NZCCM 2009 conference

David Ashman, our preservation manager attended the "NZCCM Annual Conference" at the St Columba Centre, Ponsonby, 22-23 October 2009.

David Reports:

As the current President of the NZCCM and a member of the organising committee, this years’ conference held more responsibility for me than in previous years. This proved to be both rewarding and time consuming.

From an organisers point of view the conference was an outstanding success. In my view, there were three elements that made this so:

1. a reliable, committed and enthusiastic organising committee that shared the load and took responsibility for getting tasks done;
2. a fabulous venue/location – the St Columba Centre on Vermont Street, with a wonderfully helpful and unflappable manager;
3. an eclectic range of speakers that included artists, curators, architects, managers and of course conservators.

The theme ‘Conservation In Public’ was inspired by the work of John Holden who released a publication last year called ‘It’s a material world: the importance of conservation and its place in the wider culture.’ You can also check out the video on you tube.

There were 14 presentations over one and half days, covering a wide variety of subject matter.

Catherine Smith, a conservator from Dunedin, was the first of our two keynote speakers. She gave us an overview of how conservation had grown up in New Zealand during the past 40 years. She challenged us to look forward by raising our profile and to demonstrate the value of conservation to a wider audience. This would require that we address some widely held misconceptions about our profession, low professional standing in some quarters and lack of representation at policy level. Whilst Catherine wasn’t offering solutions she was suggesting we look for opportunities to engage with the public and in particular supporting those in more remote areas who don’t have access to conservation services.

Dean Whiting talked abut the interconnectedness between communities, the past and conservators. He described how beneficial the development of community skills had been when working on conservation of marae. As with Catherine, he raised many questions and suggested we explore ways of working collaboratively alongside the communities that are concerned with the materials being cared for.

Phillipa Tocker, Executive Director of Museums Aotearoa, invited us (NZCCM) to work together to raise the profile of conservation as a core function.

Kate Roberts, whilst Manager of Service Delivery at Puke Ariki was involved in the design of three major exhibitions showcasing the history of Taranaki and displaying the collections of Puke Ariki. During this beautifully illustrated presentation she spoke of the challenges of engaging the local audience in their own troubled and complicated history.

Our other keynote speaker, John Holden, gave an hour long presentation that came to us via a video link from the UK. He made a call to action for us to engage with the public and politicians to tell them what we do, why we do it and why it is important. For too long conservation has been seen in narrow terms. Now is the time to make the case for conservation not just being about the objects and the past but also in its role of shaping values and creating the world of tomorrow.

In addition we had presentations that included, an art curator on the subject of “Arts knowing disintegration: Contemporary art and wilful decay”; an architect on “Issues of Authenticity in NZ Built Heritage Conservation”; an artist presenting from the front (without PowerPoint) in a very entertaining end to the first day on the subject of “B-Sides & Rarities; How to Look at the back of a Painting”. Conservators talked about their experiences in Antarctica; we heard about the treatment of a 19^th century paper globe, and about experiments using zinc alginate for the consolidation of dyed black phormium.

The message I took from this conference was that now is the time to forge ahead, building on the excellent work already begun, to tell the wider community what conservation is, why it is important and how we can work together to create a future shaped by our past.

So all in all an extremely full, interesting and inspiring conference augmented by an AGM, organised visits and the all important conference dinner.

I would like to say thank-you to Sue Cooper for her support and encouragement during the year of planning and organising and to the rest of the Lead Team and Jayne Gutry for supporting me and two members of my team to attend this conference.

Damen Joe, from the Preservation Unit, both attended the conference, here’s what Damen had to say:

I thought the variety of topics was great, and easy for me, as a relative new-comer, to understand what they were talking about. That was also balanced by some more technical talks and discussions, and John Reynolds' talk which was great to introduce a more lateral take on conservation practice.

Paper highlights were… Lizzie Meek's, Kate Robert's, Dean Whiting, Ute Larsen and Camilla Baskcomb, and John Reynolds… and more, I'm sure!

I really appreciated being able to see and hear from such a wide variety of speakers who had some interest in conserving cultural materials. Working in the library, primarily with paper means that my concept of conservation is somewhat limited. Hearing people talk about topics ranging from the Antarctic hut objects, to Museum practice, to the more technical piupiu talk, allowed me to see how the area of conservation is an extremely wide and continually innovative area to be in. This was evidenced by the questions after floor talks, which gave a sense of the community and willingness to share knowledge. While in some ways, (due to my inexperience), I was more of a spectator, I enjoyed participating in the conference, and look forward to continuing to learn more in the area.

Catherine Perry wrote

One of the highlights of the conference for me was the chance to go on a tour of the Auckland City Art Gallery building site with the architect and guilder foreman. It was interesting to hear the architect's ideas, and see the realities of how the old parts of the building are being married with the new. The tour was enhanced having heard a number of papers at the conference concerning architectural conservation. Whether you are conserving a book or a building, the concerns and challenges can be similar, just on a different scale. It was great to be able to get a glimpse into other areas of conservation, particularly architectural conservation.

National digital forum

Keziah Singleton, digital collections coordinator attended the National Digital Forum in Wellington on 23/24 November 2009

NDF stands for National Digital Forum - a coalition of museums, archives, art galleries, libraries and government departments working together to enhance electronic access to New Zealand’s culture and heritage.

The National Digital Forum runs an annual conference, bringing together people working with digital collections. The conference attendees primarily come from the GLAM sector (GLAM stands for Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums). This year’s NDF conference was held in Wellington, and had a record number of attendees.

I came away from the conference thinking about three key concepts: finding content; connecting content; and how technology could have a personality.

Finding Content

How we can make our digital content (like the photographs in Heritage Images Online) more easily found? One of the most important factors in finding information is content metadata. Content metadata is information like titles, creators, subjects and locations which in an ideal world would be attached to every digital object. Unfortunately there are plenty of objects out there with insufficient content metadata. One way to improve the metadata is to allow members of the wider community to add information about objects (a process similar to tagging). This is known as user-contributed metadata. Digital NZ presented a session about tools they are developing to allow user-contributed metadata to be added to their records. At the moment they are working on location data – providing a map where users can pinpoint locations associated with the object (and leave comments explaining why). If users add information to Digital NZ’s ACL-sourced records, we would have the option of importing that information back into our own databases.

