Reader's Advisors Course

Special Topic: INFO 560 Readers' Advisory Services
INFO 560, Readers' Advisory Services, will be co-ordinated by Jane Graham George. This course covers serving adult reading needs by addressing fiction genres and popular nonfiction. The relationship of readers' advisory services with reference and other library programmes, research on adult reading, and popular reading in an information society are examined.



There is a 90 minute computer audioconference every week, and in addition you should expect to spend about 11 hours per week reading and writing. See the technical requirements here:
http://www.sim.vuw.ac.nz/degrees/mis/index.aspx#delivery

There is information about the course here:
http://www.sim.vuw.ac.nz/degrees/mis/560.2010-details.aspx

While a Bachelor’s degree is the normal requirement, for this course I will consider applicants with relevant work experience. This is for a Certificate of Proficiency (COP).

Fee information is here - look for 'library and information studies' at 500 level in trimester 1.
http://www.victoria.ac.nz/home/study/subjects/coursecatalogue.aspx

When you are ready to apply, you need to use the University's online enrolments system that can be accessed from the main page:
http://www.victoria.ac.nz/home/
The key point for you will be to look for the COP option.

Enrolments close very soon - on 10 February.

Philip Calvert
IST Programmes Director

Open Polytechnic Libray Studies Courses

Open Polytechnic courses are open for enrolment until 15 February 2010.
You can enrol in undergraduate degrees, diplomas, or certificates. You can also take 'one-off' courses for continuing professional development.
All study is by distance, using print and electronic resources, supported by online forums. The trimester begins on 1 March and runs for
16 weeks. The following Information and Library Studies courses are offered in Trimester 1:
72142 Information Access - information literacy 72170 The Information Industry - an introduction to libraries and other information providers
72171 Library Systems and Processes
72175 Principles of Records Management
72270 Information Sources and Services
72276 Literature and Information Resources for Children and Young People

72370 Information Issues
Courses are also offered in Communication, Humanities, Information Systems and Technology, and Business. Some courses have pre-requisites.
We offer two undergraduate diplomas in Information and Library Studies, as well as a Bachelor of Applied Science and a Bachelor of Arts. For advice about these qualifications, please contact Mary Innes (freephone)
0508 650 200 ext 5665.
Other qualifications include:

Certificate in Literature and Library Services for Children and Young People (Level 6). Contact Jan Irvine (freephone) 0508 650 200 ext 5594.
Certificate in Cataloguing (Level 5). Contact Amanda Cossham (freephone)
0508 650 200 ext 5518.

Diploma in Records and Information Management (Level 6). Contact Mary Innes (freephone) 0508 650 200 ext 5665.

For more information about information and library studies courses and for enrolment forms, please go to: http://tinyurl.com/yr9gc4 or http://www.openpolytechnic.ac.nz/programmesandcourses/subjectareas/pcinf

LIANZA Professional Awards

A reminder to members that LIANZA is once again calling for nominations and applications for LIANZA Professional Awards and now is the time to think about:
• Putting yourself forward to be recognised as an Associate;
• Noticing the achievements of others and support them to put themselves forward for the recognition of Associate;
• Working with others to nominate your colleagues for an award of Fellow, Letter of Recognition or a Merit Award; or
• Nominating yourself or a colleague for the NEW Award of Merit – Digital Services

The closing date for these awards is WEDNESDAY 31 MARCH 2010. Follow the links below to read the full criteria and download application forms information for each award.
ASSOCIATESHIPS
An Associate of LIANZA is awarded to a personal member of the Association of 5 years who has demonstrated the knowledge, skills, judgement, attitude and commitment of a professional Librarian or Information Manager.
http://www.lianza.org.nz/development/awards/professional/associates.html

FELLOWSHIPS
A fellowship is the highest level of professional attainment awarded by the Association. It is only awarded to a personal member of the Association of 10 years who has made a significant contribution to the advancement of librarianship and/or information management through a sustained record of achievements, or who has demonstrated outstanding qualities of leadership, teaching or research.
http://www.lianza.org.nz/development/awards/professional/fellowship.html

