection and handling of titles such as Into the River. Can I offer my thanks at this point to all those who have offered opinions and examples of their own experience with Into the River, and issues of censorship in general. It is all grist to the mill for this very important discussion. So while it's not always comfortable to have these sorts of conversations, I do believe it is so useful for us to offer and listen to different viewpoints, and to understand these big issues that affect our ability to work as library professionals. Miriam Tuohy President Updated to add follow-up item on Morning Report 9 Sept 2015 http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201769893/school-librarians-in-uproar-over-banned-book In an interview yesterday, Hekia Parata discussed the Innovation in Education programme, which is about bringing teachers who achieve results in their own schools to schools who may be struggling. Ms Parata was discussing collaboration between schools and teachers when she also moved on to discuss shared facilities. She asked the question “do schools need their own Library?”, but she also questioned the need for schools to have their own gym and assembly hall. She was discussing the pooling of resources so that several schools could share one ‘state of the art’ facility. This of course seems reasonable. Schools would like to use state of the art facilities for their students, but these facilities need to be accessible to all students and members of the school community.
The School Library Association of New Zealand Aotearoa supports providing all students with convenient access to a school library on site, with a text rich environment that supports their research, reading and learning as well as providing access to technology and ICT resources that support the curriculum. This will enable students to gain the skills they need to transition from school into the next phase of their education or working life. School libraries are areas for growing greater learning outcomes for all school students at all levels of their schooling. At the moment many schools - especially primary schools - do not have a library. If they have a library it is often small, understaffed or unstaffed, often being used for other things such as a spare classroom. This is very disappointing. Access to a school library is very important to all students and teachers, providing a one stop shop for information and resources but also a vital place for community interaction, solitude and where interests can be stimulated. SLANZA would like all schools to have a library that is staffed, open and easy to access. A school library’s collection is hand picked for the community it serves. School librarians know their students, their interests, their curriculum needs and have an understanding of the community their library serves. Access to the services the school library provides is important for every student in New Zealand. How else are we to grow the literacy and encourage the love of reading and the quest for knowledge that a school library gives students the chance to obtain? We must not forget about the 10 - 12% of students with challenges of various kinds, about the 70,000 students who start school every year. School libraries provide working spaces, quiet places for meeting these students’ individual needs, and resources to support foundation literacy and to encourage these students towards better educational outcomes. SLANZA National Executive |
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