From the Editor

 I've been telling myself I really must write a thought-piece on advocacy on my personal website, if only to make the tag larger and more prominent, which is logical really.

To me, advocacy is about speaking out for what is good and right in your opinion.

Read more...

From the President

"Kia ora koutou
Earthquake recovery and getting back to some semblance of normality (or the “new normal”) continues to be our focus here in Christchurch, so I thought it would be good to share some of the progress we have been making.."

Read more here...

LIANZA Activity

* Council are seeking nominations for a number of council positions at LIANZA.  Click here for more details

* New blog post: "39 professional development opportunities" from Janet Upton and Beryl Anderson from the Professional Registration Board

* Reminder: Expressions of interest are sought for the position of Editor of the NZLIMJ. View the position description here, and e-mail Alli if you are interested please.  EOIs close 30th April.

Feature Articles

Sean the Storyteller
Gamification: the new graphic novel

Sally Pewhairangi
Inspire me with your vision for libraries

Donna Watt
News from SLANZA

Regional news and events

* SLIS North event reviews

* Auckland event tonight, (Tuesday) "Breathe Life into your presentations..."

* Ikaroa's report back on their Professional Revalidation evening

* Te Upoko o te Ika a Maui event with ARANZA tomorrow night: "Christchurch Earthquake Fundraiser Quiz Night"

* Te Upoko o te Ika a Maui reports on what last year's recipient of the $750 Hydestor award did with their money...

* Want $750 towards your professional development? (Te Upoko region only sorry!)
 

CatSIG sponsorship opportunity

Are you thinking about studying in 2011?
You may be currently completing a library qualification or looking for professional development opportunities.

CatSIG is offering two opportunities for sponsorship.
Read more here...

News from the School of Information Management, VUW

Every year the School of Information Management gives prizes and awards to students who have excelled in their studies. Instead of just providing a list of the 2010 prize winners, this time we have collected comments from some of them.

Read more here...

Of interest (internets - local)

* There was much feedback from Mike's outoing blog post with our last issue, including several references to exotic lizards.  In my daily internet browsing and feed reading, I have since come across a reference to Mike's post by friend and colleague Tom Avery.  Have a read of his post "L is for LIANZA: What's that? Some kind of exotic lizard?" part of an A-Z blogging challenge for the month of April.

* It's Records and Archives Week soon! (1-7 May 2011) Check out the programme of events here which is being updated as I type! [thank you Kirsty]

* Sally Pewhairangi, one of our Librarylife regular columnists, has an excellent daily information resource at her website.  It's called "The Daily News" and uses the hashtag #nzlibraries on Twitter.  Seriously, it's good, you must check it out for yourself!

Of interest (internets - wider)

* Librarians: Masters of the Universe, an article from CNN honouring those who help us. Us in fact!  [thank you to the many people who helped this surface on Twitter and to Philip van Zijl for sending it to the nz-libs list-serv in his Friday Frivolity series]

* Applications for the latest Aurora Institute for merging leaders program are now open! New format, new look, new facilitators. Many past attendees are now the leaders of the library world...
[thanks Sue Sutherland]

* OCLC's Asia Pacific Regional Council election results, April 2011.  Alison Elliot, Director of Content Services at the National Library has been appointed as an Executive Member to this prestigious Council - Congratulations!

Special notice to all members: LIANZA's online community membership policy

In 2009 LIANZA Council authorised the development of a new website which would include forums and on-line communities. One of the drivers for this was to make networking with other library and information professionals accessible to all members and not solely reliant on regional/national face to face events.

At the time, Council debated the issue of member only sections of the website and the agreed philosophy was that the information on the website be free for all but that participation in the forums and on-line community discussions would be a member only benefit.

The launch of the new website was somewhat delayed and with a few early teething problems the member only benefit was inadvertently overlooked. We are now revisiting this and contacting those who have signed up but are not currently members of LIANZA or our partner Te Roopu Whakahau and encouraging them to join over the next month. Those who choose not to do so will have their profiles removed.

The sign up process has been changed to make a membership number mandatory. TRW members will need to be verified through TRW and therefore there may be a delay of several days before LIANZA can authorise the profile. A previous post about website access was made earlier this year and you may refer to it here.

A final giggle

We had a couple of worthy submissions to this week's final giggle.  

* The first from Kristine in Lower Hutt is more just a cool youtube video, "Lego Matrix: Trinity help!"  Check it out here

* The Smell of Books - an interesting concept...

Library Life #356

19 April 2011

ISSN# 1176-8088

Please send any feedback to:
The Editor
hana.whaanga@gmail.com