Connecting Content

Another way to make our digital content more easily found is to improve the connections between our separate objects. This means finding ways to reduce the divisions and differences between all the databases, tools and portals we are producing. This concept generated a lot of discussion but no answers.

One suggestion was to improve the consistency of our policies and the way they are explained, especially around the ability to reuse content. At present most institutions lock their content down and publish a variety of statements restricting re-use – even though a lot of the content is actually in the public domain. Lewis Brown from Digital NZ called very passionately for a global change to all our policies on reuse, but other attendees disagreed (also passionately). There was however general agreement that we could all at least provide more plain English information about what exactly is permissable and what is not – and we could develop a consistent lexicon and iconography, so that users receive this information in a standard format.

Reflecting personality in technology

Daniel Incandela from the Indianapolis Museum of Art opened the conference with a call for us to allow our technology to “reflect a personality”. The museum’s website has a range of content produced by many of the museum staff – by engaging staff they give ‘personality’ to the site. They also aren’t afraid to try different ways of showing information about the museum and their collections – here’s one example. Daniel argued that institutions can be far too conservative and unwilling to take even small risks. He showed us some videos he made for the museum which at the time of filming seemed hugely risky, but now just seem like interesting videos!

Nina Simon from Museum 2.0 expanded on this theme, talking about the importance of creating a conversation with your audience – by all means ask questions, but it’s even more important to actually care about the answers! And we heard about the National Library of New Zealand’s experiments with Twitter. NLNZ use Twitter to send out ‘teaser’ tweets which link back to items in their digital collections. Another example of how taking a risk can engage audiences in new ways.

NDF 2009 was challenging but rewarding. Thanks ACL for sending me.

Claire Scott, community librarian of Grey Lynn Library also attended the LIANZA conference. Following are her posts:

From the opening keynote address by Sir Tipene and Hana O’Regan, it seemed that the conference would indeed be all about people. As chairman of the Ngai Tahu Trust Board, Sir Tipene led what became one of the most significant Treaty settlements in 1998. It was only natural that daughter Hana would inherit some of her father’s passion for Treaty issues and identity politics. She completed her MA with a thesis about Maori tribal identity, and this later became the subject of her first book. Together Sir Tipene and Hana discussed the intergenerational transmission of knowledge and the practicalities of accurate and comprehensive transference over time. What is lost is often immeasurable, but in the case of Ngai Tahu, and Maori people in general, clearly it is language.

ePortfolios

Another extremely interesting presentation which focused on people was the Australian ePortfolio Project by Associate Professor Gillian Hallam of the Queensland University of Technology. ePortfolios enable tertiary students to track their personal development while also keeping their body of learning in an employer-ready format. While all QUT students have access to t he ePortfolio platform from PebblePad in the UK (www.pebblepad.co.uk ), 26 library students trialled this tool, with support from ALIA. Managers and mentors were also involved. An ePortfolio can be as detailed and elaborate as the user chooses. Some that we saw included video clips and interactive tools created by the student and included in the ePortfolio. Such a toll would certainly assist New Zealand library students and practising professionals to maintain registration body of knowledge information.

Social media

Also about people was Brenda Chawner’s presentation on social media. Brenda is in the mid stages of undertaking research into the use of social media by information and communication professionals. She compared her 2007 survey results with those taken earlier this year which showed some predictable advances in the uptake. For example, in 2007, 57.5% of respondents read blogs at least once a week (5.4% - never, 12.9% - wrote their own blogs). In 2009, 70.4% of respondents read blogs (4.1% - never, and 20.2% - write their own). With regard to social networking, in 2007 only ¼ of respondents had any kind of profile and many faced institutional barriers. In 2009, this number has jumped to 84.4%, and a number of respondents now actually use their social networking profile for business purposes rather than facing barriers from their employers.

Most people saw the advantages of maintaining a social networking profile as enabling them to keep in touch and connected, as well as being able to present a human side to their commercial profile. Drawbacks included issues such as being time consuming, a loss of privacy, and a lack of face to face contact. Others cited a poor quality of information while some felt pressured to keep their profiles up to date. In addition, some organisations find themselves represented unofficially by unauthorised staff. However, not many places of employment have yet developed a policy regarding social media.

Customer education programme

Kim Clayton from Wellington City Libraries presented a very informative session about the revamp that WCL recently undertook of their customer education programmes, To ensure a clean slate, they started back at the very beginning and asked both themselves whether they were meeting the needs of their customers, and they asked their customers what they wanted to learn. As with public libraries everywhere, key barriers to finding this information involved gaining access to customers, budget constraints, and staffing issues. In the end they surveyed 100 customers and the result was universal – what the customers want are one-on-one sessions rather than group classes. They want the information when they need it, and not before.

Implications of providing a service such as this are, of course, numerous. Firstly, staff need to be fully trained and competent with all of the tools that they are required to demonstrate. Staff are the key point of difference. But how do you train over 200 staff to be experts? Wellington City Libraries did this by having their information team promote a “database of the fortnight” with three to four questions. Managers committed to ensuring that staff had the time and access to participate, and the project received very good feedback from staff. The questions have become a new tool, useful in training new staff.

In addition, simple business cards were created which included popular topics such as “My Gateway” (account access) and which were blank on the reverse in order for staff to add notes or key tips for the customer to remember. These are available at all sites for staff use, and are an inexpensive and effective tool for customers to take away with them.

The point of need was also pre-empted with the use of “mini-expos” – a staff member with a laptop out in the library at high peak times demonstrating various things in the body of the library and available for questions and assistance. The next step is to move this out to the branches where both the needs and the peak times are different. But a complete coverage of the network is seen as a vital part of getting this right for customers.

