Exciting news from SCIS!

Our Authority Files can now be automatically imported into Softlink’s Oliver V5 library management system with a single click via our API. This new feature saves time for library staff who no longer need to manually import the files.

Authority Files enhance your catalogue records by creating “see” and “see also” references, helping you and your school community discover relevant resources. Think of it as making your catalogue smarter!

Our expert cataloguers create name, subject, and series reference linkages that extend your search results to include resources that may not directly match your search term, but are still relevant (E.g. “Disasters” will also show you Shipwrecks or Disaster Relief so you can find more specific or related resources). This creates a “rich” search experience and provides easier access to the resources you’ve carefully curated to aid learning and development.

Oliver V5 users can set up the SCIS API to import Authority Files automatically using parameters 7324 -7327 to set up the import. See below information:

• 7324, ‘SCIS Authorities Automatic Import’,enables the new automatic import.
• 7325, ‘SCIS Authorities Automatic Import Options’,the same options as available when manually importing a MARC Authority file.
• 7326, ‘SCIS Authorities Automatic Import Frequency’, how often the process is run as part of nightly housekeeping. This defaults to every 6 months.
• 7327, ‘SCISAuthorities Automatic Import Type’, the same options as available when manually importing a MARC Authority file.

In addition to the new parameters, two existing parameters (7320 and 7321) are also used for this functionality:

• 7320, ‘SCIS Username’,available from SCIS for use with their API.
• 7321, ‘SCIS Password’,available from SCIS for use with their API.

If you need help completing the process, you can contact Softlink at support@softlinkint.com.

Once set up, there will be no need to import manually, and you can simply enjoy the benefits of Authority Files through features like Oliver’s cataloguer display. This display provides clickable links to broader, narrower, and related terms, as well as series references. See the example screenshot below:

We’re excited that Oliver V5 users will now be able to enrich their catalogues through Authority Files without needing to lift a finger! If you’re an Oliver V5 user and Authority Files subscriber, we highly recommend setting up automatic Authority Files import today. SCIS would like to thank Softlink for implementing this new feature, making library management easier.

Don’t subscribe to our Authority Files yet? No problem! Our friendly customer service team is here to help. Contact us at help@scisdata.com or any of the phone numbers listed on our website to learn more about the benefits and how to get started.

Education is an important part of reconciliation. Making sure your school community has access to resources that can help them learn about our shared culture and history supports and strengthens our ability to build a better community for all Australians.

To help you expand your library collection to include more new resources about and by First Nations people, here are six resources we’ve catalogued over the last year.

First Knowledges Law: The way of the ancestors

Marcia Langton & Aaron Corn

SCIS number 5448393

Law is culture, and culture is law. Given by the ancestors and cultivated over millennia, Indigenous law defines what it is to be human. Complex and evolving, law holds the keys to creating resilient, caring communities and a life in balance with nature.

Marcia Langton and Aaron Corn show how Indigenous law has enabled people to survive and thrive in Australia for more than 2,000 generations. Nurturing people and places, law is the foundation of all Indigenous societies in Australia, giving them the tools to respond and adapt to major environmental and social changes. But law is not a thing of the past. These living, sophisticated systems are as powerful now as they have ever been, if not more so.

Country tells us when …

Tsheena Cooper, Mary Dann, Dalisa Pigram-Ross & Sheree Ford ; translation by the Mabu Yawuru Ngan-Language Centre

SCIS number 5443458

Some cultures around the world have four seasons that they look out for on a calendar; summer, autumn, winter and spring. The Yawuru mob don’t have four seasons that are told through a calendar. They have six seasons and Country tells the Yawuru people when they have arrived by what can be felt, seen, tasted, smelled and heard.

The Voice to Parliament Handbook: All the detail you need

Thomas Mayo & Kerry O’Brien, cartoons by Cathy Wilcox

SCIS number 5449162

Indigenous leader Thomas Mayo and acclaimed journalist Kerry O’Brien have written this handbook to answer the most commonly asked questions about why the Voice should be enshrined in the Australian Constitution, and how it might function to improve policies affecting Indigenous communities and genuinely close the gap on inequalities at the most basic level of human dignity.

