Committee member profile's for 2010

Kia ora koutou


Well, another AGM is looming in front of us, and it is with great regret that we farewell two long-standing committee members from Te Upoko o te Ika a Maui; Paddy Plunket, and Anne Thompson.  Paddy and Anne have both been involved with the committee for a number of years and their energy, efforts, advice, conversation, opinion, organising skills and leadership, will be sorely missed by those that remain.


The committee members for October 2009 - October 2010 were:

• Paddy Plunket (outgoing chair)
• Laurinda Thomas (Regional councillor, continuing)
• Anne Thompson (treasurer)
• Gabrielle Hikaka (Te Rōpu Whakahau representative)
• Trish Beamsley (Te Rōpu Whakahau representative)
• Charlotte Clements
• Timothy Greig
• Hana Whaanga

It is with great pleasure that I can introduce FOUR new committee sprockets that have put up their hands to be voted onto the committee for this year's AGM.  Please put your hands together for....

Cherie Shum  

I have been working in libraries for about 10 years, starting with a small school library and then a large public library.  I am currently the Collection Development Acquisitions team leader at the National Library.

I am a registered librarian, graduate of the Aurora Leadership Seminar, a LIANZA mentor and an Associate member of LIANZA.

Tom Avery
I've been engrossed in the world of libraries and LIANZA since 2001. While working in public and academic libraries and studying for library qualifications, I've got to attend lots of great LIANZA events including conference, but also regional events and talks by international speakers. I'm nearing the end of my course and would like to put more into the LIANZA and library communities and make our community buzz. My latest role is in library systems so I'm naturally interested in gadgets and technology, but really I'm interested in how libraries can add value to their customers with these tools. Catch up with me on my blog or on twitter @wifilibrarian.

Kathryn Oxborrow
Hi, I’m Kathryn and I’m from the South Coast of the UK.  I started my library journey as a Library Assistant at Reading University Library and then I did my MA Librarianship at Sheffield University.  For the past nine months I’ve been working at the UK Department of Health as an Assistant Librarian, with involvement mainly with cataloguing and customer services. I’m about to start work at the National Library of New Zealand working as a Collection Management Librarian in the Legal Deposit team.  I’m very excited to get       involved with NZ librarianship.

and
Helen Naismith
My name is Helen Naismith and I have been working in the library profession for 33 years. I started as a young shelver at the Wainuiomata Public Library at the age of 16 then worked my way through several job changes to become a Cluster Manager here at the War Memorial Library today.


My experience is vast and varied having spent many years as a children's and young persons librarian, then in a more senior management role. I completed the NZLA Certificate and was in the very last intake of students doing this course through the Teacher's College in Wellington.


I have almost completed the MLIS papers and have a Diploma in Business from the Open Polytechnic. My interests are reading, dancing, jewellery making, gardening and swimming. I love working in the customer service area and am passionate about libraries, literature and information management.
I would consider it an honour to be part of the LIANZA committee and look forward to meeting everyone and working hard on the behalf of this fine committee.


regards Helen Naismith.

------------------

If you'd like to view the current committee's profiles, who are re-standing (Hana and Charlotte) or hold positions that don't need to be voted for (Laurinda - Regional Councillor, Trish and Gabrielle TRW Representatives), then you can view those here in last years profiles.  


They are last years, so just pretend that we're a little older and a little wiser now and have more strings to our respective bows.


UPDATE
Laurinda thought she'd update hers...


Kia Ora! I’ve been working in the library and information sector since 1998, starting off as a Library Assistant at Massey, then an Assistant Librarian at VUW, before tracking off an on OE to the UK, and working as Consultant for a Library Software company. Coming back to NZ in 2008, I took a role as a Knowledge Analyst, and am now Acting Director of Knowledge Management at the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology (soon to be the Ministry of Science and Innovation).


I joined the Te Upoko regional committee in 2002, and served as secretary from 2003-4. I rejoined the committee in 2009, and the 2009/10 year was my first as the LIANZA Regional Councillor for Te Upoko o te Ika a Maui. I'm now into the second year, and it's proving to be a great experience (see my report for the last year here http://wellingtonregionlianza.blogspot.com/2010/09/councillors-report-200910.html)


In my spare time, I love to poke around in bookshops, and am a big fan of the F1.

Join the Te Upoko region on the LIANZA website and win!

Earlier this year, LIANZA launched it's new website. After a few early technical problems, we've sorted out the major glitches and are making progress on getting the site into great shape for our members (see WAG for more information on this).

We want to make the new site a great place to go with an active community. To do so, we'd like to encourage you all to sign up to the website, and join the Te Upoko o te Ika a Maui group on the Communities page. We've noticed that lots of people have listed the region on their personal profile, but not joined the Te Upoko community group. Our aim is to have all our regional communications going through the website, so we'd like to get as many of you signed up as possible!

As an added incentive, we have $30 book vouchers for two people who join up to the Te Upoko community group between now and Friday 1 October - that's just over 1 week away! We'll randomly draw names from all the new people that join up. It only takes a couple of minutes to do so (instructions below).

We will contact the lucky winners personally, and post the results on the LIANZA website.

Good luck!

To create a new account:

1. Go to http://www.lianza.org.nz
2. Click on 'sign up' in the top right
3. Fill in your details, including selecting 'Te Upoko o te Ika a Maui' as your region. Remember, if you make your profile 'private' we can't count you!
4. Go to your email, and click on the link to complete your registration.

Once you have your account, join the Te Upoko o te Ika a Maui Group:

1. Click on the 'community' tab
2. Click on 'Find Groups'
3. Scroll down to 'Te Upoko o te Ika a Maui' and click on 'Request Membership'
4. Click 'join'. You should now see 'Te Upoko o te Ika a Maui' listed under "My groups" on the left-hand side.