Children's bookshop

Finally I would like to comment on the present by John McIntyre of the Children’s Bookshop in Wellington. John is one of the best advocates for books and literacy in children that I have ever listened to. Although he is a businessman, he has an immense genuine love of books, and a desire to enrich the lives of children though them. John speaks publically at a number of events, and works tirelessly with young people who have had difficult lives to date. He spoke of one young woman he had met who had returned to school after a failed first attempt. In the meantime, she had produced two young babies, and although still a teenager, she had decided to try and turn her life around. John read some children’s books to the class, and he talked to them about literacy and words, and bringing them alive for children. Some time later he received a letter from this young woman that still moves him when he reads it aloud. She credited his visit to her class as one of the key areas that changed the way she parents her own young children, how they now have books in their lives, and the immense difference that this has made to them all.

To meet a man so passionate about books was very warming, and his passion for children’s and teen literature has made me want to read it again for the first time since I worked as a school librarian.

IAML conference

Marilyn Portman, music librarian attended the IAML conference on 5-6 November 2009 in Wellington.

What is IAML??
IAML stands for International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres. This is an organisation that promotes, encourages and helps to facilitate projects in music bibliography, music librarianship and information science at an international and local level.

The New Zealand branch meet every year for a conference and AGM. This year it was held in Wellington at the Massey University and also at St Paul's Cathedral and I had the pleasure of meeting with colleagues and fellow music librarians from around the country.
I will share a couple of sessions that were or real interest.

Session one: Music in the school curriculum
speaker Vicki Thorpe, Music advisor, faculty of Education at Victoria University

Vicki covered the NZ Curriculum 2007 and the Arts and the NCEA requirements for music. She looked at the current issues and challenges for music education in N.Z. Changes to the NCEA 2011 were explained and general changes in music education explored in line with rapid changes in technology. There are big issues in NZ music education at primary level especially with no more arts advisers in primary schools and a great lack of teacher knowledge and skill in the arts. Issues facing secondary schools lie with the teachers having to be very adaptable and figure out whether they want formal or informal learning, inside or outside of the classroom. Where and how does music learning actually happen?

• Libraries are in a key position to be able to provide support and resources for teachers and students in their life long musical learning. By having a varied and interesting collection of music at their library, a whole new world can open up to them that they may not have known existed.

Here are some websites to check out and explore:

http://arts.unitec.ac.nz
http://www.tki.org.nz/e/community (arts kete)
http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz (learning areas/achievement objectives)


Session two: Focusing on copyright - the RIANZ perspective
speaker Campbell Smith, CEO of RIANZ

What is RIANZ??
It stands for Recording Industry Association of NZ. It is a not-for-profit organisation who represents the rights of the recording industry as a whole.
RIANZ works alongside PPNZ(Phonographic performances of NZ) and APRA (Australasian Performing Rights Association) however, what is becoming evident is that confusion reigns with the number of different licences required and there are moves afoot to unifying the licences to make a more efficient and logical model.

What does RIANZ do?

• maintains the NZ charts, gold/platinum sales
• controls ISRC (same as an ISBN number)
• Runs the NZ music awards
• Polices piracy

Now we are in the digital world

The recording industry is commercially unstable at present and income is declining. The major contributing factors are file sharing and RIANZ have been looking at ways to approach this problem. They would like to work with the ISPS to have a staged approach as they feel the user has a right to due process. The ISP would send out issue notices to infringers, basically educating them and pointing out legal down lad avenues and then if behaviour hasn't improved would suspend their account.

RIANZ would like to have a three pronged appropach to their business:

• gain legal certainty for the protection of rights
• Education of users - go into the highschools and teach about intellectual property
• stop sulking! look at new opportunities to sell content to generate income. Come up with more ways and means of getting music into users hands.

RIANZ and libraries;

RIANZ have basically buried their heads in the sand when it has come to libraries and pretend that we don't have music. However, they are keen to talk and explore different options. There is the "Authors Fund" that compensates authors for having books in libraries, why couldn't there be a similar thing for musicians?

IAML(NZ) are very keen to spear head dialogue with RIANZ and so hopefully this will bear positive fruit for libraries and musicians alike in the future.

Thankyou to Auckland City Libraries for enabling me to attend this conference

Report from sessions at LIANZA conference

Judith Waaka also attended the LIANZA conference - here is an article about some of the sessions she attended.

“He tangata, he tangata, he tangata”
Acknowlege the past, embrace the present and advance the future.

LIANZA conference 2009 opened with keynote speakers Sir Tipene and Hana O’Regan, the father and daughter duo presented a humorous and personalised approach to the intergenerational transmission of knowledge. The banter between the two really captured the audience.

They spoke about both the processes and tools used to transmit knowledge from pre-European times to early settlement of the British through to post treaty times. Traditionally knowledge was shared through oral traditions such as mōteatea, karakia, stories and practises like maintaining tribal boundaries, survival and whakapapa. There were a number of comparisons made about the relationship between the accelerating extinction of languages and loss of traditional knowledge.

Traditional knowledge was once used as a means for physical survival as whānau, hapū and iwi in terms of food, shelter and warfare. In modern times we use our knowledge to maintain the survival of our identity as Māori people for things like proving our traditional land use rights and mana whenua.


From “We shall remain” to “Operation teen book drop”:new national indigenous library services initiatives

Presented by Loriene Roy and Scott Alan Smith

This presentation was really enjoyable as it focussed on Indigenous library services.

Loriene and Scott spoke about We Shall Remain, a series of DVD’s about American Indian history. I’ve put in a suggestion for purchase for the DVD series and I’m looking forward to requesting it when it comes in!

Of particular interest was the event kit for libraries which gave a number of tips on developing indigenous library events and programmes, relating the events to the libraries collections. The event kit is available in pdf format.


Ngā ūpoko tukutuku – Advancing the future
Our own Collections Librarian – Māori Teri Ta’ala was one of the presenters for this session. Participants were asked how we could develop the Māori Subject Headings faster. Suggestions were made about hiring someone full time to work on the project and looking at other funding avenues to resource the project rather than relying on just LIANZA, Te Rōpū Whakahau and National Library.

