Volume 33 Nº 1 - February 1997
From the editor
David Berry
Eighteen months ago Oranaannounced the establishment of the Marjorie Cotton Award to commemorate an outstanding Australian pioneer in the field of children's librarianship and to recognise present-day individual achievement and co-operative networking services for young people in public libraries.
In this issue, we honour Heather Fisher, the inaugural winner of this prestigious award. Heather's work with the children of Gosford - already featured in Orana(November 1995) as part of the 'Quiet Achievers' series - provides inspiration for all of us who work with children. Heather describes herself as committed to a job she loves and 'dedicated to the cause of education in the widest sense and family literacy in particular and reaping very pleasing rewards in terms of personal satisfaction'. Her values are shared by Orana's readers.
Former Orana Advisory Committee member Marjorie Lobban, presently working in Canada, has interviewed Judie Dueck of Winnipeg, an outstanding Canadian teacher-librarian. Judie's concerns mirror those of teacher-librarians in Australia. Judie Dueck says:
It's easy to become insecure if you feel under attack and lots of librarians and library staff do feel just that way… but, if librarians are the technological, pedagogical and information leaders in the school, then they can make a very strong contribution to education as a whole, to schools in particular and most importantly to students.
These words make the perfect introduction to Grace Kinch's account of implementing the Internet at Kilvington Grammar where 'the implementation of Internet services has been a shared responsibility between key people: the principal, the computing technologies co-ordinator, the IT support and the teacher-librarian'.
These accounts, together with the other articles and regular features in this issue of Orana, have been published on the World Wide Web as well as in the traditional printed form. This is a first for any Australian library journal and, as far as I am aware, a first for any journal devoted to library and information services to children anywhere in the world. You can find Orana on the Web through ALIA's own site http://archive.alia.org.au/sections/cyss/orana/.
[http://archive.alia.org.au/sections/cyss/orana/]
