scis – Page 8

SCIS Information Services Standards Committee (ISSC)

Ever wondered how changes to the SCIS Standards for Cataloguing and Data Entry or SCIS Subject Headings are decided on? Both are the responsibility of the SCIS Information Services Standards Committee (ISSC), which is comprised of representatives from Education Services Australia, members of our agencies in the education departments of Queensland, Western Australia and New South Wales, and representatives from the National Library of New Zealand. Members of the ISSC also contribute to the Schools Online Thesaurus (ScOT) discussion group.

The ISSC continually revises the SCIS Standards for Cataloguing and Data Entry and SCIS Subject Headings in order to ensure that they remain in keeping with international standards, whilst also ensuring that schools’ specialised needs are taken into account. Members of the ISSC draw on their experience in providing cataloguing and support services to school libraries and their links to curriculum experts within their organisations in order to provide informed discussion on the adoption of new or modified headings, alterations to the cataloguing standards and other enhancements to the SCIS service.

The ISSC group conducts regular meetings throughout the year via teleconference, as well as utilising an edna group page which acts as an online forum for the exchange of discussion papers, regular updates and news.

If you have any questions about how SCIS Standards for Cataloguing and Data Entry are implemented in SCIS bibliographic records, or wish to suggest a change to the SCIS Subject Headings we would love to hear from you. Drop us a line at scisinfo@esa.edu.au – we’re here to help!

Libraries Alive! and the SCIS survey

What our users think about our service is always important to us, but now more than ever we need your feedback! Library consulting company Libraries Alive! has recently been hired by Education Services Australia to conduct a review of SCIS to help us to identify the best ways we can continue to support school libraries with cataloguing services in the future.

As part of the review we are conducting a survey of our customers to find out what the people who matter most think about us. So, if you are a customer of SCIS, and have not already received our email notification, please find the time to complete our short online survey.

The survey is completely anonymous and shouldn’t take any longer than 5 mins to complete. We know how busy you are and how many demands there are on your time, but we hope to get as many responses as possible by 18 June 2010.

Inquiry into school libraries and teacher librarians in Australian schools

The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training’s Inquiry into school libraries and teacher librarians in Australian schools is well underway, with 371 submissions and 2 supplementary submissions received by the committee and a series of public hearings taking place around the country starting in April.

Education Services Australia, as SCIS’s parent body, has put forward a submission to the inquiry arguing for an adequate distribution of funding for the ongoing development of school library staff in both specific library-related professional development and as part of generic whole school development, and further discusses how major policies and investments such as the Australian Curriculum and the Digital Education Revolution impact strongly on the use of resources that support teaching and learning in schools and argues that the work of teacher librarians has become even more important as a result. Representatives of Education Services Australia have been invited to attend the hearing in Adelaide on July 12.

All submissions, including that submitted by Education Services Australia (No.119), are available in PDF format (excepting those designated Parliamentary-in-Confidence) from the inquiry’s submissions page. An extraordinarily diverse array of individuals and groups have submitted responses to the inquiry – and it must be said it is heartening to see organisations not directly related to libraries such as the Queensland Teachers’ Union (No. 240), and the Copyright Agency (No.289) putting submissions forward which strongly defend the importance of the role played by libraries and teacher librarians in schools, alongside library organisations such as ALIA (No.332) and ASLA (No.327).

This inquiry has the potential to strongly affect all school libraries and librarians, so do take the time to review some of the submissions and to follow the outcomes of the hearings – and get in contact with your library associations to put your 2 cents in too!

Access All Areas; Library and Information Week 24 – 30 May 2010

This is the week to shamelessly promote yourselves! With Julia Gillard’s Australian School Library and Teacher Librarian Inquiry currently taking place, Library and Information Week provides an excellent opportunity for school libraries to keep their community aware of the hugely important role played by the library in supporting school staff and the curriculum; and in teaching effective information searching skills and developing a love of reading in all students.

If you do nothing else for Library and information week, DO take part in National Simultaneous Storytime, run on Wednesday 26 May. This year the book is Little White Dogs Can’t Jump by Bruce Whately and Rosie Smith, which will also be made available electronically via the National Simultaneous Storytime webpage for those schools which do not have their own copy. Get creative, grab a projector, and you’re off!

Other fabulous ideas on how to promote your library are available from http://www.alia.org.au/liw/, and please don’t forget National Library Technicians’ Day on Tuesday 25 May. This is an important opportunity to remind everyone of the important role played by library technicians in school libraries, as well as an excellent excuse to host a celebratory morning tea!

And don’t forget, there’s no reason to restrict activities to one week of the year either. Running activities all through the school year is a very effective way to keep the library in the fore-front of the school’s life.

This post was co-authored by Anthea Amos, Connections Editor.

Hot off the press -Connections 73 is now online!

And as usual, we’ve scrounged around to source the most interesting articles, by authors both from within Australia and internationally.

Clifford diorama made from cut-outs of damaged books, a la Rhyllis Bignell

Is technology producing a decline in critical thinking and analysis? a research report by Patricia M. Greenfield examines how technology has changed familiar patterns of learning, while Things that keep us up at night, by Joyce Kasman Valenza and Doug Johnson explores some of the bigger fears faced by school librarians in relation to the shifting informational landscape.