LETTERS OF RECOGNITION
The recipient of a LIANZA Letter of Recognition is an individual or organisation who/which has rendered a significant and special service to the Association, or demonstrated continuing service over a period of time to the Association, or made an outstanding contribution to librarianship, libraries or information management New Zealand. A certificate is awarded to the successful nominee.
http://www.lianza.org.nz/development/awards/professional/lor.html

JOINT LETTER OF RECOGNITION FOR BICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT WITHIN NEW ZEALAND AOTEAROA
The recipient of the Joint Letter of Recognition for Bicultural Development within New Zealand Aotearoa is an individual, group or organization who has rendered a significant and special bicultural service to the library and information profession within New Zealand, Aotearoa, or demonstrated commitment to biculturalism over a period of time to the profession, or made an outstanding contribution bi-culturally to librarianship, libraries or information management in New Zealand. The recipient need not be a member of LIANZA. http://www.lianza.org.nz/development/awards/professional/jlorbiculturaldev.html

AWARD OF MERIT MARKETING
Awarded to personal members of the Association who has contributed in an outstanding manner to library and/or information services in the area of marketing in New Zealand. http://www.lianza.org.nz/development/awards/professional/meritmktg.html

AWARD OF MERIT MANAGEMENT
Awarded to personal members of the Association who have contributed in an outstanding manner to library and/or information services in the area of management in New Zealand.
http://www.lianza.org.nz/development/awards/professional/meritmngmt.html
AWARD OF MERIT DIGITAL SERVICES - NEW AWARD
Awarded to a personal member of the Association who has contributed in an outstanding manner to library and/or information services in the area of digital library service development in New Zealand.
http://www.lianza.org.nz/development/awards/professional/meritdigital.html

The closing date for all awards listed above is WEDNESDAY 31 MARCH 2010, if you have any questions about any of the above LIANZA Awards or to check the length of your membership please contact the LIANZA Office: office@lianza.org.nz or 04 473 5834


OTHER LIANZA AWARDS
Applications and nominations for other LIANZA awards are also open, closing dates are below. Further communications and details will be emailed to remind you of these closing dates over coming weeks.

Monday 31 May 2010 - Edith Jessie Carnell Travelling Scholarship, Ada Fache Fund, John Harris Award, Rua Mano Award

Wednesday 30 June 2010 - 3M Award for Innovation in Libraries, YBP / Lindsay Croft Award for Collection Management, Nielsen BookData Research Award, Paul Szentirmay Special Librarianship Scholarship

For further information visit - http://www.lianza.org.nz/development/awards/index.html


Megan Button Manager
LIANZA

Breaking New Tauranga Library to impose charegs on books

The Public Service Association is alarmed that the Tauranga City Council is proposing to charge a 50 cent fee to adults borrowing books from its public libraries.

“Public libraries have a proud and long standing history of providing books and other information to the public free of charge,” says Public Service Association national secretary Brenda Pilott.

“We oppose any move that undermines the principle that public libraries and their services are free and accessible to all members of the public.”

“New Zealanders value their public libraries because they’re free and accessible and this is reflected in their high usage.”

“Libraries play an essential role in enhancing literacy and providing information that support our education system and our democracy.”

“Charging a fee to borrow books will restrict access to that literature and information undermining these two key elements of our society,” says Brenda Pilott.

This was shown by the fact the number of books issued by Ashburton's library dropped when a $1 charge was placed on borrowing books less than two years old. This was why Ashburton axed the charge.

“We hope the Tauranga City Council looks at the Ashburton experience and withdraws its proposal to charge adults a fee for borrowing books from Tauranga’s public libraries,”
says Brenda Pilott.

Future Perfect : Digital Continuity Conference

Future Perfect : Digital Continuity Conference
Wellington, New Zealand

Monday 3 – Wednesday 5 May 2010

Venues:
Workshops: Archives New Zealand, 10 Mulgrave Street, Wellington.Conference: The Wellington Convention Centre, CBD, Wellington.BarCamp: Mac's Brewery Bar, 4 Taranaki Street, Wellington.
Programme
Archives New Zealand is pleased to announce the Southern Hemisphere's premier conference dedicated to the theme of digital continuity, preservation and long-term public sector information issues. This is an exciting opportunity for all information professionals impacted by the emerging information risk and longevity issues, or those who just wish to find out more. These escalating digital challenges will impact on all of our lives both personally and in our workplaces. Come along to hear what the key issues are, and who is developing answers both globally and locally.The Future Perfect 2010 conference will feature internationally renowned experts from Australasia, North America and Europe presenting on a range of aspects in the digital preservation and information continuity fields.While we have some of the world’s leading digital preservation experts in New Zealand we will also be taking the opportunity to deliver workshops and master-classes. The conference also includes a BarCamp 'unconference' day with a more technical outlook.
http://www.archives.govt.nz/advice/digital-continuity-action-plan/future-perfect-digital-continuity-conference-2010