Councillor's Report 2009/10

When I joined the LIANZA National Council last year, we set two strategic priorities - Communication and Advocacy. My first year as the Te Upoko o te Ika Councillor has been focussed on the first of these, particularly in getting out into the wider Wellington region to see library and information staff. As an Association, we haven't always done well at communicating all of the activities that we get up to, and yet we do so much. In going out to the region, I wanted to both let people know what we were doing and find out what members wanted us to do on a local level.

Over the first year, I visited the Upper Hutt, Porirua, Whitireia, Paraparaumu, Otaki and Waikanae libraries, as well as a couple of trips across to the Wairarapa to see librarians from across the district. In all my visits, I was heartened by the amount of goodwill that there was, and their interest in what LIANZA was doing.

While on these visits, I talked about having different areas of the region running their own events with LIANZA Te Upoko support. The philosophy of the current regional committee has very much been that we receive a capitation for all of our regional members, and we want them all to have the benefit of that money. There is a lot of knowledge waiting to be shared in the regional communities, and we want to enable that. Partly, this is pragmatic - we are not an association (or a profession) with scads of cash, so we must group together and learn from each other where that knowledge exists. Also, we are largely an association of volunteers, and as such we all have a limited amount of time and energy. In other words, in learning from each other, we make the most of the association that we're part of.

The Wairarapa group has been proactive in making this happen. They approached the regional committee about forming a 'sub-group' based on geography, in recognition of that need to get together as a group and develop professionally. They're now planning a weekend school for the region next year, and looking forward to the opportunity to both bring great speakers into their area, and showcasing all the best things about the Wairarapa to others.

Over the past year, I've seen the Association involved in a huge amount of "business as usual" including Professional Registration, Conference, Library Week, the LIANZA Children's Book Awards, Press Releases, calls for awards and committees (and facilitating those committees), and CPD as well as submissions on copyright, the Super City and National Archives. Then there are the one-off aspects such as the Centenary publication and events, MOUs with affiliated organisations, and the new Website.

Perhaps the biggest lesson for me as part of the National Council, is how much LIANZA manages to do with so little money, but with so much goodwill from those people who put in their time. During the early part of this year, I initiated a proposal to introduce a volunteer award, which I hope will be introduced next year. My hope is that we can recognise this work, and highlight to people that being a volunteer is rewarding personally and professionally.

In the coming year I hope to continue to visit libraries, particularly to talk about LIANZA's new strategic plan. In our more fiscally constrained times, it's essential that we identify what the most important things are for the profession and concentrate on achieving them, rather than spreading our resources too thinly over a large number of areas. I do think it represents a change for the association, but a positive one and a big step forward that I hope we can all embrace.

Best wishes,
Laurinda

Laurinda Thomas ALIANZA, RLIANZA
Te Upoko o te Ika a Maui Regional Councillor

Annual report 2010

LIANZA
The committee directions for this year were workshopped at the beginning of the year by the committee and activities for 2010 were organised around the focus of career planning and development, retirement planning and fun. 
These included:
*Professor Rowena Cullen's inaugural lecture: 'Why IT Matters: Your health and the public health'
*Guest appearances and sponsorship of a VUW Library studies orientation event
*Using Twitter for Librarians workshop
*A great Xmas dinner at Flying Burrito Brothers attended by 22 members
*8 weeks to Associateship
*BOK seminar
*Centenary Gala Event president present speeches, photos, cake and a showing of Aunt Daisy and the Dancing Cossacks at the NZ Film Archive.
*Meet the Leaders - a speed dating / knowledge workshop format
*Heidi Julien seminar on information literacy research and practice

A coaching/mentoring workshop is planned for October.

We are particularly happy to have supported the formation of a regional group in the Wairarapa with Sandy Green initiating the group. Laurinda visited and Sandy has brought groups over to regional events held in Wellington.

The Committee sadly farewells two pivotal members; Anne Thompson, who has been treasurer for five years or more, and Paddy Plunket who was the regional councillor and has spent the past year in the role of chair.
Laurinda, Charlotte and Hana are returning and Tom Avery is standing for election for the first time.
New committee members are always welcome and thanks to TRW reps Gab and Trish for their ongoing involvement in all events and committee work.

Gig review: Information Literacy with Heidi Julien

It's very very fortunate that we were able to arrange an evening seminar and discussion on Information Literacy with Heidi Julien on Wednesday evening.  Much appreciation and thanks must go to Philip Calvert, Dan Dorner, Timothy and anyone and everyone else in the SIM faculty and community who organised for Heidi to talk with us.

To my recollection, I've never attended a discussion on information literacy with a scholar before, and not to my surprise I found Heidi's discussion quite accessible.

Questions raised afterwards when discussion was opened, were very realistic questions, from the practitioners themselves, such as this bit of reality from a librarian at Victoria University,

"Can we call it something else?" [to lure them in] 

(verifying this for accuracy when Twitter is back up)


A great time was had by all, I'm sure.  And I managed to snaffle a colleague at my workplace away from apathy to make the venture into town with me!  Also, I finally met Tom Avery face to face, whom I've been communicating with on the Twitterverse, which was cool.  And of course, lots of networking was had by all.

I must mention that Tom raised a good question in his tweet:

"Is information literacy a social construct?"

(verifying this for accuracy when Twitter is back up)


A valid point that was seconded by others listening in.

One overriding and pertinent question Heidi posed to the group (of 35+) regarded the difference between scholarship in informaiton literacy and what practitioners are wanting out of the research.  Is the information researched usable?  Or is the gap between scholars and practitioners too big?

What are your thoughts?  Tell us what you think