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.