Rhyllis Bignell has great suggestions for how you can use your weeded books for both decoration and to support classroom activities, and the first in a series of articles by Nigel Paull takes us through the initial stages of acquiring funding and planning for a new multimillion dollar library at South Grafton Public School in New South Wales.

http://www2.curriculum.edu.au/scis/connections/is_tech_prod_decline_in_critical_thinking_etc.html

Now you can use SCIS cover images on your blog!

We’re pleased to announce that ESA and Thorpe-Bowker have recently upgraded their licence to extend the use by SCISWeb subscribers of the bookcover images provided with SCIS records. Schools may now use the book cover images not only within their library catalogues, but also on the school website, including in blogs, wikis, online newsletters and intranets. Unfortunately this extension applies to online use only, and does not permit schools to print off these images and use them in book displays etc. So while, for example, it may be tempting to print off that SCIS book cover image, turn it into a poster and laminate it, then use it to advertise Book Week, this does not fall within the licence agreement for the use of SCIS book cover images. But hey, the artist who created that nice piece of artwork deserves a few royalties too!

Book cover images are also available on other web pages, including publishers’ web pages, but you would need to look at the terms of usage of that web page to see if they are freely available to be printed off. Contacting the publisher to ask permission would be the safest way to go, or you could try asking your local bookshops if they could hang on to some of the promotional posters they receive for children’s and YA fiction. For more information about this and other copyright questions, a good place to refer to is the Smartcopying website, at http://www.smartcopying.edu.au.

This post was contributed by Mary Gough, who provides SCIS cataloguing services for Queensland schools.

SCIS is on the road again – in Vic., S.A. and N.Z.

In the next two months SCIS staff will be running a series of training sessions on how to get the most out of your SCIS subscription. The training will highlight how SCIS cataloguing products can be used to provide a more effective library service, including how you can customise your SCIS profile to optimise your use of SCIS, information about book cover images, special order files for educational websites and TLF learning objects, and how the use of SCIS Authority Files has the potential to save you time by inserting references into your library catalogue.

The training sessions will be kicking off this Monday at the SLAV Shared learning conference for library technicians and assistants, with our SCIS manager Leonie Bourke conducting one of the first concurrent sessions of the day. SCIS will also have a trade stall at the conference, with our Marketing Manager Tricia Nathan and Customer Support Officer Elaine Jeffries present to answer any queries you may have about SCIS.

In May, we will also be running a series of training sessions for New Zealand/Aotearoa, conducted by one of our excellent catalaguing staff, Bruce Moir, who is based in Dunedin. Bruce’s background includes secondary school teaching, working in Children’s and Young People’s Services at Dunedin Public Library, Mosgiel Library Manager, and working as a Library Adviser at National Library where he was on project teams which promoted the use of SCIS.

Bruce will be conducting sessions on the following dates and locations:

6 May – Auckland
7 May – Hamilton
13, 14 May – Christchurch
19 May – Dunedin
26 May – Wellington
27 May – Palmerston North

In the same month, Tricia Nathan will be running SCIS training sessions for South Australian schools. Although most of the SA sessions are fully booked out, some sessions still have vacancies, so if you are interested in attending please don’t hesitate to contact us at SCIS to see if we can squeeze you in! The SA dates and locations are as follows:

18, 19, 20, 21 May – Adelaide
26 May – Mount Gambier
28 May – Whyalla

The lovely image of the South Australian outback is from Flickr Creative Commons, contributed by intrepid traveller Prince Roy. http://www.flickr.com/photos/princeroy/ / CC BY 2.0

New TLF learning objects special order file in SCISWeb

New TLF learning object special order files were made available this week. A new full file of all 2,782 TLF learning object records, as well as an update file of 503 new and updated TLF records can be downloaded from the Special Orders page in SCISWeb.

SCIS Special Order files allow schools to easily download groups of catalogue records for popular resources, such as TLF learning objects, websites and and Clickview files.

To review and select SCIS Special Order files for download into your library management system, you will need to log on to SCISWeb and then select the Special Order files tab from the navigation bar at the top of the page. From our menu page you will be able to download any of the SCIS Special Order files. Access to SCIS Special Orders is included in your subscription to SCISWeb.

Dates confirmed for SCIS training in SA

Training sessions have been organised for schools in South Australia. To secure a place you need to make a booking. Be quick – bookings close after March 31st! Please note that each person wishing to attend from your school is required to make a separate booking.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/comedynose/ / CC BY 2.0

Congratulations to South Australian public schools!

You now have free access to SCIS Authority Files and SCIS Subject Headings as well as ongoing access to SCISWeb for the next 3 years (2010-2012), as a result of an agreement made by The Department of Education and Children’s Services with SCIS.

For those schools who are unfamiliar with the SCIS service, or those who have used SCIS in the past but would like to learn more about our services, we will soon be running a series of training sessions “Making the most of SCIS” for South Australian schools. Those who responded to our earlier online survey regarding the training sessions will be contacted directly but you will also be able to register online via SCISWeb. Once dates are confirmed, we will also be posting more information here on the blog, so keep watching this space!

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