Shona Lewis and Marie Hickey, attended the first NZ Family History Fair in Hamilton, representing the Auckland Research Centre, Auckland City Libraries as exhibitors. It was organised by the New Zealand Society of Genealogists, who the Auckland Research Centre has a close relationship with.
Article from Shona Lewis -
It started off on the Friday, with registrations, and the setting up of exhibition stands, followed up by the NZSG AGM meeting. In the evening, the Governor General, Anand Satyanand, and Mayor of Hamilton Bob Simcock, attended the opening ceremony and dinner with a full Maori welcome.
The Fair started on Saturday morning with seminars being run throughout the day over both days of the weekend. Marie and I alternated between looking after the stand and attending seminars.
We had probably the best position right at the entrance to the exhibition hall and right next door to the main NZSG stand; which meant we attracted a lot of exhibitors.
Our stand was decorated with posters and flyers of our Family History events, and leaflets promoting our Family History collections, as well as a few promoting Specials and the Library as a whole. We had a Powerpoint presentation running on loop on the datashow, which showed off our digital library and what sort of information could be found within, and again, slides of our posters about our FH events.
The datashow proved very successful at pulling people into the stand, and allowed us the opportunity of being able to do live demonstrations on the other laptop of how to search on our digital library. On Saturday morning alone, I managed to find a total of SIX ancestors for researchers - immensely satisfying!
The seminars were of good quality - they covered all different topics and were relevant for the beginner right through to the more experienced researcher. As I often present to the public these days, it was of interest to me to watch the different presenting styles. Of value, too, was getting insight and inspiration of what might prove useful for future family history lunchtime sessions.
For me, personally, the most useful tip I learned was to use a different colour folder, box etc, for each branch of my family tree, and to start a new folder for each member of the family once they got married. That way you can tell at a glance which branch they belong to. Useful, as my personal research has got so large, its become quite hard to manage.
The Fair closed at 5pm on Sunday - and was extremely successful. Well in excess of 1000 people visited the Fair over the two days, and its hoped that it will be held again in two to three years time.
Article from Marie Hickie -
I recently attended the inaugural New Zealand Society of Genealogists Family History Fair which was held at Te Rapa.
The week-end included a series of talks lasting about ½ hour each and there were stalls showcasing a variety of exhibitors – Auckland Research Centre included.
I managed to attend three talks over the course of the week-end, these were about Archives New Zealand, Resources in Australia and Unusual New Zealand resources. The talk on Archives New Zealand and Australian resources were very interesting.
Shauna Hicks reminded us that there are virtually no central records for Australia so it is necessary to know when the state came into being and how it was governed prior to that date as the records would be located at the appropriate archives. Graham Langton spoke about the popular records such as wills, pre 1920 army personnel files, passenger lists, notices of intention to marry etc and how Archives New Zealand works. Robyn Williams’ talk on unusual New Zealand resources stressed that you should also “think outside of the box” with your family history research and looking at alternative sources such as school magazines/histories, church/local histories, gazettes etc to get a more rounded view of life in the times of your forebears.
One of the highlights was the Who do you think you are? Presentation by Jan Gow at the official dinner on Friday night which highlighted the family of the Topp Twins – Jools was present as were her parents.
A thoroughly but busy week-end.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
POW! The North Island Children’s and Young Adult’s Librarians Conference
Juliana Austen, Children’s Advisor, Teri Ta’ala and Dave Tucker attended the POW! North Island children’s and young adult’s librarian conference in Rotorua on 22-23 July 2010
One of the key learnings taken from the conference was that “Kids are reading more, writing more and creating more but in different way.”
The curriculum & the library, presented by Tracy Dyett RNZLIANZ Curriculum Services Librarian
This is an article from Juliana Austen
Tracy outlined the different way students are approaching research in their schools. She explained the “inquiry approach” to learning concepts, which takes an integrated approach involving values and competencies. Resources must reflect the path of a questioning approach, emotional engagement, student choice, authentic real life purpose, challenges and reflection. Books may include fiction and non-fiction on many aspects of a topic including science, art, images, poetry, myths and legends. For online resources, the National library “services to schools” provides quick links and integrated searches to the National library’s databases.