Another question raised was about the scope of the project and whether it should be broadened allowing te reo Māori access to everything in the library. The general consensus was that most agreed to the broadening of the scope, however they weren’t sure if it was achievable

I enjoyed the workshop as it gave me a better understanding about where the project is up to and what the constraints are to completing it.

More on LIANZA conference

Gail Daley, team leader collection development team attended the LIANZA conference.

“Take a walk on the wild-side”: library service at the margins. The challenges of prison librarianship. Susan Smith and Judith Wenborn.

I wanted to go to this session because ACL has an arrangement with the Auckland prison under which we donate withdrawn books, and I was interested to know how the service works and if there is any more we can do.

The librarians work within an environment of strict security. They can’t take in cellphones or cameras and have to get permission to have a USB drive. Anything that could be turned into a weapon is forbidden, so no jewellery or pencil sharpeners – pencils have to be sharpened with sandpaper.

Except for Christchurch the prison librarians around New Zealand all work alone, and resourcing is minimal. With very small budgets they rely on donations and loans from local and other libraries.

In Christchurch the library service is offered to over 1200 men on two different sites. In the main jail the prisoners are locked up for a minimum of 21 hours a day which makes the material they get from the library really vital to them. With so many hours locked up, visits to the physical library in the prison are very limited and the service is mainly delivered by way of a printed catalogue the men can choose from. But many prisoners often need to identify books visually, so it is better if they can visit the library rather than request through lists
They have books in the physical library and also photocopy legal documents, crosswords and magazine articles.

Legal information about parole boards etc is much sought after. Murder mysteries are popular. There are a number of restrictions on material and access to the internet and the catalogues of the National and public libraries is only allowed through a librarian.

They supply hunting magazines but won’t photocopy ads for guns. They don’t supply erotic material – although the prisoners can watch anything free to air on tv.

The librarians try to gauge a prisoner’s level of language and reading skills and what their interests are. They try to develop individuals as readers and will put together special interest reading lists.

Prisoners don’t like anyone else knowing what they have asked for – for instance, in a group situation librarians must be careful to talk in general terms rather than mention a specific title or author that someone has ordered. In Christchurch they run the library service with a large exchange of material between Christchurch jail and Christchurch City Libraries. This can be recreational reading, or can be study related. Material they are always seeking includes graded readers, youth interest magazines, Pacifica material and graphic novels.

Books are requested and sent to the jail as a loan. In the last two years they have borrowed 800 items and lost only two.

The librarians see their work as one means by which prisoners might be able to make a better life both in prison and when they are released. They will sometimes help a prisoner get membership of a public library on release based on a good borrowing history and behaviour when inside.

Access to the library service is a privilege. General behaviour often improves overall when prisoners have wider access to library material. If prison staff are not supportive it is very difficult to deliver an adequate library service so it is important for the librarians to develop a relationship with staff.

The prison library service is undergoing a review, so they are uncertain what the final outcome will be.

ACL has been sending selected donations to Auckland prisons for several years but there could be an opportunity to lend more material and develop a closer relationship with the prison library service.

LIANZA conference

Heather Stone, service line lead attended the LIANZA conference in Christchuch on 12-14 October 2009. Following are some notes from the sessions she attended.

The librarian as a bookseller: empowering the profession to take their knowledge to the reader
I have a confession: I decided to go to the session because it looked interesting, rather than good for me. I am so glad I did – John McIntyre, children’s bookseller from Kilbirnie was simply inspiring.

He talked about getting out from behind the counter and engaging with the customers in the library.. He talked about the importance of building this relationship as a vehicle to share your passion, know-how and experience to ‘sell’ customers books. He hammered home the point that it doesn’t matter if these books entertain, inspire, inform or educate –the important thing is that the books we recommend meet our customer’s needs.
He said librarians can make a difference in people’s lives and then to convince us read the autobiographical piece by children’s author, Gary Paulsen. It was a great session.

Customer education: what's the point?
Kim Clayton and Rebecca Waechter from Wellington Public Library gave an overview of WP's revamp eighteen months ago of the customer education programme. With little literature available on this subject for public libraries, they undertook a survey of 1000 customers across 12 branches. In a nutshell the results were overwhelmingly in the favour of one on one lessons which were short in duration (15 minutes), topics determined by the public rather than by library staff, and delivery taking place when required by the public. The confidence of staff in the delivery was pivotal in the success of the lesson. Customer education has been revamped to reflect the results e.g one on one mini expos of resources taking place within the library at peak times using a television screen and a computer so members of the public walking by can also see it.

Revitalising the library and the self serve generation
Joanne Smith from Hobsons Bay Libraries, Victoria, Australia was awarded the Margery C, Ramsay Scholarship by the Library Board of Victoria. Joanne's presentation highlighted her research on the changing face of customer service in this self serve age. Libraries have to adapt the design, and layout of the building and opening hours to reflect community needs. By selecting technology that offers the same or better service than staff can, staff can be redeployed to engage more with customers. In addition, librarians need to move from having a gatekeeper and 'book police' mentality to a customer centric position. Joanne's lecture resonated with the ACL customer centric focus.

SLANZA conference [School Library Association of New Zealand Aotearoa

Annie Coppell, Reference Librarian - Teens and AnyQuestions National Service Coach recently attended the biennial SLANZA conference at Rangi Ruru Girls’ School in Christchurch between 28-30 September 2009.

Overall impression of the conference? It was great. The workshops I attended were all helpful/intriguing/inspirational. The keynotes were inspirational and thought-provoking (well, I’m sure Derek Wenmoth was – but we missed it, unfortunately got held up). The organisation was smooth. The dinner was fun (although no dancing – which saddened some attendees, but not me). For each session there were way more than one workshop I desperately wanted to go to – sometimes 4!!! This isn’t usually the case at conferences, I’ve found. Congratulations to the organising committee, workshop presenters, and keynote speakers.

Day one: challenging...
Keynote – Suzette Boyd, from Melbourne, asked challenging questions – are we revolutionary or evolutionary? Have we told others what we – as librarians – are capable of.
Workshop One: the challenge – teaching information literacy skills to high school students with a 5-7 year old reading level!
Workshop Two: the challenge – presenting! Anthea, the AnyQuestions Manager, and I presented the research by Core Ed on how AnyQuestions does help teach information literacy skills to our students.

