People and Places

As is to be expected, there has been a lot of movement at the end of the school year. Ken Vesey, the previous editor of The Link, is now Director of Library Services at The Lovett School in Atlanta. His successor at St John's International School is Cheryl Bruns.

Michael Curtiss has joined the International School of Brussels, while Kathy Bravin is at the British School of Brussels.

Richard Dewey has retired as Library Director of Robert College. John Royce has taken over this position, while John's position at the International School of Hamburg has been taken over by Stuart Crouch, formerly of the International School of South Africa.

Two librarians who took up posts earlier than the end of year are Mary Richter, who has joined the team at the American International School of Luxembourg, and Matthew Smolinski, the new Librarian at Bavarian International School. Carol Gordon has left Frankfurt International School and is now Head of the Educational Resources Library at Boston University (she would love to hear from old friends; email her at cgordon@bu.edu). Cindy McGee has taken over as Middle and High School Librarian at FIS, while Ali Wills has taken a year's leave of absence from FIS to work as Head Librarian at the International School of Monaco.

Vivienne Warner has also left school librarianship. She is now Executive Officer at ECIS in Petersfield, working in the Professional Development and School Services Department.

We wish all these people well in their new roles.

If you have news to share, a new job, a new baby, an exam passed, whatever, just write in!

Annual Conference, Nice, Novemeber 1999

Our guest speakers for the Annual Conference are Bob Berkowitz and John Foster. Bob Berkowitz, from the U.S., is probably best known in the library world as half of the team (with Mike Eisenberg) which invented the Big 6 approach to information skills teaching. John Foster, from Britain, has published collections of poetry for children, and has many years of experience in getting kids hooked on books, and particularly on poetry. Follett are again sponsoring a Librarians' Lunch on the Friday. I look forward to seeing many of you in Nice.

Coralie Clark
American International School of Budapest
Chair, Committee on Library and Information Services

Henry Parker

It was sad to hear of Henry's death earlier this year; it was very sudden and very unexpected. Henry was known to the ECIS community through his appointments at Copenhagen International School and Yokohama International School. He was a lively contributor to professional discussion and debate, and his comments and advice were frequently featured on the ECIS listserv. He was as ready to ask for help when he needed it as to give it when he could. His helping nature went beyond librarianship: in particular, he adopted a Thai family, whom he met while travelling in Thailand. He helped them financially, and was particularly concerned for the welfare of their two children.

Henry's sense of humor was wicked, very dry indeed, especially when he found anomalies or things which made no sense. But he loved his work, and he loved learning something new. He also loved people, especially the children he worked with. The school really loved him, especially the students he worked with... he always had time to read stories and work one-on-one with the little ones (and the bigger ones too)!

He was one of a kind and is missed.

International School Libraries: Beyond the Year 2000

This ECIS-sponsored Librarians' Conference took place in Waterloo, Belgium, last May, and was the biggest such event in the history of the ECIS Committee on Library and Information Services. It attracted 140 participants from 5 continents and 31 countries, including 18 exhibitors and 21 presenters, many of them librarians from international schools. I find this a particularly valuable event as it is just for librarians, and the informal contacts are as important as the organized sessions.

The enormous success of this event can be attributed to the hard work and professionalism of the organizer, Ken Vesey, then librarian at St. John's. This event grows larger each time it is held, and the committee is already giving serious thought to a venue for the next "special event for librarians" in the 2001/2 school year. One possibility is the new campus of the Upper School of the American International School of Budapest, due for completion in 2000.

Coralie Clark
American International School of Budapest
Chair, Committee on Library and Information Services

One new feature of the May Conference was a silent auction. Participants were invited to bring along materials they no longer needed but which might be of value to other schools or other librarians. Items for auction were put on display and participants invited to write their bids on paper. Anyone wanting the same item had to record a higher bid, and the highest bid at the end of the weekend secured the item. Vendors and exhibitors were very generous indeed; they too contributed many materials for auction.

The money raised was sent to Book Aid International, an international charity which buys books for schools and libraries in the Third World. We received this letter in response:

Thank you for the generous donation raised at the "Beyond the Year 2000" Conference which worked out at UK pounds 115.05... Your fundraising idea was a new one to me and certainly was successful for a "last-minute idea". We would be very happy to send you posters, etc. if you decide to repeat it.

