Issue 124

Welcome to the Term 1, 2023 issue of Connections.

SCIS is back on the road in 2023, having restarted running our popular in-person workshops late last year. In November 2022, we undertook our first interstate trip since the pandemic began, running two wonderful workshops in Perth. It was a great chance for us to connect with library staff outside our own city and help them learn how to make the most of SCIS. It was also a chance to share insights and learning gleaned from the pandemic in a collaborative forum. 

SCIS Marketing and Communications Specialist Daniel Czech with Bob Hawke Senior Secondary College librarian Bindy Hammond

We thoroughly enjoyed visiting Perth and extend a special thanks to Bindy Hammond, the librarian at Bob Hawke College, for hosting our workshops in her amazing school, which was constructed in 2018 on the grounds of the old Subiaco Oval. While in Perth, we were lucky to visit Melissa Pettit and Dorothy Millar, who work in the School Library Support program at the Department of Education. It was truly inspiring to see the amazing work they’ve put in to creating a comprehensive set of school library support resources for government schools across Western Australia.

We’ll continue our in-person workshops in Melbourne on February 28th before heading to Queensland to host further workshops prior to the ASLA conference in April. Speaking of the ASLA conference, we’re thrilled to be attending this year’s conference, and also to be sponsoring the ASLA Australian Teacher Librarian Award. The award recognises an Australia teacher librarian who has made an outstanding contribution to the profession of school librarianship. The recipient will receive a $1,000 professional learning grant. Nominations are now open and will close on the February 24th. We encourage anyone who knows an outstanding teacher librarian to consider nominating them for this fantastic award.

We’re also delighted to announce our New Resources Monthly mailing list in 2023. We know that library staff are always looking for compelling new resources to add to their collections, and SCIS catalogues thousands of new resources every year. To help keep you up to date with the newest and most interesting resources we’ve catalogued, SCIS is now offering the opportunity to sign up to receive email updates about new resources. Those who sign up to the mailing list will receive a monthly email containing a curated selection of the latest books, websites and apps we’ve added to our database. We’re incredibly excited to be introducing this new mailing list in 2023. You can sign up via our mailing list signup form.

can sign up via the QR code in this article. Finally, we’d like to say a heartfelt thank you to one of our long-term staff, Dr Ben Chadwick, who moved on to an exciting new career opportunity in Term 4 last year. Ben has worked with SCIS since 2011, beginning as a Metadata Analyst and finishing as the Director of Research and Information. His contribution to SCIS forms the backbone of the quality service to schools we provide today, and we’re incredibly grateful to him for to all his work over the last decade.

We sincerely hope you enjoy this first issue of Connections for 2023. We’re looking forward to working with all the wonderful school staff who use our services both nationally and internationally over the next year and can’t wait to dive in and get cataloguing for you!