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

Gig review: Meet the Leaders

Kia ora koutou!

Dude! I should've posted this a while ago, but here 'tis:

A big thank you to all involved - invited and attendees at the Meet the Leaders event on Friday evening.  It was awesome and with thanks to Ross Becker we have some fantastic photos of the event.

Chris Szekely, Chief Librarian of the Alexander Turnbull Library

Sue Sutherland Deputy Chief Executive, National Library and Acting Director, National Digital Library

Mark Crookston, Senior Advisor, Appraisal, Archives New Zealand and Secretary, Wellington Branch Archives and Records Association of New Zealand

Anahera Mōrehu  Kaiwhakahaere Māori me Moana-nui-ā-Kiwa (Manager Māori and Pasifika Services), University of Auckland and Incoming Tumuaki, Te Ropu Whakahau

Gabrielle and I took part too...

while Laurinda was the bell-ringer looking on...

A great night was had by all.  Thank you to Gabrielle Hikaka and TPK for the venue and fellow committee members principally responsible for putting this together and holding it together on the night - Laurinda :)

Here's to a roadshow of this around the regions!

Peace out

Meet the Leaders

Kia ora koutou!


We have an exciting opportunity coming up for you to "meet the leaders" in the Wellington library and information management field.  Ever wondered how Chris Szekely got the top job of Chief Librarian of the Turnbull?  Or what Jane Hill is going to attack first in her role as incoming LIANZA president?

This is your chance to meet and ask questions of some of the leading names in the sector, all in one convenient location.

How does it work?

In order to meet all our leaders, the evening will run to a "speed-dating" format in small groups. Each leader will chat with 3-4 people at a time. When the bell goes (every 6-8 minutes), you move along! Have questions for our leaders? Bring them along. Feeling tongue-tied? Not to worry, we'll supply some starter questions for you. And be prepared for the leaders to ask you questions as well!

When is it?

Friday 2 July, 5.30pm for a 6pm start.

Where is it?

Te Puni Kokiri, 143 Lambton Quay, Wellington

Who are the leaders?

• Jane Hill, Manager, Wellington City Libraries, and incoming LIANZA President Elect
• Sue Roberts, University Librarian, Victoria University of Wellington
• Sue Sutherland, Deputy Chief Executive, National Library and Acting Director, National Digital Library
• Anahera Morehu, Kaiwhakahaere Māori me Moana-nui-ā-Kiwa (Manager Māori and Pasifika Services), University of Auckland and Incoming Tumuaki, Te Ropu Whakahau
• Chris Szekely, Chief Librarian of the Alexander Turnbull Library
• Mark Crookston, Senior Advisor, Appraisal, Archives New Zealand and Secretary, Wellington Branch Archives and Records Association of New Zealand
• Susanna La Rue, Wellington Medical Librarian, University of Otago
• Moira Fraser, Group Manager, Information and Knowledge, Parliamentary Service

Please RSVP to laurinda.thomas@morst.govt.nz by Tuesday 29th June... aww hell you can e-mail her any time you like, just take up this opportunity!  Where else but possibly at a LIANZA conference would you get these people in the same room??


And all for you!


Those details again....:


"Meet the Leaders"
5.30pm - 7.30pm Friday 2nd of July
Te Puni Kōkiri - 143 Lambton Quay


See you there!

PUBLIC EVENT: Bob McKee on "Why Public Libraries Must Be Free"

Hey guys

Yes, there's been a bit of planning and discussion on this one, but Mike from the LIANZA office, Helen from APLM (Association of Public Library Managers) and Myself have managed to pull it together and finally, properly advertise this event!!

Who: Bob McKee the Chief Executive of CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) of the UK.  Pretty noteworthy person I'd say!  Here's a link to some info about him.

When: Tues 25th May 2010 5:30pm for a 6pm start with a 7pm finish

Where: Lecture Theatre 1, Old Government Buildings, Victoria University Law School, Entrance off Stout Street

Why? We felt that the Wellington Public needed to be informed of WHY PUBLIC LIBRARIES MUST BE FREE!

Be there, or be square.  Man.


Oh, and here's a reference list in case you wanted some pre-requisite reading on the subject (this list may be added to closer to the event):

• Closing the books on Libraries : Werewolf (division of Scoop?), written by Gordon Campbell
• Diligent Room post : Blissfully Ignorant : Library Charges, by Michael Parry @dannevirklib

UPDATE

The audio-visual of Bob's talk (starting with Laurinda's introduction!) is available here: http://bit.ly/aWkHRu

(cheers Mike - @lianzaoffice)

LIANZA's new website : a successful rebirth

After much discussion, consultation, debate and time, the refreshed LIANZA website is now live.  The launch was just five days ago, on Thursday the 15th of April with a public notice to the community being sent out on nz-libs the following afternoon.  A nice and exciting way to round out the working week I thought.

Michael Parry, aka Dannevirkelibrarian, was the first to put up a forum post, utilising the new website's functionality, which I thought was brilliant.  So brilliant in fact that I manage to comment three times.  See, it has been noted that there are a few kinks, and things lacking that are quite vivid in the new website.  And we're all a bit sad about it of course, us techno dudes and dudettes or whatever the cool term is these days.  Well the three people that have contributed to the site in the five days that it's been live, are a wee bit sad anyway.

I have to say that I think we, (ok, maybe some of us) had/have unrealistically high expectations for the relaunch.  I was too-ing and fro-ing between putting high hopes or high expectations there, but I went with the latter purely because it really is my expectations.  Hope's makes it a bit more emotive and lets just say here that I can't really get tooo emotive about a professional organisation, however long it's been around.  Anyway, the LIANZA office has approximately 6 staff, possibly 4 full-timers.  It's amazing that this redevelopment happened, and it's totally fantastic that it did.  I'm happy.

I'm quite stoked to say right now, that in this short post, I've managed to link to the new website and the information it contains (including social discussion between industry professionals) a total of four times!
That's quite cool, and it's already proving it's relevance.  I know I could've done that with the previous site's content, possibly even more so.... (rebirth kinks etc), but the fact that conversation and discussion is happening on the site already, is awesome.

Speaking of conversation and discussion and sharing, we now have a totally cool Twitter account.  Yes kids, that's right. Te Upoko o te Ika a Maui LIANZA is on Twitter!  Can I link to it again?  OK, sure, here goes :)

And here's the profile without doing an a href - http://twitter.com/teup0ko

If you're wondering what Twitter is all about, wow, have I got some news for you....!  Why don't we start with their about page on their website, that's always a good start.  Yes, that is slanted, ok, so how bout we look at this review I wrote of a twitter workshop Magalie of Wellington City Libraries and Twitter fame held last month?

Oh, and if you're with SLIS - they have a twitter account too - http://twitter.com/SLIS_NZ.

So come on and join us in the conversation!  We won't bite, I promise :-)