Looking after Country with fire: Aboriginal burning knowledge with Uncle Kuu

Victor Steffensen, illustrations by Sandra Steffensen

SCIS number 5441515

Join Uncle Kuu as he takes us out on Country and explains cultural burning. A timely story of understanding Australia’s ecosystems through Indigenous fire management, and a respectful way forward for future generations to help manage our landscapes.

The Queen is Dead

Stan Grant

SCIS number 5449211

‘History is not weighted on the scales, it is felt in our bones. It is worn on our skin. It is scarred in memory. ‘The Queen reigned for seventy years. She came to the throne at the height of Empire and died with the world at a tipping point.’

What comes next after the death of what Stan Grant calls ‘the last white Queen’? From one of our most respected and award-winning journalists, Stan Grant, The Queen is Dead is a searing, viscerally powerful, emotionally unstoppable, pull-no-punches book on the bitter legacy of colonialism for Indigenous people.

William Cooper: an Aboriginal life story

Bain Attwood

SCIS number 5445080

William Cooper’s passionate struggle against the dispossession of Aboriginal people and the denial of their rights, and his heroic fight for them to become citizens in their own country, has been widely commemorated and celebrated. By carefully reconstructing the historical losses his people suffered and endured, this book reveals how the first 70 years of Cooper’s life inspired the remarkable political work he undertook in the 1930s.

Ahead of our webinar on developing your library collection with SCIS, cataloguer Mavis Heffernan previews some of the ways you can use SCIS as a collection development tool. Register for the webinar today for in-depth advice on how to use the tools covered below.

A subscription to the SCIS database provides much more than bibliographic records for school libraries. With access to more than 1.6 million bibliographic records, the database is also a means of support for teachers, providing a valuable view of curriculum resources.

At present, there is an increasingly overwhelming number of print and digital curriculum resources available for teachers. However, due to their heavy workloads, teachers are finding that they do not have time, or the expertise, to find specific resources relevant to their needs. Because of this, it is becoming more important for teacher librarians to search and analyse content efficiently in order to support teachers and provide them with access to a wide range of resources. This is where access to the SCIS database can help.

When I was in a school library, I established a Current Awareness service for teachers, using information from what was then the Victorian Education Department’s Central Cataloguing service. This was done on a very small scale. I began by contacting teachers at the school, asking if they would like to have information about available resources for their curriculum planning. This information was accessed mainly from bibliographic records in the Central Cataloguing service. Teachers were notified monthly, using printed lists, and were then able to use the resources already in the school library or to request that additional resources be purchased.

Today, using the SCIS database makes a ‘Current Awareness’ service much easier, both for teacher librarians and teachers. For example, teachers could complete an online form, detailing their curriculum areas of interest, as well as other relevant information, such as resources for professional development. The teacher librarian, or other library staff, then do an advanced search of the SCIS database for bibliographic records of relevant recent resources. This search would include learning area, subject headings, year level, print and digital resources, as well as fiction and nonfiction resources. The summaries in the bibliographic records can also be very useful for resource selection.

In addition, URLs are included for websites and apps, so that staff can click through to a website or app from its catalogue record. Here are some examples of how SCIS records can be used in a Current Awareness service.

