Congratulations to Annie Brady who has won the SLA School Librarian of the Year Award 2015.  Annie Brady is a JCSP school librarian in St Paul’s CBS Secondary School in Dublin. This article, which she wrote, appeared in the Irish Times when she was shortlisted for the award:  http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/how-i-got-into-my-pupils-good-books-reveals-librarian-up-for-top-award-1.2352856

Well done Annie, from the SLARI committee.

A copy of Chris Powis’s slides from his workshop Teaching Skills for School Library Staff can be downloaded here.

On Friday 4th April 2014 we held our Spring Conference and AGM at Pearse Street Library.  The conference was called “Librarians Teaching Information Literacy”, and we were delighted to have Julia Barrett of McGrath Barrett & Associates to speak to us about helping students to find information effectively. Her presentation comprised of three parts: Planning a Search, Freely available information resources, and Effective Googling. Julia brought our attention to many very useful resources and methods and we thank her for an enjoyable day.

You can access our blog here: Blog

Hilary Cantwell of St. Paul’s Community College in Waterford has won this prestigious award.  This award is given annually to recognise the work done by librarians in school libraries.  Nominations may come from anyone working in a school library.  Those nominated may be working in primary or secondary schools.

For more information go to:  www.sla.org.uk and also http://www.rte.ie/news/player/1218/2013/20493809-waterford-librarian-wins-international-award/ for a report on RTE recently.

Dr Sheena Wilkinson, the inaugural writer-in-residence formally launched the Bringing to Book project with an inspirational talk entitled ‘Children’s Books Saved My Life’, at the Church of Ireland College of Education on Tuesday, 8 October.

Sheena’s inspirational talk traced her journey from being the child who loved reading and writing to the adult professional writer she is today.  Speaking to academics and librarians active in the field of children’s literature and to students post-graduate and under-graduate of children’s literature and initial teacher education, Sheena recreated her childhood love of reading and writing stories. She shared her early efforts at creating stories and how important her teacher, local library and librarian and of course, her parents had been in supporting and encouraging this creativity.

With this image of the child reader/writer in mind Sheena urged the undergraduate B. Ed. students in the audience to do everything they could to be the significant teacher who will encourage that spark of creativity in the children they will teach during their career.

Sheena will be on-campus in Dublin two days per week during this academic year, she will be attending Bookfest events around the country this month and for anyone interested in finding out more about ‘Bringing to Book’ and the residency, Sheena can be contacted at sheena.wilkinson@cice.ie .

To read Seamus Heaney’s address at the launch of Library Ireland Week 2010 click here.  https://www.libraryassociation.ie/sites/default/files/Seamus_Heaney%20_Leabharlann-1.pdf