Day Two: fun…
Keynote: ‘The learning brain’ – so many people missed this session because of this title – but it was one of the best conference keynotes I have ever heard! Neuroscience translated into English and made understandable, and memorable.
Keynote: Brian Falkner – basically, reading stops your life from sucking. How true is that!

Day Three: confrontational
Workshop: Libraries in a web 2.0 environment – ie making your library services 2.0.
Workshop: searching – oops, the sites AnyQuestions uses most – like google & Wikipedia – were not flavour of the month in this session…
Keynote: Denise L’Estrange Corbett – her life story.
Speech: MP for Christchurch on behalf of the Minister of Education. A lesson in how not to engage with your audience. I feel she might have been sucked in by the promise that a bunch of school librarians wouldn’t be that horrid.

I made a lot of connections at this conference. People I’ll be staying in touch with and, hopefully, working with over the coming months.

Taranaki Children's book festival professional development day

Sue Jackson, Remuera Community Librarian, attended the Professional Development days at Taranaki Children’s Book Festival on 31 August and 1 September 2009 at TSB Showplace New Plymouth.

These two days were just part of a week long celebration of children’s literature. Approximately 80 librarians from school and public libraries in the North Island attended the two days to listen, share ideas and learn from others.


Day one
Day One provided participants with an opportunity to talk through networking and discussion groups. A speaker provided an introduction to each of the ten topics covered which was followed by animated discussion within each group.

Topics covered were pre-school storytimes, strategies for behaviour management in the library (including adults at storytimes, class visits and teens), Book Clubs and reading groups for primary school children, collection management, electronic resources available free to schools and Any Questions and Many Answers.

We heard Frances McEwan, Children’s Librarian at Upper Hutt City Library, speak about a school membership programme, “A Book in every Backpack”. This is an inspiring project aimed at ensuring each child in Upper Hutt has access to library programmes and resources and encouraging reading. It is being achieved by developing strong relationships between library staff, schools, teachers and families, simplifying the joining process for schoolchildren and removing any barriers to membership. Class visits to the library during school time are a vital part of this programme. Of the schools involved so far, only 11% of children have not taken part. The next step is to roll the programme out to intermediate schools and preschools in Upper Hutt.

Jan Watts, NLNZ School Library Adviser, provided tips on reading aloud. She referred to
“The Power of Reading” by Stephen Krashen, “The Read Aloud handbook” by Jim Trelease, Effective Literacy Practice Years 1-4 and Years 5-8 published for the Ministry of Education and Mem Fox’s website.

Ruth and John McIntyre from The Children’s Bookshop in Wellington gave an excellent session on some great current titles and emphasized the importance of staff reading books before recommending them.


Day two
Day two was our chance to listen and learn from a number of key speakers. A highlight was a session with Margaret Spillman, teacher-librarian at Mackay West State School in Queensland. Margaret spoke about “Productive Partnerships – Learning for Life”, a successful partnership she has developed with Mackay Libraries, helping to ensure a quality learning environment for students to develop their literacy skills. There are five key elements to the programme:

• Work shadowing (Public and school library staff spend a week at each others libraries)
• Library monitor programme for students
• Grade Ones at the library (GOAL) programme – every child should be member of public library
• School website – link to public library website
• Database workshops for students in the public library (Cool Clicks and Data Dudes)

The outcome of this partnership is that the Public Library is seen as an extension of the school library with students moving seamlessly and comfortably between the two. Take a look at the school website and Productive Partnerships

Jan Watts, School Library Adviser, explored the world of the graphic novel. She reminded us that the visual is now just as important as text for young people and that visual literacy is now part of the New Zealand curriculum. Students now understand visual text very quickly and can often be drawn into reading through graphic novels.

Sue's presentation
Sue Jackson gave a presentation on the Active Movement programme for under twos and its success at 12 Auckland City Libraries. This programme is delivered in partnership with Sport Auckland by library and Sport Auckland staff. Sue spoke about the need for such a programme in order to build early literacy skills in the very young and to educate parents on the importance of movement for their child’s development. She outlined the structure of a session, explaining some of the activities and their contribution to the development of literacy skills. Sue provided information on how other libraries could become involved in the programme through contact with their local Regional Sports Trust.

It was a very busy two days spent listening and networking with staff from public and school libraries. All of these people have a passion for working with young people and want to contribute to developing their literacy skills and encouraging a love of reading.

National Forum on Public Libraries and Diversity

Rex McGregor, Collection Librarian (Arts) attended the National Forum on Public Libraries and Diversity, Theme: Kia ora neighbour, People in your neighbourhood on 23 August 2009 at Wellington Central Library

This year there were 31 registrations from 20 organisations from Whangarei to Timaru, with a large Wellington contingent. The Auckland region was represented by librarians from Auckland, North Shore and Waitakere.

The more intimate nature of the forum resulted in lively discussions and provided opportunities for networking.

Sessions focussed on a variety of successful multicultural projects.

Key quote: “We’re the living room of the city.” - Parrill Stribling, Palmerston North City Libraries.


Building Bridges: Information to integration
Young refugee authors of ‘Earthless Trees’ spoke about their journey to New Zealand and how the library has made a contribution to their settlement.
Speakers: Hajar Ali, Samson Sahele and Shamim Homayun

Samson Sahele, formerly a journalist in Ethiopia, explained how he conducted a series of ten writing workshops organised by the Wellington Refugees as Survivors Trust for new migrants to share their stories. Four students of the original eight contributed stories to the resulting book Earthless Trees that was published a few months ago. Samson introduced one of the writers, Hajar Ali, an 18-year-old Afghani refugee, who had suffered discrimination in Iran and Pakistani. Together with her parents she arrived in New Zealand when she was 14 and learnt English in 6 months. She expressed gratitude for the opportunity to study in a safe environment and considered the library her "second home." When she read an excerpt from one of her stories she impressed the forum not only with her command of the language but also with her confidence and presentation skills. Ada Nally, the Muliticultural Community Customer Specialist at Wellington City Libraries, commented on how Hajar was a perfect example of how a young Islamic migrant can enhance New Zealand society.