1. The SCIS database, with its curated collection of more than 1.6 million bibliographic records, gives teachers and teacher librarians access to view resources to use for planning curriculum content, planning projects and professional development. For example, the ClickView digital video library features more than 13,500 videos; the Wheelers ePlatform has ebook and audiobook records, fiction and nonfiction, for Australian, New Zealand and UK schools at both primary and secondary level; and there are records from the National Library of New Zealand. There are also records, for secondary level, from Massolit.
2. A wide range of records for teacher reference resources are available from the SCIS database. These resources are especially useful for teacher professional learning. There are also useful websites for supporting teachers. Some recent examples include: Responding to students’ trauma disclosures (foundationhouse.org.au); Music teacher resources (music-teacher-resources.com); and Educational resources about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures (ABC Education).There are also more than 900 apps available. Examples of recent apps include: Planboard: lesson planners for teachers (apple.com); TinyTap: kids’ learning games (apple.com); and Move ease (nsw.gov.au).
3. The SCIS database is also very useful for primary school teachers who wish to select class sets of reading materials. A search by the subject headings ‘Reading materials’ and ‘Levelled readers’, and by publisher, such as Sunshine Books and Decodable Readers Australia, will provide access to view a large range of up-to-date print and digital resources.
4. The SCIS database can also be used as a buying tool or resource selection tool for teachers, as well as teacher librarians. When a search of the database is completed and a list of resources is produced, the teacher will then be able to request these resources to be purchased for use in the library or classroom, and can download the SCIS records for these resources in anticipation of their arrival.

By being proactive, initiating current awareness, and producing specifically curated lists from the SCIS database, school librarians can enhance the efficiency and impact of their collection development practices.

SCIS cataloguer Laura Iseman writes about her career as a librarian, and what she loves about cataloguing.

As is common with many librarians, I loved reading as a child. I had a respectable collection of books, and I organised them on my shelves by how much I liked them. This was perhaps not the best system, but I knew where they all were.

My love of books led me to make them my career, and my first professional position was as a children’s librarian in a public library. In those days, it was not yet common for records to be imported. So adding items to the collection meant the individual creation of all records and the children’s collection was my responsibility.

Because I was cataloguing all the new acquisitions, I was very familiar with the collection. When working with children visiting the library I knew what the latest trends were and could let them know what was available. I liked knowing that my work meant students could easily find the resources they were looking for.

In addition to the fun of looking at all the new books, I also enjoyed the process of cataloguing. I am a process worker by nature, and I like categories. Every book is different, but the fundamental structure of the catalogue record doesn’t change. I enjoy the challenge of choosing the best terms and classification for each resource, to give the people looking for them the best chance of finding what they want.

I progressed from cataloguing only children’s books to working on the full collection and then to working in academic libraries. By this time, many records were available online. But there were always those obscure or very new titles that needed a full record made. At the university this, of course, included the research output of the students and staff.

Cataloguing theses can be a real challenge, particularly doctorate theses. I was very grateful to have access to Google when I was working on them. I am not a trained scientist, and sometimes I needed to look up all the words in the thesis title to be sure I was assigning the right subjects. This also exposed me to a range of topics I would never have chosen to investigate. I know more about microbiology than I ever expected to know, and for a while I was quite up to date on research into the prevention of malaria. Higher mathematics, however, remains a mystery to me. Cataloguing academic theses did give me some idea of just how broad this topic can be.

Works in the humanities were closer to my interests, and I appreciated the new ideas that I saw expressed. One, in particular, that has remained with me was a study of Jewish immigrants to Melbourne in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I was interested in the discussion of the ways that religious practices and dietary restrictions helped to maintain the community as distinct from society at large. So much of our social bonding happens over food, it is difficult to develop intimate relationships with people if you can’t eat together.

My career as a cataloguer has come full circle and I am once again working on resources for children and young adults. I am enjoying the fact that these titles rarely contain words I don’t know. I can delight in seeing new picture books and be reminded of old favourites as they are re-issued.

The daily pattern of my work now is one I could not have imagined when I first started. The idea that I could make quality records without having the items in hand would have been bewildering when I first started cataloguing. The fundamental process is still the same though, and I still find satisfaction in knowing that I am helping many people in their search for knowledge, enlightenment, or a cosy read to enjoy before bedtime.

Thinking about doing a stocktake or audit of your library collection at any time can be a daunting task. Some librarians and staff may find they’ve inherited a large and aging collection. And you may get the feeling that if you remove too many things, you’ll be left with hardly any resources at all!