Google Image Swirl image functionality searching

Search interfacesGoogle Labs is trialling Image Swirl which adds an "images related to this one" functionality to their image search in a lovely visual way.

NZ Content on Wikipedia (media)

New Zealand: Digital Forum Goes GLAM on Digital Collaboration
From the Article:
The vice-president of Wikimedia Australia, Liam Wyatt, told the forum the often-criticised comparative rarity of Australia/New Zealand content in Wikipedia can be attributed in part to over-zealous protection of copyright in this part of the world.
Wikipedia/Wikimedia’s open standards dictate that it can’t use anything that cannot be licensed for general reuse. Much New Zealand’s content is more tightly restricted than that, he says.
Wyatt outlined some of the positive collaborations Wikimedia has set up with conventional museums, libraries and archives, which shows an encouraging change of attitude internationally to open licensing of content.
Museums, libraries and art galleries are already primes sites for public social interaction with information. With computing and the internet taking on an ever more personal and social face, the fields are converging in interesting ways.
Angelina Russo, from Swinburne University, Melbourne, researches technology’s role in the design of the public interface of GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) institutions. She had high praise for the colossal squid exhibit at Te Papa, where the conference was held.
Source: Computerworld Australia

LIANZA Conference 2010

Linda Geddes is 2010 Conference Convenor. It'll be the centennial conference (first NZ library conference was 26th-28th March 1910) - aim to create a historic event. Video prepared with welcome message from Dunedin Mayor, apparently not realising that librarians can party to rival the Undie 500 delegates. :-)Theme will be "At the Edge - Te Matakāheru" 28 November - 1 December in Dunedin, at the University of Otago.

Usability testing tool - possibilities...

UsabilityInfomaki: An Open Source, Lightweight Usability Testing Tool describes a tool developed by New York Public Library to spread the usability testing load among visitors to their website - visitors are asked if they want to answer a single question; if not, they're not bothered again; if they do answer it they're given the option to answer another one. Because it's not asking much of an investment in time a lot of people will do it, and then because it's so easy a lot will answer more than one: "In just over seven months of use, it has fielded over 100,000 responses from over 10,000 respondents."

Office of Fil & Literature Classification - newsletter

Newsletters and Lianza
The Office works to develop and maintain relationships with libraries around New Zealand in order to ensure the classification information needs of librarians are being met. In order to do this, the Information Unit regularly corresponds with libraries and distributes information in various ways.
Newsletters
Every 2 months the Office sends out a newsletter to libraries via email. This newsletter highlights current news and issues from the Office relevant to libraries. Recent newsletters have covered the new label posters produced by the Office, box sets of DVDs and labelling of children's books accompanied by DVDs. If you would like to receive this newsletter contact the Information Unit.
December libraries newsletter (pdf v9.0, 282 kb)Classified Books from 1963 to 30 November 2009 (Excel 86 kb)
For archived newsletters look here.
LIANZA
Since 2005 the Office has attended the annual Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa conference. Members of the Information Unit run a stand offering information relevant to librarians, answer questions, and give advice about censorship and classification issues.
The 2009 LIANZA conference at the Christchurch Convention Centre in October was a great success for the Office and we look forward to attending future events. The following information sheets were specifically created for the latest conference and are now available to download as PDFs:
Key Information for Librarians (pdf v9.0, 218 kb)Graphic Novels Information Sheet (pdf v9.0, 217 kb)
You can also download our flowchart about Labelling restricted books, comics, graphic novels and magazines. (PDF, v9.0, 432kb)

Google Newsflash
2.1. Google Real Time search This just happened - rolls out in NZ over 'the next few days' Purports - don't you love that word - to give immediate access to new posts including Twitter - and FaceBook 2.2. Google's Year?Are they still the big bad guys determined to steal all our data - not so according a major spokesperson at the Battle of Ideas conference in London Session - Rethinking Privacy in an age of Disclosure and Sharinghttp://www.battleofideas.org.uk/index.php/2009/session_detail/2515/The whole session is on line.

