Reflections of the National Education Summit Brisbane 2021

Well, after two years of anticipation, we finally had the 2021 Brisbane National Education Summit. I first attended the Summit in 2019 and the 2020 event was postponed due to COVID. However, on the first weekend of June 2021, the Summit finally went ahead and what a fantastic event it was. This is the highlight of my professional learning for the year and a wonderful chance to network and connect with local and interstate school librarians. 

If you couldn’t make it to the Brisbane Summit, check out the Melbourne Summit, which is scheduled for October 2021 Melbourne NES  2021. .

In 2021, the Capacity Building School Libraries conference’s focus was the power of reading, diverse collections, and the power of evidence. There were four streams across the two days. Keynote speakers were Dr Margaret Merga, lecturer and researcher who is doing great things for school library research, and Clare Thorpe, Associate Director (Library Experience), University of Southern Queensland.  As well as the conferences there was also a free expo and free seminars.

I had the privilege of presenting on the Friday. It was nerve-wracking but also incredibly exciting to speak on the Friday about genrefication and the steps we took as a library team to increase student engagement with reading and our fiction and non fiction collections. If you want to check out my presentation, you can view the slides here.

It was so inspiring to listen to all the other presenters. My only negative was that I need to be able to clone myself so I could attend the free seminars, get around to all the exhibits and network and chat to all the amazing librarians at the conference at the same time. 

I was so pleased to meet some incredible library technicians and teacher aides at the conference, who shared the work they are doing in their libraries and how they are fighting for their school libraries. So heartening and so inspiring. 

If you get a chance, put this event on your must-attend list for next year. It promises to be bigger and better than ever and it is such an amazing chance to connect with like-minded school librarians.

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National Education Summit Brisbane 2021 Presentation From Genrefication to Readers Advisory and Beyond – What Really Works

It was such a pleasure to present at the National Education Summit 2021 Capacity Building School Library Conference. My presentation was all about the ways school librarians seek to engage students with collections and reading. It’s not an easy task and I hoped to combine my experience with genrefication and promoting collections and share what worked to get students reading. 

You can access my slides from the presentation here in PDF format:

Genrefication NES Presentation

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Our genrefication process for the YA collection. Read all about it here.

Our one-year-on genrefication reflection and targeted plan. Read it here. 

Non fiction genrefication. 

And some more from me about my thoughts around genrefication. 

Want the survey results? Want to be involved in a more comprehensive survey? Want to share data and compare collections and collection promotions? Contact me or get in touch via social media.