But never has the concept of ‘quality over quantity’ been more true or important than when we’re talking about decolonising Australian school library collections. If you’ve felt that your school library may contain materials about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples that are out of date, factually incorrect and even offensive, but have been too overwhelmed by the scope of the task of dealing with them, you may find this guide helpful.

1. Get yourself into the mindset

If you haven’t already read it, this article in our Connections school library journal might inform and inspire you. It describes the first-hand experiences of a teacher librarian and a First Nations parent when they embarked on a similar project.

• How an old book created a commitment to better represent First Nations Australians

2. Assembling your criteria for the assessment of resources

You need to set some parameters to help you decide what to keep and what to remove from your collection. The good news is many others have already considered this! There’s a seminal set of criteria written by the Curriculum Corporation; a shorter set of guidelines developed by the Queensland Museum; and a guide written by Narragunnawali which amalgamates the two.

You can use these documents to develop a set of criteria that is appropriate and usable for your specific needs.

• Evaluating resources guide, Narragunnawali; Reconciliation in Education
• Selecting and evaluating resources, Queensland Government
• Evaluating resources, Queensland Museum

3. Deciding where to begin

You may wish to break the project up into stages, especially if you have a big collection. This might mean looking at sectioning off parts of your project into categories like:

• Fiction
• Non-fiction
• Picture books
• Big books
• Teacher resources
• Readers
• Audiobooks
• Audiovisual material

You may also need to break up non-fiction into sections. If you use Dewey, consider beginning with:

• 200 – Religion. (If you use SCIS, you’ll find resources relating to Indigenous spirituality at 298)
• 300 – Social Sciences
• 900 – History and Geography

These Dewey classifications are where you’re likely to find the bulk of your resources about First Nations peoples of Australia.

4. Assembling your team

If you only have a small collection, you may be able to tackle this job on your own, bit by bit. But if you have a larger collection you may need help. If you’re able, perhaps you can call on teaching staff to help out at certain times. Your parent community may also be able to help – and maybe even people from the local community too. This is where your carefully crafted criteria for assessment of resources will come in handy – it will ensure everyone is on the same page!

You may also like to do an initial sweep of your collection, and then have a team of ‘reviewers’ who are familiar with your assessment criteria, who can double check the resources you are keeping and discarding. This can be a good way of checking you are on the right track, and of making the job a community endeavour.

5. Get started!

Things are always busy in a school library and the ‘right’ time might not just jump out at you – so you will have to make it happen. Perhaps you could have a working bee, and get lots done in one fell swoop…or perhaps you might make it a project the team might work on over a term, or even several terms, in between other work. But the most important thing you can do is just to get started! Every small step you take towards this goal is a positive one, even if there are missteps along the way.

6. Use your Criteria for Assessment as a basis for selection criteria for new resources

Just because a resource has been recently published doesn’t mean that it will automatically fit your revised criteria! Make sure you have a clear idea of what types of resources you want to add to your collection. Some libraries have a policy, for example, of only purchasing new resources about First Nations peoples if they are authored by First Nations peoples – or if they are endorsed by First Nations communities. You may like to preference resources published by First Nations publishers; or you may see, after auditing your collection, that there are gaps in your collection that need filling. Adding some detail around selecting First Nations materials in your Collection Development policy will help you stay on track with your goal of maintaining a decolonised collection.

We hope you’ve found this guide helpful, and that you are inspired to get started on your own project. The last thing to emphasise here is that we must take responsibility, as librarians and educators, to ensure we are informed and able to make sensitive and considered decisions about what is contained in our collections, without deferring responsibility and mental load to others. It is up to us to get started and begin this work – and there’s no better time for that than now.

We’d love to hear about your own experiences – if you’ve started, had blockers, or managed to complete an audit of your own. Please add your comments or send us an email telling us your story.

The month of October is International School Library Month. This year’s theme is reading for global peace and harmony. SCIS Cataloguing Team Leader Ceinwen Jones has some great suggestions for developing your library collections in support of this theme.