First Voices
Understanding the importance of maintaining a child’s first language on a foreign land is not difficult but ‘how’ to do it is.
Gunhild Litwin spoke about the project ‘First Voices’ that helps children learn and maintain their first language.
Speaker: Gunhild Litwin
Massey University – Adviser ( Learning Languages)

The forum heard how German children in New Zealand often grow up without exposure to their own language. Gunhild Litwin frankly stated that many German immigrants become so well-integrated here that the German embassy doesn't know how many Germans are in the country. She described New Zealand as "shockingly monolingual" and said she once "felt bad about speaking German to a point where I stopped doing it." After the demise of the Palmerston North Goethe Institute, she and like-minded German mothers, determined to "get out of the club/society rut", began craft activity sessions for children at the local library. These gatherings provided opportunity for conversations and storytimes in the children's native language. This was a successful example of how a customer initiative can make use of the library as a venue.


Migrant Employment Project
Topic: This initiative helps participants gain useful local work experience in roles within Wellington City Council. Migrants and refugees bring diversity into the workplace and the community we serve.
Speaker: Amanda Golding
Migrant Work/Diversity Advisor WCC

Amanda Golding introduced four young Asian women who have successfully moved from the Migrant and Refugee Work Experience Programme into permanent employment by Wellington City Council as librarians. Each of the women spoke about how valuable the assistance had been in improving their "employability" by teaching them essential skills for the New Zealand workplace. We also learned how the Library has benefited from having such culturally diverse staff members.


Workshop: New Diversity projects in Public libraries
Topic: Public libraries in new Zealand are taking more and more steps to engage with culturally and linguistically diverse population for building community participation. Participants shared new projects from their libraries.
Facilitator: Dr. Parrill Stribling
Palmerston North City Libraries

This brainstorming session produced many of the ideas listed below. A major undercurrent was the current economic situation, which may have contributed to the lower turnout at the forum this year. Concerns were expressed that multicultural initiatives are particularly vulnerable to cuts in service.


Practical ideas for libraries

1. Develop partnerships with other organisations
   e.g. Schools. Palmerston North Normal Intermediate compiled a magazine of articles by migrant students whose first language is other than English or Maori. The library helped by publishing copies for each contributor.
   
   
2. Provide venues for community activities and events
   e.g. Chinese senior gatherings
   Chinese knitting group
   Chinese book group
   French conversation group
   German Basteln (crafting with children)
   Displays
   Art exhibitions
   Music/dance/theatre performances
   Ethnic celebrations
   National costume fashion shows
   
   
3. Actively invite community groups to use library spaces
   e.g. through advertisements in local foreign language newspapers
   
   
4. Provide work experience for new migrants
   e.g. Wellington City Council created jobs in libraries for new migrants in the Migrant Employment Project to gain work experience. Several participants subsequently acquired permanent library positions. (Note: this initiative was established before the current economic downturn. The Ministry of Social Development has no funds to extend the programme.)
   
   
5. Promote awareness of migrant and refugee issues
   e.g. writing workshops or competitions encouraging new immigrants to share their stories
   
   
6. Provide catalogue and self-check information in a variety of languages
   
   
7. Provide orientation tours or self-guided audiotours to the library in optional languages
   
   
8. Maintain cultural awareness training for staff
   
   
9. Promote exposure to first languages
   e.g. storytimes, poetry readings, songs, discussions, debates

Rare Book Librarian’s Meeting

Georgia Prince, Special Collections team leader and printed books librarian attended the Rare Book librarian's meeting on 23 July 09 at the State Library of Queensland, Brisbane.

Having an Australasian gathering of Rare Book Librarians is a rare event in itself, and everyone present commented on the value of the forum for informal discussion and endorsed the setting up of an email list so we could continue the communication.

There were only two of us from New Zealand, Donald Kerr from Special Collections at Otago University and myself, the only representative from a public library. The rest of the 25 attendees were from the Australian National and State Libraries (Canberra, Victoria, NSW, WA, and Queensland) and from University Libraries.

The agenda was loosely adhered to, as discussion was wide ranging. Topics included were:

• Digitisation and its impact on heritage collections
  Requests to share digitisation policies as most institutions were working with drafts in fast-changing environment.
  Different methods of digitisation- the industrial model of large-scale scanning of rare pamphlets at SLV, compared to themed approach at SLNSW’s “discover collections”.
  Can we cope with demand once digitised image on Google and we become “a world-wide target”?
  State libraries are digitising for access not preservation compared to university libraries often digitising on demand from academics.
  How do we know who is digitising what (talking about books here, not unique manuscript collections)?
  Re-iteration of the “do it once, do it properly” digital standard.
  
  
• Moving collections during building development
  This was the agenda item I suggested, in light of our relocation of Special Collections during the fire suppression project.
  Pleased to hear that we were on right track with planning to box as much of the collections as we can. No stories of nasty surprises from the experiences of other libraries (SLQ moved collections during recent redevelopment)
  Described our plans for gas-flood fire systems; no other libraries had that. Avoided sprinklers if they could, but had dry-pipe systems and early warning smoke detectors, caps on top of shelves to prevent sprinkler damage. 1985 fire at National Library resulted in smoke damage. Suggested dummy run in order to time.
  
  
• Quality of rare book catalogue records
  Variety of detail in electronic records for rare books. Earlier records were often not transferred on to new electronic catalogues. SLNSW is only now doing a retrospective project for its earlier holdings, but has been able to produce good quality records including signatures, provenance and copy-specific information because Libraries Australia now allows for such information.
  University of Sydney has about 40% not converted. SLQ does not have facilities for copy-specific cataloguing- dearth of trained cataloguers capable of rare book cataloguing.
  
  
• Census of incunabula
  Updating Kaplan’s 1966 survey of Australasian incunabula (pre-1501 books). Some of that unreliable as Kaplan didn’t see everything. Additions since then?
  Request for information about holdings.
  
