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.