OUT-TAKES FROM LIANZA 2021 CONFERENCE

One of the greatest things about connecting with colleagues at LIANZA is finding a sense of kinship and relief in shared struggles. It’s not about collective handwringing, it’s about collective action – and that’s exactly what came out of the workshop with Jane Stratton and Afaf Al-shammari from Australia’s Think + DO Tank Foundation.

I was thrilled to secure a spot on the workshop with the people behind Sydney’s Lost in Books and it didn’t disappoint. Despite a very early morning in Sydney Jane and Afaf were energetic and open-hearted in their discussion of their work and the techniques and viewpoints they use to understand the needs and drivers of different groups.

‘Who is missing from our thinking?’ Jane urged us to ask ourselves. ‘Who is missing from our service model?’ And more importantly: ‘What is the consequence of them not being included? What might be lost because of their absence?’

These last two questions were thought provoking. On the one hand, for me working in the quickly expanding community of Waimakariri in North Canterbury, if we miss seeing how our community is changing and don’t investigate the needs of all the different parts of that changing community, we might just find ourselves less and less relevant to our community’s day-to-day lives. But that’s a very library-centred view.

So, let’s reframe the question. ‘What does the community lose out on if we don’t connect with non-users?’ The answer to that is as long as a piece of string. But at the top would be the diversity and variety that leads to the embrace of all people and cultures within the community, leading to a truly democratic society.

Jane walked us through her process of enquiring (looking for service gaps), experimenting (co-designing solutions), enacting (giving different solutions a go and in Jane’s words, “Doing a lot that doesn’t work” and legacy making (really embedding and making your solutions thrive).

She described techniques such as Curious Mapping. This is connecting shoppers at different supermarkets via video calling to identify shared values across communities and using a giant game of snakes and ladders to give voice to what helps and what hinders people in their dayto-day lives.

Ask “What would make life here better, easier or more affordable?” and see what libraries can do to contribute. After a break to rest our brains, we returned to dive into more discussion about how to truly serve our communities, and the importance of aligning our measures with our vision.

A key talking point was how we centre different groups in our communities, so that we can ultimately remove the implicit exclusion that inclusion brings.

This thinking was all summed up beautifully in the thought shared that this shift in thinking doesn’t represent a change of policy, but rather a change of heart.

All of us at the workshop opted to stay connected to keep the discussion and support going. It seems to me that this is the true value of the LIANZA conference – forming ongoing professional support and learning networks. That and hatching future travel plans – when global pandemics allow, I’m heading to Lost in Books in Sydney!

Laura Caygill: is the Community Experiences and Diversity Team Leader for Waimakariri Libraries. Formerly a Community Library Manager for Auckland Libraries, Laura moved back to her hometown of Ōtautahi in 2019. She recently began learning Te Reo Māori and loves building high achieving teams that bring about transformational change.

As a sole-charge health librarian in the Wairarapa, I very much enjoy being with a group of librarians engaged in animated conversation, sharing library experiences and quite simply being with a group of people who ‘get’ what I do. This year’s LIANZA 2021 conference was my latest opportunity to dispel the one-person isolation and go mingle!

Sadly, this didn’t go to plan - instead of spending three invigorating days in Wellington, the conference went virtual. For me, three days of Zoom presentations would have been too demanding, so I was pleased to find I had no hassles changing my registration to just the Wednesday. I chose this day to watch Kareen Carter’s presentation on the ‘Future of Health Libraries in New Zealand,’ my very supportive colleague who manages the Wellington Medical & Health Sciences Library.

Kareen spoke about how the New Zealand health system is in line for a major shakeup mid next year. The current service provider functions will be merged into ‘Health NZ’ – a new single entity to lead dayto-day running of the system for the whole country. This change will have a direct impact on my job and is a big deal for the health library and information sector. Kareen believes we need to be engaged in the process to minimise the risks that will come with changes to the health system. That this is an exciting opportunity for the health library and information sector to boldly adjust the way we do things, to keep pace with the changing health industry landscape. It really is a case of ‘watch this space.’

During my day at conference, I had some fun dropping in and out of whatever presentations took my fancy. There was enough variety on offer in each time slot for me to find a session to catch my interest. One of those was keynote speaker Ruth Carlyle, who seamlessly Zoomed in from England. She talked about the work being done by the National Health Service (NHS) to develop the health literacy skills of people, giving them the tools that they need to make informed decisions about their health and treatment choices.

Something I hadn’t previously given much thought to was Ruth’s observation that we all need health literacy in our lives at some point. That there could easily be a time in our life when we experience a low level of health literacy, when under stress, faced with unfamiliar illness with hard to pronounce drugs for treatment for our own or a family member’s illness. As I listened to Ruth, I wondered what New Zealand had on offer around health literacy education. Later that day, a quick search found a training organisation I am embarrassed to say I was unaware of Health Literacy NZ. Their site has some fantastic resources, including a brilliant article they wrote for the New Zealand Medical Association. The article was published in the February 2020 edition of the NZMJ Digest and is titled: ‘The phrase

This article is one forget.

I won’t

The thing I missed most at this year’s LIANZA conference was not being able to feel the energy and buzz which comes from being physically in the same space as other people. That spontaneous interaction between individuals and groups where the unexpected can happen. On the other hand, what I was very impressed with and relieved to find, was how easy it was to navigate the site and the variety of tools we could use to connect with other conference-goers. I enjoyed my virtual day at conference and give a loud shout-out to LIANZA for making it happen and to all the presenters for generously sharing their knowledge and experiences with the rest of us.

Maryann Cowgill: For the past 13 years I have been employed as the health librarian for Wairarapa District Health Board. When I started my first library job in 1990, I could never have predicted how much pleasure and satisfaction would come my way in this wonderful profession.