  
• Other issues
  What do institutions do about increasing age of general collections? SLQ treats all pre-1920 books as heritage.
  

The rest of the programme :

• Viewing of selection of treasures in “Fox family white gloves room”, including impressive collection of artists books
• Guided tour of exhibition “Bold but faithful; John Oxley Library at work”
• Presentation on the Petherick Australiana collections at National Library of Australia
• Tour of Storage area for heritage collections. Managed by a retrieval team- all requests electronic. Retrievals on the 1/2 hour in John Oxley Library. Do not need readers ticket to use the room
• Tour of Conservation lab. Staff of 13. Exhibition team, repair and treatment team
• Specialist conservators for photographs, film, paper and books
• General Tour of State Library. Impressive well-lit and well-used reading rooms overlooking Brisbane river. Strong programme of events, with large auditorium and smaller venues.

Following are some photos taken at the State Library of Queensland, Brisbane:

Teen Librarians’ Regional meeting

Annie Coppell, teen librarian attended the second annual teen librarian's regional meeting on 23 July 2009 at Whangarei Library for librarians from around the (very) wider Auckland region.

There were staff from Whangarei, Auckland, North Shore, Rodney and Manukau libraries – all sharing knowledge and learning from each other. The agenda was fairly packed:

• an open forum about teen web pages (Whangarei, North Shore and Manukau are all in the process of updating their sites);
• Manukau and Rodney reporting back on their teen reading challenges;
• Rodney reporting on their Montana Poetry Day Poetry Aloud Competition;
• a discussion on teen reading trends;
• a discussion about building relationships with schools, with Liz, librarian from Whangarei Girls High; and managing teens on computers;
• and Jayne Gutry our professional development adviser also presented, via teleconference, a paper on the Dealing with Youth training Auckland City Libraries had implemented.

From all of those sessions, on such different topics, it seems to me that there were two major learnings:

• Communication
• Connection

The success of the programmes/challenges/competitions – all came down to good communication with the target market.

The success of the relationship between public libraries and schools – communication and personal connections

Jayne Gutry spoke about some workshops delivered to four ACL libraries earlier this year focussed on dealing with youth. Staff at Panmure, Glen Innes, Onehunga & Mt Roskill libraries had expressed concerns about youth behaviour in their libraries. The workshop focussed on stages of adolescent development and explored ways to communicate with youth. Staff said that they found the workshop to be useful and have since started to get to know youth in their libraries. Here is a link to Jayne's presentation

If the whole team communicates the same message – if you build personal connections with teens (or homeless people) – there is little chance for troublesome behaviour to brew.

How to keep on top of reading trends? Communication and connection – ask your teen customers.

The value of the day? We want it to continue. We value the chance to communicate with each other and to make personal connections with others in the field.

What do we want of it? We’re investigating the possibilities of setting up a list-serv for teens librarians (including secondary school librarians). There is an existing schoolibs list serv, and a kidzlist one… but nothing specific for teens.

What else? The lack of professional support for our specialist area. Many years ago there was a ChYPS SIG – Children, and Young People’s and Schools’ Special Interest Group – part of NZLIA (now LIANZA). That is now in abeyance. The ChYPS SIG used to hold annual conferences – alternating between children and youth. It was at one of these – ‘Sounding Off’ in 1995 – that my passion for working with this age group was cemented. It’s why I’m still here. As far as I can tell, the last conference was ‘Absolutely Positively YA 97’, held in Wellington. If anyone is interested, I have the information for these, and the 93 Conference in my desk drawer (I inherited some of the papers, promise).

I could give you all the facts and figures that were shared. But it’s not really what was important from the day. Manix (Manukau’s reading challenge) goes from strength to strength because they communicate with the audience, because they have connections within their community.

• Communication
• Connection

That’s what I came away with. Those were the messages that were reinforced.

“Rising Dragons, Soaring Bananas” International Conference

Henry Liu from Mt Roskill Community Library attended Going Bananas, a yearly international conference organised by New Zealand Chinese Association (NZCA), which was set up in 1935. This year, the conference title was Rising Dragons, Soaring Bananas, and was held by NZCA in association with ISSCO (the International Society for the Studies of Chinese Overseas).

Differing from the three previous conferences, Rising Dragons, Soaring Bananas had a Community Session and an ISSCO Breakout Session running at the same time.

About 350 representatives from different places around New Zealand, China, Singapore, Australia, Fiji, Canada and United States attended the meeting. Auckland City Libraries sent her eight staff to attend.

Sam Minchin, Service Delivery Manager – online, gave a presentation at the Community session on the first afternoon to launch the Chinese Digital Community, which enormously raised audience interest. The Chinese Digital Community contains topics (i.e. articles, stories), photos, documents, videos, audios and web links, and is expected to grow and evolve over time as people add to it.

It was designed to preserve the heritage of the Chinese living in New Zealand, and is for anyone and everyone who's interested in sharing information about what it means to be Chinese.

"We hope the site will provide future generations with better, faster and easier access to information that houses the memories of those who have contributed deeply to the building of this nation," says Kai Luey, Chairman, NZ Chinese Association.

On the second morning’s seminar, “Using Chinese Communities Online”, Yan Wang and Kah-Bee Chow demonstrated in groups how to use the site and helped attendees to upload their photos, family history documents, etc.. According to the observation on the Chinese Digital Community website, the number of documents, topics and images added after Sam’s presentation doubled, tripled and even quadrupled. The number is still going up steadily.

The conference lasted for two days from 18-19 July in Owen G Glenn Building, Business School, The University of Auckland. You can view the conference papers and presentation by speakers, online.

Ninth Australian Library History Conference

On 25-27 June 2009 David Verran presented an abstract to the Ninth Australian Library History conference in Melbourne on Government promotion of public libraries in New Zealand, 1869 – 1935.

I had three goals to achieve whilst there:

1. The first was to visit the Victorian Archives Centre (also known as the Public Record Office and have an in depth conversation with them about the practical applications of Web 2 technology. As with us, they are progressing the provision of wikis and public accessibility to database content, with the aim of facilitating online hosting of audio and visual content from Victorian residents - akin to the Kete pilots we have underway here.
   
