Category: TL Things
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To remove or not to remove
Edited on 25/07/2025 to add reference to and discussion of the ALIA Code of Ethics – Cannot believe I missed this! 🤦♀️ I recently wrote the following piece to share my thinking and decision-making process with my students, following questions raised about the inclusion of an author’s work in a particular subject. I thought it…
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2023 Softlink report – Part 2/3
Welcome to part two of my opinion piece on the 2023 Softlink report. The first part, available at this link, covers my thoughts on this year’s participant numbers. My plan for this post is to dive deeper into school library budgets and staffing. I think understanding these aspects is powerful, as they are crucial for school…
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2023 Softlink report – Part 1/3
The 2023 Softlink report has been released for 2023 and I am FINALLY getting around to writing up my thoughts on it. I am pleased to see that there was a significant increase in respondents this year, particularly in New Zealand! As a result, two separate reports, one for Australia and one for New Zealand…
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Book-sell blurbs for YA
I have recently been trying to think of ways I can help overworked, time-poor, teacher librarians (TLs), particularly those with smaller teams or working by themselves. In a conversation with one of my TL colleagues, she got me thinking about how time-consuming and difficult it is for one person to read ALL THE BOOKS (not…
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Softlink 2022 Report
The 2022 Softlink report has been released! Each year, Softlink invites school libraries and Teacher Librarians (TLs) around Australia and New Zealand to respond to their annual survey. Each year, Softlink produces a report with their findings. I’ve had a good look at the 2022 report and thought it might be fun to draw out…
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Selecting First Nations Resources
I was recently asked to do a presentation for the members of the School Library Association of NSW (SLANSW) on Resourcing for the Curriculum, and I chose to focus on an area that we are developing in one of the subjects I teach in at Charles Sturt University (CSU); ETL503 Resourcing the Curriculum. Currently, we…
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A day in the life of a teacher librarian
“What does a typical day for a teacher librarian look like?” I get this question from my students a lot and I can understand why. I mean, we like to know what we’re getting ourselves into. We also like to be able to plan ahead. I think people outside the profession also have questions about…
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A brief history of school libraries and teacher librarians in Australia
I’ve been doing some reading into the history of school libraries, teacher librarians, and the different School Library Associations around Australia to better understand where I, as a teacher librarian, come from, the continual fight for school libraries and teacher librarians, the structures of these organisations and how they support teacher librarians within their states…
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Librarian things: Metadata & tagging
So, you know about hashtags but do you know about metadata and tagging for research purposes? My brother has just started a Masters degree and one of the first courses he had to do is on conducting good research. As part of this course he learned about the ways in which librarians set up catalogues…
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Developing a reading habit
During my research for my thesis, I spent a lot of time reading about the importance of reading (how meta is that…) and I discovered some very interesting things. I thought I’d share some of the most interesting tidbits of information that I discovered here. I also shared a video on my YouTube channel with…