Issue 99

Welcome to Connections 99.

Every year during September and October, SCIS sends out subscription renewals to all schools not covered by a bulk licence arrangement. If you are not on a bulk-deal arrangement and have not yet received your invoice, please ensure your administrators know it will be coming; we occasionally have unfortunate episodes where valuable subscriptions are ignored because other staff aren’t aware of who we are.

This year, we introduced a welcome change for our New Zealand subscribers, with all invoices payable in New Zealand dollars into a New Zealand bank account. Please check the bank details on your invoice and email [email protected] should you have any queries.

SCISWeb Licence

Every SCIS subscriber agreed to the SCISWeb Licence Agreement at the commencement of their SCIS subscription. This document outlines the SCIS terms of use. For example, all subscribers agree to keep their SCIS password confidential and to change it from the original.

As of 15 October 2016, SCIS will be renewing its licence terms. Item 15 in the agreement has been modified: it requires that subscribers will not share certain fields in SCIS records in collective cloud-based catalogues. Item 16 is new: it specifies certain fields in SCIS records that subscribers must not alter or delete. These fields are important for identifying the record and ‘stamping’ its provenance as a SCIS record. This is also important, for example, in identifying records in the ELR survey.

Please read the renewed SCIS Licence Agreement and ensure you are familiar with the agreements you have entered into with SCIS. After 15 October 2016, we will require anyone accessing SCISWeb to acknowledge their understanding of the renewed agreement before using SCIS products and services.

Educational Lending Right (ELR) survey

Speaking of the ELR survey, it is currently in full motion. Many of you have previously participated in this valuable initiative aimed at making the creation of books a viable livelihood for Australian authors, illustrators, and publishers. If you are invited to participate this year, please take the opportunity to support book creators.

International Association for School Libraries

Rachel Elliott (Director, Metadata and Library Services at ESA) and I were fortunate enough to attend the International Association for School Libraries (IASL) conference in Tokyo in late August. It was a unique experience to mix with teacher librarians globally, and with academics concerned with advocacy and advancement of school libraries. We also mingled with some wonderful new Australian friends. At risk of ‘blowing our own trumpet’, we were reminded again what a special and unique treasure Australian and New Zealand school libraries have in SCIS; in no other countries are schools provided with such wholesale access to comprehensive, consistent, and quality library catalogue records.

Connections 100

Finally, I’d like to excite your anticipation of our 100th issue of Connections. It will be released in Term 1 2017, and promises to be a full issue, celebrating the past, present, and future of Connections, SCIS, and school libraries. Nicole Richardson is busy collating content, and I’m greatly looking forward to it.