2008

The 2008 membership details are now available on our Membership page.

One of the benefits of joining ISLA is that there will be other, smaller meetings and get-togethers for ISLA members during the year.

At our first meeting of the year, we drew up a calendar for the year. We made a decision to include informal networking opportunities by scheduling a meeting once a term. There will be no formal agenda for these meetings. We feel that there is still a great need for teacher librarians and library assistants to share experiences over a cuppa.

Following is a list of activities planned for the year. Please note the following dates in your diary:

Term 1:

Tuesday, 8th April: 6.30pm. Dinner at Top Choice in Wollongong (Corner of Market and Corrimal Streets).

Term 2:

Wednesday, 21st May: Networking afternoon tea. 4pm at Wollongong Public School library.

Wednesday, 11th June: Professional Development Day at Dapto High School.

Term 3:

Thursday, 7th August. Networking afternoon tea. 4pm at Wollongong Public School library. Great chance to discuss and share any Book Week ideas.

Term 4:

Professional Development Day: date and venue to be advised.

Wednesday, 5th November. Networking afternoon tea. 4pm at Wollongong Public School library.

Office Bearers 2008

President: Margaret Cooper

Vice President: Jane Pretty

Minutes Secretary: Fiona McKay

Correspondence Secretary: Jenny Kay

Treasurer: Celia Owen

Primary Rep:

Secondary Rep: Di Ridley

Non-Government Schools Rep: Trish Atkinson

Web Master: Wendy Dawson

Presidents Report 2007

ISLA has had a very successful year in 2007. It has now been three years since we started organising Professional Development Days for teacher librarians and their school assistants. It is evident that we have established a reputation for providing relevant, needs-based, practical information to assist teacher librarians to improve their teaching and management practices in Illawarra schools as attendance figures have risen this year.

Our first Professional Development Day for the year was held on the 19th June at Fairy Meadow Demonstration School. A very comprehensive program was offered which included Victoria Clay speaking about engaging boys in the library; Joy Lawn with her excellent ideas for using the Shortlisted books for Bookweek; June Wall who presented her “All my own work” workshop to Secondary teacher librarians and two local presenters in Brendan Barr and Sharon McGuiness who showed us many interesting web sites to use with students. To conclude the day, Debora Abela proved to be a very entertaining and energetic author. A total of 116 people attended the day.

In addition we organised an after school information session at Keiraville PS with Doug Jenkins to explain the changes that we would see when Thin Client was installed on computers in Government schools. The large turnout indicated that we were providing vital information to our teacher librarians to help them prepare for the changeover to Thin Client.

Our second Professional Development Day was held on 23rd October at Shellharbour Public School. This was the first time that Library Assistants were invited to attend the whole day. There were some practical workshops at the start of the day, in which Primary and Secondary teacher librarians were able to share their teaching and management tips followed by two sessions presented by Kevin Hennah. Kevin’s ideas for transforming the physical aspects of the library to make it more appealing to library users was a big hit, with many of us going back to our schools and making changes to improve our libraries to better meet the needs of our students and teachers. The day concluded with local author, Bill Condon giving us some samples of his work and a taste of his dry sense of humour.

The feedback, together with an attendance figure of 124, proves that we are providing the right sort of assistance and networking opportunities that teacher librarians require. These days would not be possible without the dedication, support and efforts of our ISLA executive and planning committee.

We also made small changes to our constitution to update it and make it more relevant to current needs. We changed the name from Illawarra School Librarians Association to the Illawarra School Libraries Association, as a way of catering for a broader membership base to include library assistants and others who are interested in school librarianship. Our current membership numbers 53.

An important achievement for the year was the launch of our own professional website -www.isla.org – thanks to Wendy Dawson. Establishing our own website gives us more opportunities to provide a worthwhile service to our members.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the privilege of being President in 2007. I think ISLA is in a very healthy state thanks to the teacher librarians who have selflessly given their own precious time to contribute to our organisation this year.

Margaret Cooper
President 2007