NDF - Copyleft & Copyright

I was at the National Digital Forum conference in Wellington earlier this week mingling with people involved in digitising and curating New Zealand’s cultural heritage material – people from museums, galleries, archives, libraries.
I was struck by a few commonalities between the cultural heritage sector (known as GLAM – Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) and the digital news media.
Both deal with sizeable repositories of digital content, for a start, and are grappling with how best to manage those assets, ensure their longevity and make them readily discoverable.
Here are a few thoughts on a couple of themes that I picked up on from the conference, which was held at Te Papa (Museum of New Zealand). The conference was nicely organised, had some interesting guest speakers from here and overseas, and was very enjoyable (my thanks to the organisers).
Copyright/copyleft
Since passive audiences have become active users of content, we’re all trying to figure out how to manage content ownership online and get a balance between commercial imperatives, the costs of digitisation, and the need to enable innovation and maintain a lively public domain of enduring use to citizens.
This is a big issue, and complex, and I don’t propose doing it justice in this post. I just want to acknowledge that it’s an issue affecting all branches of the creative industries and wonder out loud if we can’t jobshare the task of finding local solutions.
Five years ago copryight didn’t get a mention in a journalism curriculum. Now I feel dutybound to raise it, introduce Creative Commons, have discussions about how to use images found on Flickr and Google, and introduce questions to ask yourself when publishing your own work – who do you want to be able to use it, how do you want them to be able to use it, do you want to be credited, how will you enforce your rights and so on.
Libraries and museums, meanwhile, have to track down who holds the copyright on historical images and material, decide what to do if the holder cannot be found, very often seek permission to use the material, and determine how to indicate to end users what they are entitled to do with the material (without making them read dense legislation, clauses and exceptions).
Then there’s the people, like NZ On Screen, who are dealing with archival film and television material who also have to hunt down copyright holders, very often consult dozens of people about a single video clip (producer, director, writers, etc) and manage how end users interact with the material.
Meanwhile there are anomalies in the way we reference material. We think nothing of grabbing a couple of paragraphs from a report or speech or blogpost to include in a news story or essay or artwork, but we tend to feel differently about grabbing a few paragraphs out of an audio or video clip to use in a news story or essay or artwork.
Content ownership, use and licensing isn’t simple. Laws and regulations vary in different jurisdictions, how they’re applied varies even within jurisdictions, and they are often densely written and impenetrable to your average end user. Creative Commons stands out not only for giving content creators simple licences to choose from but also for creating simple icons to describe them that are instantly recognisable.
To extend that kind of simplicity to digital content management in the New Zealand context would be fantastic.
There was also a clearly articulated need for greater education about copyright/fair use issues.
There was a suggestion at the conference that members of the forum should work together on a coherent and simple set of guides/licences/icons for New Zealand.
If that conversation continues, my instinct is that the news media should be involved. I suspect we have insights from our industry to share, and would benefit from learning more about the issues and insights of others.
After all, journalists need cultural and heritage collections for research and should be linking to them for the benefit of readers, and I suspect the news media could learn a lot about managing archives from the GLAM folk.
Visual and digital literacy
Newsrooms everywhere are trying to get journalists comfortable online and competent at storytelling in visual, aural and written forms (video, audio, images, text) so they can get their product out to their customers in whatever format they demand.
Journalism schools are finding ways to do the same while still teaching traditional skills such as writing clearly, checking facts, attributing information, providing context, avoiding ambiguity and being fair and balanced and accurate.
It’s deceptively difficult, in my experience.
You think to yourself, ‘I’ll introduce Flickr, that’s a useful resource’, then find yourself talking about how to shoot images, crop images, caption images and add metadata, search engines 101, how to use software such as Photoshop or Gimp, choose file sizes, understand compression and loss and file types, manage uploads and downloads, collaborate on content creation, use in-house content management systems, manage online accounts and profiles, understand privacy controls, host images for blogs, links, broken links, how to consider copyright and apply and acknowledge it in a variety of scenarios. Phew.
It’s not just newsrooms. The GLAM crowd face similar challenges of bringing their staff up to speed in these and other skills, because they too have to learn how to give their audiences what they want in a variety of engaging formats.
I get the feeling we’re all still finding our way and could use a bit of help.
Making our stuff findable
We can build beautiful, rich websites till the cows come home but they’re no good to anyone if people can’t easily find all that lovely content lurking beneath the homepage. That’s as true for news websites as it is for cultural archives and exhibitions, and it’s a topic that arose often in conversation at the NDF conference.
I’ve been cooling on destination websites for a while. You need to have a destination website, of course, but you need even more to have your content out where your audience is so they can trip over it often and usefully.
I often think it would be nice to create a website from the premise that you publish content all over the web and use the home site to curate it, rather than aggregating/curating first and then pushing out from your home site.
Either way, the big deal in making our content findable is…
Joining the dots
We reinvent the wheel a lot online, and we duplicate content and destinations. That’s partly because we’re all separate organisations doing our own thing. It’s partly because our stuff isn’t findable enough – I often go looking for information and come up empty, even though I know it must be out there somewhere.
But I think it’s also partly because we don’t try hard enough. We don’t allocate enough time for staff to go searching around topic areas, vet what they find, select the most relevant for users’ benefit, and think about how best to link to it.
News websites are perhaps the worst culprits. Some still don’t link out at all, to anything or anyone. Others have begun throwing in a few links to public documents and have finally brought themselves to link to, gosh, YouTube clips that they’re writing stories about. Others are doing a much better job.
But there’s often not enough evidence of news organisations behaving like they’re a member of society. There’s little thought about what a reader coming to a given news story might want to know about its background or what other questions it may raise for them. There’s little interaction with cultural, non-profit, government and other organisations with rich content that would be useful to readers.
There’s often little thought about how to provide useful links – links in stories and listed at the bottom of the page are a great start but how about ways to search other sites from the keywords generated by a news story, a way to book tickets to the show you’ve reviewed, a link to an online bookseller from a book review, a map showing the location of the story topic and a way to click through and explore the location.
Easier said than done, I know, but still.
Those are just a few things chasing round in my mind after the NDF conference. There are many more. We were shown some great sites and exhibitions as well, which I’ll try to collate into another blogpost in a while.

