Life Membership Awardees 2014

It gives the Life Membership Committee great pleasure to announce that the following people have been nominated by their peers and been successful in achieving Life Membership of SLANZA in 2014.  These awards were announced at the Annual General Meeting 2014, held in Dunedin at the Weekend School.  

Life membership is awarded to people who have contributed greatly over a number of years to our organisation.  They have gone well above and beyond, they have given of their time and energy over many years for the betterment of our org and all of the people nominated this year have been stalwarts of the organisation since it’s inception.  

It is a hard thing making choices between such worthy nominees but after a great deal of deliberation the following people are being recognised for their contribution and awarded Life Membership in 2014.  

Jenny Millar
Jenny has been with SLANZA from the very beginning.  She was on the steering committee for SLANZA for the year before it’s inception.  Prior to that she was heavily involved in the School Library Network, she was the first Otago/Southland representative for SLANZA and her foresight and vision, amongst the others on that committee have formed and shaped what we have become.  She continued in this role for many years.  She has been a major contributor to sub committees of the National Executive, giving of her own time for years.  Keeping the Otago/Southland region humming when the chairperson was based in Otago and hosting and organising Otagoites, no easy job, organising meetings, and always keeping us in the loop with what was happening at a National level.  She has been a huge help to local librarians and her work promoting and reviewing books has been fantastic.  Jenny is a SLANZA stalwart.  She is tough, resilient and a rock to those in the school library world who need one.  We heartily endorse her nomination and are most pleased and happy to reward her with this Life Membership.

Rosalba Finnerty
This is a person who has been one of the standing stones of SLANZA since it started.  She has been involved in almost every area of librarianship over her career and not content with that has become an archivist on top.  Rosalba has served her time on the National Executive, she has been involved in so many conferences and committees that it is not possible to count them.  She has represented the National Executive at committees of many kinds over the years and still does this today when needed.  She has retired from her position at Samuel Marsden Collegiate, and gone on to have an illustrious career in archives, both for that school and for SLANZA, her lounge playing host to a mountain of paper and digital records, she has been in this privileged position for the last two years and her dedication and thoroughness has sharpened all the NE up.  Because of her we are better organised and future ready.  Rosalba gives up her weekend on National Executive weekends to cater to the National executive, it is a mighty thing, she is our emergency minute taker and advisor on matters of many kinds.  Her knowledge of the history of the organisation is regularly called upon.  This barely covers it.  She is an advisor, an ear to many, a fantastic stalwart of the Wellington committee and all round organiser of everyone and everything.  It is an utter pleasure to award her Life Membership of SLANZA.

Janet McFadden
The nomination for Janet McFadden was fulsome in its praise for her work for, with and alongside SLANZA for many years.  Janet has been one of the biggest advocates for the benefit of school librarians belonging to SLANZA, she has been a committee member of the Wellington region for many years.  Janet was the first convenor of the Wellington region, as early as 2002 she was helping organise Wellington conferences and has continued to do that regularly.  No conference is complete without a presentation from Janet.  Her dedication to school librarians across the country, and particularly in Wellington has been always appreciated.  Janet has spent her professional life working to provide a wide range of resources and skills to school library staff. Her willingness to help and support others, well beyond the realm of her role at National Library and her continued commitment to the profession of school librarianship at all levels is testament her professionalism and leadership.  Janet is a hard working endless promoter of school libraries, the people who work in them and SLANZA as an organisation of value and importance to those people and for this we are incredibly grateful and are delighted to award this Life Membership.

Gerri Judkins
The name Gerri Judkins is one which is clearly associated with SLANZA and her dedication to SLANZA is legendary.  Not only within her home district of the Waikato but amongst all those who have stood back and admired the energy, the enthusiasm and the sheer gutsy determination that kids will read, that school libraries are the places where kids get the stuff to read.  Gerri is a reading and school library evangelist.  Her work on the SLANZA National Executive has left lasting effects.  Her understanding of the different circumstances in which school librarians work had a major influence on decisions made around the NE table.  Gerri understood the world that most of us worked in, it was refreshing.  Gerri is still giving presentations promoting SLANZA, the work that we do with reading in schools, promoting the Lit Quiz and being the powerhouse of energy she has always been.  I think she is currently in Russia at IASL doing exactly that.  Gerry is the little engine that could, could promote SLANZA endlessly, could attend meetings when others couldn't, could answer tricky questions and indeed could ask them, could use her endless supply of contacts to make stuff happen, could organise a mini-conference with almost no time and limited funding and could be the person who had read every book available so that she could promote it to her kids and sell it to a whole NE meeting.  Gerri Judkins does SLANZA proud and therefore it is not a difficult decision to award her this Life Membership.

We offer our sincere congratulations to these awardees.  We want them to know that SLANZA has appreciated their efforts and has received enormous benefit from their work for our organisation.

Bridget Schaumann

President