The SLANSW Regional Representatives on the Committee have agreed to organise an online meeting for those in their regions via the SLANSW Zoom Room. This meeting would offer regional members an opportunity to discuss their needs and to make suggestions for future professional learning that might be organised by SLANSW. We are currently developing a list of dates when the regional representatives will host these meetings and members will be invited to sign-up to both attend and to encourage non-member colleagues to participate in order to witness the benefits of a SLANSW membership.

A generous offer has been made to SLANSW institutional members by Courtney Harvey from Fairfax Media. Access to this offer will be provided in Term 4, the offer applying to subscriptions in 2020.

With no logins, no passwords, and no limits on concurrent users, the subscription to The Sydney Morning Herald, The Financial Review, and The Age would be activated by the school's IP address and the school supplied with URLs that direct users to the digital replica of the day's printed newspapers.

Fairfax Media are offering SLANSW institutional members a 10% discount on the following subscription prices:

Fairfax Media has also generously offered SLANSW one free subscription to the three-papers package and this will be used as a prize in our 2019-2020 membership drive. All those who join or renew their SLANSW institutional membership for 2019-2020 before 30th September will be eligible to go into a lottery for the subscription package that will be drawn at the SLANSW Conference at the State Library of New South Wales on Saturday 19th October.

There are a number of free referencing generators available to assist students to appropriately acknowledge information sources. That said, many such tools come with a heavy advertising component. We are therefore delighted to offer an alternative to schools in which our members work.

Michael Hargreaves from Citemaker has generously offered to provide free-of-charge a SLANSW branded referencing generator whereby schools would be provided their own unique URL (as is provided for paid subscriptions). This offer is available for schools charging less than $5,000 annual tuition fees and with less than 1,000 Year 7 - 12 students.

The free SLANSW branded version of CiteMaker would differ from the full subscription version in that:

A SLANSW version of Citemaker would otherwise have full citation generation capabilities which includes access on multiple platforms, including tablets and smartphones. Our arrangement with Michael Hargeaves is currently being finalised and details of how eligible schools can access the SLANSW Referencing Generator will be sent to members once available.

Off we go…

I just love the start of the year – it’s hectic, it’s crazy, and it’s wonderful.

February is a passing parade of technology and library orientations, of teachers needing resources and services yesterday, and conversations with students about what they read over the holidays and what to read next.

As we start the new year, here are a few websites that I continue to find useful for information about reading and digital technologies:

Common Sense Media 

Digital Technologies Hub 

GCF Global 

National Library of New Zealand 

If you haven’t been accessing Margaret Merga’s compelling and copious research regarding school libraries, the role of teacher librarians, and the state of reading amongst “tweens and teens,” do make it a priority for this term. Also consider networking with other NSW teacher librarians on the Facebook group NSW School Library Matters. This group is an incredibly welcoming, knowledgeable and collaborative group who can help with almost any request. It’s a fabulous arena for professional learning.

by Di Laycock, President

Photo by Austris Augusts on Unsplash