Make it Digital has two awards of up to $10,000

Hi there,
We launched an award a couple of weeks ago - NZ organisations can win one of two $10,000 awards to kick-start their digitisation project!*

Make it Digital has two awards of up to $10,000 on offer for organisations who have NZ content they want to digitise and make easier to find, share and use.

To enter, organisations need to register their Make it Digital project on http://makeit.digitalnz.org/voting and then encourage votes and comments from their community along with completing a supporting application to tell us why the project is important.

Find out more: http://makeit.digitalnz.org/about/award/


*Terms and conditions apply http://makeit.digitalnz.org/about/award/terms-and-conditions

Please feel free to email me if you have any questions.

Cheers,


Jo Eaton
Community Manager
DigitalNZ
http://www.digitalnz.org/
jo.eaton@natlib.govt.nz
Ph 04 474 3134 (ext 8785)

Extramural Short Courses Victoria University

Upcoming Courses2 FebruaryTe Māramatanga: Treaty of Waitangi
3 FebruaryEndnote 1: Managing Your References
5 FebruaryPowerPoint Start
10 FebruaryRisk Managemen
t11 FebruaryExcel Smartskills
17 FebruaryThe Art of Minute Taking
18 FebruaryProject Management for Administrators
18 FebruaryPolitical Marketing
19 FebruaryAchieving Productive and Outcome Focused Meetings

Professional Registration & Revaildation

Using LIANZA Conferences and seminars to support your revalidation activities

The annual LIANZA Conference and other LIANZA activities such as seminars and weekend schools can provide an excellent opportunity to engage in a range of professional development activities which you can record in your journal and use towards revalidation of your professional registration.

Attendance at conference or a weekend school is not just one revalidation activity, it can be several. Conference activities cover all areas of the Body of Knowledge, as well as the different domains of professional practice, particularly Currency of knowledge (attending conference presentations) and Communication and networking, ( knowledge sharing). Conferences and seminars provide a great opportunity to think about the future of the profession and the challenges out there, while learning about new initiatives and best practice examples, and building new networks.

