On Wednesday, March the 19th the Wellington region gathered at Raroa Intermediate (thank you Clare Forrest) for our first event of the year. Last year Adaire Hannah received a Life Membership Award for her outstanding contribution to Slanza at our conference.  As well as receiving our recognition and a certificate the National Executive also wanted the Life members to receive a badge. Unfortunately the badge came too late to be presented at our conference.  So we started out meeting with a presentation to Adaire of her badge and a big Thank You from our region for all her efforts on behalf of Slanza and the school library community.

Then we sat back to listen to Matt McGregor from Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand.  In July 2010 Government accepted a proposal from NZGOAL (the New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing framework) regarding the Government use of Creative Commons licenses for copyright works.  Matt enlightened us how this affects schools and in particular librarian's as we are often at the forefront in dealing with copyright issues.  It was a lively session with many people asking interesting and informative questions. For all of you who could not attend see this website: http://creativecommons.org.nz/2014/03/more-from-our-march-events/ 
It was a great turnout for our first meeting.  Hope to see you all at our next event in June.

We recently had a question about successful visits from Wellington based authors who would appeal to teenagers.  Here is the suggestions so far:

1. James Norcliffe
2. Kate De Goldie
3. Anna Mckenzie
4. Fifi Colston

If any one else has any more ideas please contact me.

We all know author visits are really popular with our students and a great way to raise the profile of your library.

Karen Clarke
St. Patrick's College