Exciting times for school libraries in Australia!!

I am sharing a message from Karen Bonanno:


Well, what a week it has been here in Australia.

On Monday, the Chair of the House Standing Committee on 
Education and Employment tabled the report from the Inquiry 
into School Libraries and Teacher Librarians in Australian Schools
 — School libraries and teacher librarians in 21st century Australia. 
http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/ee/schoollibraries/report.htm
It has been a long journey since March 2010 to reach this point.

The Committee has presented 11 recommendations for debate 
by the House of Parliament and we now enter into a three to 
six month response time.

In response to the release of the report I have been working with the 
Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) and the 
Australian School Library Association (ASLA) to create a wiki 
http://schoollibraries2011.wikispaces.com/
and a Facebook page (the link is on the wiki)
to enable parents, students, teachers, and 
everyone else who is concerned about the state of school libraries, 
to find out more information about this highly topical issue and to 
join in the discussion. I encourage you to share the wiki and the 
Facebook page with your colleagues, your family (every parent 
should be interested in this topic), your friends and anyone who 
is interested in school libraries.

I’d also encourage you to revisit the series of blog posts on 
school library advocacy 
http://www.karenbonanno.com.au/tag/library-advocacy/
and to revisit the webinar presentation on 7 successful 
strategies to develop your advocacy toolkit.
http://www.schoollibrarymanagement.com/presentations.html

Stay tuned as this will be an exciting time."