So keep your professional registration requirements in mind when making the case to attend the LIANZA Conference and other seminars, and again once you get there.

Here are some suggestions for how LIANZA Conferences and seminars can help you meet your revalidation requirements:
Identify the papers that are most meaningful to you, and record what it is about that paper that interested you. What did you learn from it, and how have you applied this?
Were there networking opportunities that were particularly useful and which you have followed up?
Are there opportunities to visit other libraries or information centres while at conference? Record any visits that were of particular value.
Are you presenting a paper – remember to record this.
Were you on the organising committee? – What did you learn from this that you can apply to your work? Maybe this counts under the domain of professional leadership.

Use the following form while at Conference to record possible revalidation activities, then complete it and add the detail to your Journal once you get home and have had a chance to reflect on the Body of Knowledge area and the learning outcomes.

Feel free to redesign this form to suit your own preferred way of working. Here is as an example you might use – http://www.lianza.org.nz/library/files/store_024/conference_seminar_attendance_template_revalidation.doc


Revalidation PowerPoint presentation

Recently the LIANZA office has received several questions regarding the revalidation process, mainly completing and maintaining your journals.

If you have any specific questions please email registration@lianza.org.nz otherwise please refer to the revalidation guidelines on the Registration website as there are some useful tips and interesting library life articles. http://www.lianza.org.nz/registration/revalidation.html

In case you haven’t seen the revalidation presentation by Alison Dobbie you can view this here: http://www.lianza.org.nz/registration/files/Professional_Registration_Revalidation_update_Dec_2009.pps

Night Before Christmas

A Politically Correct Christmas Story
'Twas the night before Christmas and Santa's a wreck... How to live in a world that's politically correct? His workers no longer would answer to "Elves". "Vertically Challenged" they were calling themselves. And labour conditions at the North Pole were alleged by the union to stifle the soul. Four reindeer had vanished, without much propriety, Released to the wilds by the Humane Society. And equal employment had made it quite clear That Santa had better not use just reindeer. So Dancer and Donner, Comet and Cupid Were replaced with 4 pigs, and you know that looked stupid! The runners had been removed from his sleigh; The ruts were termed dangerous by the E.P.A. And people had started to call for the cops When they heard sled noises on their rooftops. Second-hand smoke from his pipe had his workers quite frightened. His fur trimmed red suit was called "Unenlightened."And to show you the strangeness of life's ebbs and flows, Rudolf was suing over unauthorised use of his nose And had gone on Geraldo, in front of the nation, Demanding millions in over-due compensation. So, half of the reindeer were gone; and his wife, Who suddenly said she'd enough of this life, Joined a self-help group, packed, and left in a whiz, Demanding from now on her title was Ms. And as for the gifts, why, he'd never had a notion That making a choice could cause so much commotion. Nothing of leather, nothing of fur, Which meant nothing for him. And nothing for her. Nothing that might be construed to pollute. Nothing to aim, Nothing to shoot. Nothing that clamoured or made lots of noise. Nothing for just girls, or just for the boys. Nothing that claimed to be gender specific. Nothing that's warlike or non-pacifistic. No candy or sweets...they were bad for the tooth. Nothing that seemed to embellish a truth. And fairy tales, while not yet forbidden, Were like Ken and Barbie, better off hidden. For they raised the hackles of those psychological Who claimed the only good gift was one ecological. No baseball, no football...someone could get hurt; Besides, playing sports exposed kids to dirt. Dolls were said to be sexist, and should be passe; And Nintendo would rot your entire brain away. So Santa just stood there, dishevelled, perplexed; He just could not figure out what to do next. He tried to be merry, tried to be gay, But you've got to be careful with that word today. His sack was quite empty, limp to the ground; Nothing fully acceptable was to be found. Something special was needed, a gift that he might Give to all without angering the left or the right. A gift that would satisfy, with no indecision, Each group of people, every religion;Every ethnicity, every hue, Everyone, everywhere...even you. So here is that gift, it's price beyond worth... May you and your loved ones, enjoy peace on Earth.

NDF Conference Brief Summary

Lots of people mainly from the "GLAMs"
but other Librarians and IT gurus.

