Volume 35 Nº 1 - March 1999

The 1998 Nancy Booker Lecture

Heather Fisher

Thank you for the great honour of inviting me to deliver the 1998 Nancy Booker Lecture. I have seen this event advertised for some years but it was usually on a week night and I rationalised that a late night made getting up for work on the next day a monumental effort and I was not anxious to travel home late on the trains and it seemed to be always on the night that I have my Guide meetings and I didn't know anyone personally who was going, and I invented several other equally weak excuses with the end result that, to my shame, I have never attended this event before. So, when I was invited to speak this year, I was highly honoured and readily agreed and then I nearly had a stroke from nervousness just thinking about it? Once again my mouth had run away ahead of my brain! Who exactly was Nancy Booker? Why was there a lecture named after her? Who comes to listen to such a lecture? What kind of standard is set each year? What will everyone expect? How many people come? Have I got enough interesting things to say or will people snore in their chairs? So, now I offer you this time together with some trepidation, feeling that there have been some very worthy people associated with this evening, starting with Nancy Booker herself and ending with all the hard-working professionals of today, who give their best to keep the principles and ideals alive that were initiated all those years ago...

The Nancy Booker Honour Lecture is held biennially by the New South Wales Children's and Youth Services section (CYSS) of ALIA to honour Nancy Booker, who was instrumental in establishing the School and Children's Committee of the Library and Association of Australia, the forerunner of CYSS NSW. She also campaigned vigorously for the first training course for children's librarians at Mosman Library in 1951. The 1998 lecture was given by Heather Fisher, children's and young adult librarian at Gosford City Library, who also received the Marjorie Cotton Award for Children's librarianship for her outstanding contribution to services for young people in a public library. Her most recent publication is I Can Do That! Programs for Children, Teenagers and Their Families in Libraries.

Address:
Gosford City Library,
PO Box 21, Gosford 2250