Minutes


 * __Minutes of First Meeting of HCMC International School Librarians Network.

Held at Saigon Saigon Bar, Caravelle Hotel, Ho Chi Minh City, September 23rd, 4.30 pm.__**


 * //Present: Alan Jacques BIS, Tarn McDonald AmIS, Angela Cleeton SSIS, Ruth Bishop ISHCMC.//**

1. Alan is happy to construct a Wikispace for us, set it up without advertising, and then pass it to Angela for updating. Happy to do so, me. 2. Our main concerns at present include: reliable book/resource suppliers with legal conduits through the Govt gatekeepers which also observe school requirements for tax receipts; solid Library systems which meet our needs - catalogue vagaries, price, quality, bandwidth, reliability, on-the-ground and online support, etcetera!, and (what was the other thing Alan? Was it periodical suppliers - EBSCO vs others?). and databases - which ones best suit, for which purposes /users? 3. Ruth is happy to host any of us wanting to look at her Oliver system, and also ask Mr Thao of Cengage to give us a demo of the Thomson databases. 4. Tahn is ok with us taking a look at the new version of Destiny at his school sometime. 5. Ellen Clark of Follett (based in Bangkok) will be in Saigon on Sept 30 (next week). If you'd like to meet with her, and are not already doing so, I can pass on her contact email. (She's not connected with EBSCO). 6. Ruth is going to let us know who is the author featuring at her school's Book Week. Can we all share the dates for our particular school's Book Week or similar celebrations and how these are done? Maybe we could visit each other during these events just to see how it all works? How about we also start to build a file of good presenters and speakers we can invite to our schools, and which type of audience they work best with (age of students, size of groups, competence with technology, typical activities  and effectiveness of presentation, costs, etc. I can upload the file to  our Wiki.  7. Angela will find out the contact details for Dianne Frankenstein,  reading guru, who is likely to visit Beijing in 2009.  Website with info about this inspiring lady:  http://www.proactive-learning.com/p_stories.htm  Perhaps, if she is interested in stopping off in Vietnam, we could share  costs for a teacher workshop and a parent presentation, if she's willing?  8. We need a catchy name for our group! Let's see - some words to  consider for an acronym....  HCMC, 'teacher-librarian' or just 'librarian', network, Vietnam  Other groups I know of:  OZTL_NET - Autsralian Teacher-Librarians Network (then there's the American LM-Net too, Library Media Specialist Network, I guess) ALESSHK - Association of Librarians in English Speaking Schools in Hong  Kong  BjLN - Beijing Librarians Network  .........we all know of many others, so what shall we call ours? I'm going  to  stick my neck out and suggest HCMC LN, or LN HCMC.  9. Tarn - you mentioned the General Sciences Library and printing labels  in your mails.  Would you be able to line us up a visit and tour guide sometime to this  interesting local library?  Also, we neglected to discuss the lack-of-labels dilemma - can we do so  online to help solve some difficulties?  10. I'm also boldly going to suggest that (visit to Ruth or Tarn, or other session notwithstanding) we meet again in October, say Tues 21, venue to be decided? If this is not a good day/date (and to be honest, I've left my  planner at school tonight), let's consider another!