Penny Carnaby (National Library) and John Garraway (NDF Chair)

Daniel opened with a very witty account of the transformation he has overseen of the IMA’s online presence and production. In particular the great use of personalities, narratives and stories told using low cost video but with high production values). He comes from a background like myself of

video production and I totally related to his

insistence on voice, opinion, humour trumping over the technology.
Nina (a woman after my own heart) talked about audience, mostly from the point of view of the physical exhibition but the issues translate to the online world very easily. The spoke of the importance of framing the ‘right’ question as a way to draw people in to an idea. She also got the whole conference on its feet, sharing skills and seeking advise in the one-to-one, with the reward for a a successful skill swap of banging a huge gong hanging on the stage. See the visual evidence of my successful sharing here!

jane Finnis told the story of Culture24 over the last ten years, what we set out to do, what we actually did, what worked, what didn’t and what next. I also looked back on the duplication, lack of strategy, leadership and sustainability in UK digital cultural online. Ending with what I see as possibly the start of some real change in 2009 thanks to the following:
MLA digital principles publishedArts Council state digital opportunity as a key priorityNational Museum directors speak out to say future for museums lies with InternetMA conference, first year they have had a strand on ‘digital change’

You can see the slides of Jane's talk, which are in two parts here: Part One / Part Two.
It seems from the Twitter back channel and the face to face chat that the stories were appreciated, which coming from such a highly skilled and digital literate group of people was a real compliment.
Also enjoyed hearing about the excellent stuff they are doing at the DigitalNZ (part of the National Digital Library). Their work with API’s, data aggregation and date sharing is really innovative for the cultrual sector and I for one an watching their space with interest.
Same applies to the stuff that Liam Wyatt from Wikimedia Australia is talking about concerning how to engage the GLAM sector more effectivly with Wikimedia. His recent blog posts on the low hanging fruit in this area are really interesting.

Karen Kalopulu

The sudden death of Karen Kalopulu is a great loss to Auckland City Libraries, The Library Community and the Family History Community. My condolences to her family.
Karen is well known and respected across many libraries and many community groups and organisations. Karen had attended various conferences over the years Genealogy, and Library related and has made many friends. She is renown for her "Family Lock ins" of which I myself have been part of two of these. Karen has helped thousands with family history help over the years. Her skills, dedication and knowledge were immeasurable.
This is a sad passing and she will be missed by all.

Havelock North Library EXPO

Havelock North Library EXPO was a great sucess with approx 68 people plus Staff in attendance. It was great to see what new books were coming out in the new 2 months. Some great new titles.
We were very priviledged to have children's author Yvonne Morrison as our guest speaker.
Yvonne was born in Auckland in 1972, Yvonne went to primary school in Auckland before the family moved to Wellington. After attending Karori Normal School and Tawa College, Yvonne went on to Victoria University and finally to Wellington College of Education.
Yvonne trained to be a meteorologist, but found the late-night shift work too hard. Then she became a scientist doing research for the university’s physics department. Now Yvonne is a primary school teacher.
Although she started writing stories about the family cats during her primary school years, she did not publish her first book until she was 25 and then it was a science book about microscopes.
Yvonne loved reading children’s books and had lots of ideas for stories spinning in her head but it was while travelling (she has visited 28 countries so far) that she finally found the time to write the ideas down. The way the characters act out scenes in Yvonne’s head often surprises her and she especially enjoys making the readers laugh.
Yvonne’s advice to budding young authors is “Like any skill, writing takes practice. The more you write, the better you’ll become. Read a lot, and notice the way good writers write. Keep a diary of interesting things you notice about people, places or objects. Finally, your teachers are right – editing really is important.

3M Award Finalists

Finalists
Early learning through Active Movement - Auckland City Libraries
Aotearoa People's Network - The National Library of New Zealand and Marlborough District Libraries (on behalf of partner Public Libraries)
Top of the South Stories Project: Te Tau Ihu o te Waka a Maui - Nelson, Tasman and Marlborough Public Libraries, Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology Learning Centre and Nelson Provincial Museum

Great to see what an innovative bunch we are. The winner Winner was APNK
See my Conference Blog for more details http://lianzaconference2009.blogspot.com/2009/10/3m-awards.html