On first impressions, the International School Library Association seems to be setting some lofty aims for this year.

But isn’t reading for global peace and harmony what teacher librarians have been promoting since school libraries began? That is, providing materials that give students a chance to be transported to other worlds, and generating knowledge, understanding and appreciation for achievements, peoples, cultures and lives that are different to their own.

This ongoing work is surely a powerful and important step towards global peace and harmony.

What, then, is the best way to focus our resources on better achieving this goal? First, we must ensure our collections reflect the diversity of our communities, both local and global. By providing and promoting access to a variety of voices and perspectives, we can celebrate the ways diversity enhances our lives.

Here are five recently catalogued titles reflecting diversity, easily found using the search function in the SCIS database – an excellent tool for developing your collection!

Indigenous Australian history from the perspective of a First Nations female historian

Sister girl: Reflections on Tiddaism, identity and reconciliation

Jackie Huggins

SCIS number: 5396925

A new edition of Murri historian and activist Jackie Huggins’s seminal Tiddaist classic, featuring timely and compelling speeches and essays. The pieces in this collection represent almost four decades of writing, including essays, speeches and interviews. They combine both the public and the personal in a bold trajectory tracing one Murri woman’s journey towards self-discovery and human understanding. As a widely respected cultural educator and analyst, Huggins offers an Aboriginal view of the history, values and struggles of Indigenous people. Sister Girl reflects on many important and timely topics, including identity, activism, leadership and reconciliation. It challenges accepted notions of the appropriateness of mainstream feminism in Aboriginal society and of white historians writing Indigenous history. Jackie Huggins’s words, then and now, offer wisdom, urgency and hope.

Learning about pronouns

The pronoun book

Chris Ayala-Kronos and Melita Tirado

SCIS number: 5415913

They, she, he … all together, us! Join along in this vibrant board book’s joyful celebration of people and their pronouns. How do you know what someone wants to be called? Ask! This lively board book features illustrations of a diverse cast of people and simple text that introduces their pronouns.

Celebrating neurodiversity

Wired differently: 30 neurodivergent people who you should know

Joe Wells and Tim Stringer

SCIS number: 5411451

Covering the spectrum of neurodiversity, the book features a range of inspirational people, from actors and entertainers, to athletes and activists, and shows young neurodiverse readers that often what makes you different can be your key to success. The chapters feature biographies that expand to cover a broad range of themes, such as the importance of lived experience in discussions of neurodiversity, challenging stereotypes, representation and creativity.

A celebration of our diverse world

A world for me and you: where everyone is welcome

Uju Asika and Jennie Poh

SCIS number: 5408759

Imagine a world where everyone looks identical, where all food tastes the same, where we all speak the same language. A world that is … well, pretty boring. This picture book encourages inclusion, acceptance and kindness, and invites readers to imagine the world as a vast library with room on the shelves for everybody’s story. It is a celebration of our incredibly diverse world as it really is: home to 195 countries, thousands of different cultures, 10 million colours, 6,500 different languages and 4,300 religions.

Diversity toolkit for teachers and librarians

Infobase’s diversity toolkit

edited by Sam Elkin [and three others]

SCIS number: 5419894

Celebrating diversity in the community helps foster a sense of respect, equity and inclusion. This website gathers a wealth of content and digital tools – including expert-led webinars, blogs and relevant Infobase resources – to empower users with fresh insights, information and practical strategies.

At SCIS, we’re constantly cataloguing new resources of all kinds, and we love letting our community know about any free resources. With the help of our friends at Infobase, we’ve created a brand new list of free sacred texts, which are useful for schools offering senior subjects such as Texts and traditions (Vic), Studies of religion (NSW, ACT), Religion and life (WA), Religion studies (SA, NT), Religion in society (Tas) and Study of religion (Qld).

If you have any free texts you would like SCIS to catalogue, you can ask us to add them to our database by submitting a cataloguing request.

Use the below SCIS numbers in the left-hand column to search for and download the resources from our database.