Thursday, August 12, 2010

Another Conference - FREE!

The 3rd International Koha Conference is being held in Wellington, New Zealand from Monday 25th October to Wednesday 27th October.  And like the software it is FREE - can you believe it?

If you are not familiar with Koha, the New Zealand School of Export uses this software for its catalogue - ELIScat: http://ets.kohalibrary.com/ and so do hundreds of other libraries around the world.
The conference speakers are also from around the world: UK, France, Nigeria, Taiwan, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand.   You can find the full programme here:
http://www.kohacon10.org.nz/2010/program/day1.html and registration is now open.  The Conference Organiser is Chris Cormack who works for Catalyst IT in Wellington.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

LIANZA Centennial Conference

At the Edge -- Te Matakāheru
LIANZA Centennial Conference
28 Nov – 1 Dec 2010
Dunedin, New Zealand

 The Conference Programme, the Conference Registration Brochure, and the online registration form are available on the Conference website – http://www.conference.co.nz/index.cfm/Lianza10 or at http://lianza.org.nz/ (click on the Conference logo).

The Centennial Conference theme is ‘At the Edge - Te Matakāheru’. This allows us the freedom to celebrate the many aspects of librarianship including history, innovation, space, integration and people. Matakāheru is the face of a Maori digging tool and the term is used figuratively in much the same way as the English ‘cutting edge’, particularly in relation to knowledge.

One hundred years ago the Libraries Association of New Zealand was formed. The Centennial Conference celebrates both our history and looks forward to the profession forever being at the [cutting] edge of the developing information landscape.
 
I have copied the above information from advertising for the LIANZA Centennial Conference but I did want to add a personal note.   I was a member of the Otago-Southland Branch of LIANZA (or NZLA as it was then), in the 1970s and 80s. Through that membership I became familiar with people such as Ada Fache, Dorothy Ballantyne, Mary Ronnie and Jock McEldowney.   All of them contributed so much to librarianship in Dunedin and in New Zealand.  I gave my first ever conference presentation at a LIANZA conference in Dunedin - on collecting posters in libraries.  My focus was of course on the Hocken Library collection which is where I was working at that time.  Michael Hitchings, who died earlier this year, was so encouraging and supportive of my efforts.  This paper was later published in New Zealand Libraries. 
 
 I am sure the Centennial Conference will be a superb event for everyone.