Check it out at: http://schools.natlib.govt.nz/
Tracy’s presentation can be viewed at:http://www.scribd.com/doc/33685504/The-Curriculum-the-Library
Gifted children and reading, presented by Rosemary Cathcart.
This is an article from Teri Ta’ala.
A recurring theme at the conference was the ability of libraries to provide an escape from the outer world in this case for gifted children.
I would hope that all children’s librarians value their younger patrons enough to be aware of and cater to their varied needs. According to Rosemary, gifted children can feel marginalised by the educational system and perhaps even by wider society, and libraries (and great librarians) can amongst other things, provide a place of refuge for the gifted child.
Possibly the library’s most valued customers, gifted children are precocious readers and would give any summer reading programme a run for its money. A gifted child often begins reading before school, reads widely and is capable of becoming deeply absorbed in a particular passion. A great librarian may offer the kind of access to information that a gifted child is desperate for and the library can become a place to exhaust a consuming interest.
Being aware of the needs gifted children can help the library build a repertoire of books around their advanced abilities, our extensive knowledge of our collection can be essential for this. The recommended reading age of books can be misleading for example, when catering to the gifted child. They may also suffer from other problems such as dyslexia or dyspraxia.
Libraries may want to establish a rapport with local schools to work together in introducing their gifted children to the library. Rosemary recommends then harnessing the creativity of the gifted child by giving them books to review or asking them to help with recommended reading lists.
For further reading, see the articles at the REACH Education Consultancy website.
http://www.giftedreach.org.nz/index.html
One of the key learnings taken from the conference was that “Kids are reading more, writing more and creating more but in different way.”
The curriculum & the library, presented by Tracy Dyett RNZLIANZ Curriculum Services Librarian
This is an article from Juliana Austen
Tracy outlined the different way students are approaching research in their schools. She explained the “inquiry approach” to learning concepts, which takes an integrated approach involving values and competencies. Resources must reflect the path of a questioning approach, emotional engagement, student choice, authentic real life purpose, challenges and reflection. Books may include fiction and non-fiction on many aspects of a topic including science, art, images, poetry, myths and legends. For online resources, the National library “services to schools” provides quick links and integrated searches to the National library’s databases.
Check it out at: http://schools.natlib.govt.nz/
Tracy’s presentation can be viewed at:http://www.scribd.com/doc/33685504/The-Curriculum-the-Library
Gifted children and reading, presented by Rosemary Cathcart.
This is an article from Teri Ta’ala.
A recurring theme at the conference was the ability of libraries to provide an escape from the outer world in this case for gifted children.
I would hope that all children’s librarians value their younger patrons enough to be aware of and cater to their varied needs. According to Rosemary, gifted children can feel marginalised by the educational system and perhaps even by wider society, and libraries (and great librarians) can amongst other things, provide a place of refuge for the gifted child.
Possibly the library’s most valued customers, gifted children are precocious readers and would give any summer reading programme a run for its money. A gifted child often begins reading before school, reads widely and is capable of becoming deeply absorbed in a particular passion. A great librarian may offer the kind of access to information that a gifted child is desperate for and the library can become a place to exhaust a consuming interest.
Being aware of the needs gifted children can help the library build a repertoire of books around their advanced abilities, our extensive knowledge of our collection can be essential for this. The recommended reading age of books can be misleading for example, when catering to the gifted child. They may also suffer from other problems such as dyslexia or dyspraxia.
Libraries may want to establish a rapport with local schools to work together in introducing their gifted children to the library. Rosemary recommends then harnessing the creativity of the gifted child by giving them books to review or asking them to help with recommended reading lists.
For further reading, see the articles at the REACH Education Consultancy website.
http://www.giftedreach.org.nz/index.html
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