   
2. The second was the State Library of Victoria and to eventually leave with a bundle of leaflets etc from their Genealogy Librarian. What was satisfying was the acknowledgement that what they were doing is what we were doing, that we both share similar problems, but in some ways we have moved further into digitisation. I was nevertheless taken aback when it was suggested that once you digitise something then you can discard the original index! What they did have also, which we don't, is a voiced activated people summoning system called Vocera (an IBM system).
   
   
3. The third was the main official reason for attending: the Ninth Australian Library History Conference - subtitled 'Collections, characters and communities'. In reality it should have been renamed the Australasian Library History Conference, as it was attended by both myself speaking on nineteenth and early twentieth century New Zealand library history, and by Mary Ronnie who delivered the 2009 Foxcroft lecture - Carnegie down under, a century of the Dunedin Public Library. The proceedings will be published, and it was great to give a New Zealand library history perspective to the conference

The conference

The first conference devoted to Australian library history dates from 1984 and in 2009 with two speakers from New Zealand and two Carnegie Corporation researchers from the United States of America the ninth became effectively an Australasian one. I hope that the tenth will be officially called an Australasian Conference.

Back in 2004, I attended the first international conference on the history of mechanics’ institutes, which was held at exactly the same venue and in the same room. Thus, when I spoke this time on government promotion of public libraries in New Zealand, from 1869 to 1935, I felt I was continuing the story from the 2004 paper I delivered.

To a New Zealander, papers on interloan for Australian special libraries, a history of the law librarians’ association in Australia, and personalities at the Victorian Supreme Court Library had few points of similarity. However, many will know of the Carnegie Corporation and it’s funding of 18 New Zealand public libraries, including Thames and Dunedin, along with the financial support given to the far-reaching Munn-Barr report. John Barr from Auckland City Libraries joined Ralph Munn from Pittsburgh to investigate New Zealand libraries in 1934, and issue this crucial report. The two American researchers attending this conference are trawling through the various repositories of Carnegie Corporation archival material, and their contribution was most interesting in establishing points of comparison with Australia.

Four papers made at least part reference to the Munn–Pitt report, which is the equivalent report for Australia, and it was very useful to make cross comparisons. What was also interesting was hearing about mechanics’ institutes particularly in Victoria. Mechanics’ institutes virtually died out here in New Zealand by the late nineteenth century, and eventually local council funded public libraries replaced them. Auckland City Libraries started out in 1880 in the former premises of the Auckland Mechanics’ Institute, to 1887, and inherited the Institute’s remaining book stock, along with of course Sir George Grey’s gift of books and those from the old Auckland Provincial Council library.

What is also of note are some of the strong personalities who dominated the Australian library world, and who have had significant biographies written about them, such as John Wallace Metcalfe and Geoffrey Remington. Geoff Alley is the New Zealand equivalent.

Some may remember the circulating libraries, or book clubs. One speaker had done extensive research on their geographic distribution in Melbourne and had located over 1800 separate libraries. Whether this is worth doing here as well is a mute point.

Nevertheless, it is the ongoing contacts that you make at conferences that matter, and some recalled my speaking at the 2004 conference – it was great to catch up.

New Zealand Law Librarians Symposium May 7 & 8 2009

Theresa Rogers attended two sessions at the New Zealand Law Librarians symposium held at Auckland City Libraries.

Employment law
Greg Cain, Partner at Minter Ellison spoke on the changes in employment law since the introduction of the new government. The changes so far are:

• 90 day trial periods
• Kiwi saver
• Restart – redundancy package
• 9 day fortnight

Changes to come are:

• Holidays – the ability of employees to trade in their 4th week of annual leave
• Collective bargaining – Unions will need to get permission from employers to get access to employees at the workplace
• Dispute resolution – mediation will continue to be the primary problem solving mechanism however there will be changes to the Meditation Services so they will be properly resourced with qualified mediators.
• Also, there will be changes to the Employment Relations Authority to ensure that the Authority acts in a more judicial manner (the aim is that this will allow relatively simple access to justice while ensuring robust & judicial results).

The most interesting aspect the information about the 90 day trial periods is aimed at:

• benefitting small to medium employers
• became effective 1 Mar 2009 (by written agreement between the employee & employer)
• During the trial period an employee may be dismissed and the employee is not entitled to bring a PG (Personal Grievance) or any other legal proceedings in respect of the dismissal
• It is not available to employers with more than 20 employees or it the employer has previously employed the employee

However there are issues already surfacing like when does employment ‘begin’ (when they sign the contract or when they physically start work); Do casuals count?; What about fixed term contracts?; What about giving notice?; Also there is no impediment to bringing a PG or legal proceedings other than in respect of the dismissal (eg they could claim racial discrimination).


AUT law school
Professor Noel Cox, Auckland University of Technology spoke on the process of allowing AUT to offer a law degree. Evidently, universities cannot just decide themselves that they are now going to offer law degrees, there is a set process that they must go through. This process is in three stages:

1. The Council of Legal Education must give its approval
2. The New Zealand Universities Vice Chancellors Committee must also give their approval
3. The Tertiary Education Commission must also give their approval

Part of the process is looking at the resources that the institution offers to support this degree (eg staffing expertise and physical resources – with particular attention to library resources).

AUT gained these approvals and in March of this year commenced their first intake of 80-90 law students; the law degree will be fully established in 4 years time. A significant number of these students are mature students (in fact one is 78 years old!!!!). AUT decided that they did not want to be exclusive with this degree so it is available to anyone who wishes to apply, however they must maintain a ‘B’ average or above in the law papers to continue studying.

AUT will be focusing this degree on ‘Commercial Law” – which will have a much more generalist application. Evidently most law graduates leave the profession within 5 years & less that have ever practise law at all. Intellectual Property; Company Law and Legal Ethics will be compulsory papers for all graduates.

AUT are currently recruiting law staff, they have appointed Ian Eagles as Dean of Law & the degree will be located within the faculty of Business – it has become now ‘Business & Law”