We continue to receive large numbers of requests from the entire spectrum of educational institutions and public libraries in countries where information resources are scarce. Although we know that the books we provide fulfill only a fraction of the needs of the people of developing countries, we receive many letters telling us how much they are appreciated. "As a farm school, poor as it is, a library book was only a dream. But you have made our dreams come true." Mrs. C. Manzou, Headmistress, Craigie Lea Primary School, Macheke, Zimbabwe.

We could not have a better incentive to continue our services and your contribution is much appreciated.

Best wishes from all at Book Aid International.

Yours sincerely,
Mrs. Catherine Fagan
Fundraising

With this experience under our belts, we hope that our next silent auction will be even bigger and even better.

The ECIS Library Listserv

The informal listserv started by Ken Vesey has been officially "adopted" by ECIS. In recent months we have been discussing everything from job openings to planning new library buildings and choosing an automation system. It is invaluable when you want some quick information which you are sure another school librarian will have - but don't know which one!

If you have Internet access, you can join the list by going to http://listserv.ecis.org/archives/library.html and following the instructions on-screen. If you prefer to use email, send a message to: listserv@listserv.ecis.org, leave the subject line blank and use the following command in the message body: subscribe library "your name". Don't forget to replace "your name" with your name, no quotes needed.

Important: when you write messages that you want everyone to read, they should be sent to: library@www.ecis.org and not to the listserv address.

Coralie Clark

For your diary

• 15th Salon du livre de jeunesse in Montreuil, near Paris, 1-6 December 1999. The main theme is the right to read for all children (in conjunction with the 10th anniversary of the convention on the rights of the child). The guest continent is Africa, and many children's and young adult works will be featured. The star guests are Tomi Ungerer and Ahmadou Kourouma. Kourouma won the 1999 Prix Inter for his book En attendant le vote des betes sauvages, a philosophical tale in the spirit of Voltaire's Candide. World Book Day is celebrated in an increasing number of countries year by year. Next year it will be celebrated, not on 23 April as hitherto, but on 10 March 2000. Further details will be found on the Web site.
  
  
• IB Librarians' Workshop : Sevenoaks, England. 7 - 9 April 2000.
  
  
• The Read-In!, an international book event during which children have the opportunity to chat, on-line, with favorite authors, will next be held on 11 May 2000. Authors already signed up include R.L. Stine, Tim Bowler, Jan & Stan Berenstain, Avi, Virginia Hamilton, and many many more. Further details will be found on the Web site.
  
  
• The 2000 Conference, Under the Covers. This is a special joint venture between the Library Association School Libraries Group, the Library Association Youth Libraries Group, and the School Library Association. For the millennium year only, this event replaces each organization's own annual conference / workshop and promises to be bigger and better than the three put together! It will be held at Imperial College, London on 6 - 9 July 2000, and there are special reductions for early registration.

Time-saving tips

Do you sometimes feel that it takes more time, not less, to do your work on a computer?

You might feel less frustrated if you remember the 20-80 rule. It takes 20% of your time to get the information in, for instance, but it takes 80% of your time to get it out again looking the way you want it to look. Or you spend 20% of your time actively searching for information on the Internet, and 80% of your time waiting for things to happen.

Fortunately, there are often ways to make your work more productive, short-cuts to get you where you want to be. Short-cuts may take time to learn, but as with all things you learn better by practicing often. Until the short-cuts become automatic, why not tape to your monitor a list of the tips which seem more useful to you and the way you work?

The tips which follow work with Windows and Dos. There might be equivalents for Macintosh and other platforms. Check your manuals and help-screens!

It's always worth learning keyboard shortcuts. Many of the things you do with a mouse may be more quickly achieved on the keyboard, especially if your hands are on the keyboard at the time you want to perform them. For instance, instead of pointing the mouse at File and then choosing Close or Exit, you can often closeWindows documents by using <ctrl>+<f4>, or exit completely with <alt>+<f4>.

Many commands on those drop-down menus have an underlined letter: you can open the File or any other

When you switch on your web browser, you may have to wait a long time for it to connect with your home page on the Internet. You can save time by having your browser start up by loading a page that's already on your hard disk. It could be a blank page, it could be a page listing your favourite links. In Netscape, go to Options OR Preferences (depending on which version you are using), and then choose General >> Appearance OR Navigator. Now choose to start with a blank page, or browse until you find your bookmarks.html (or whatever file name you have given your personal bookmarks file). With Internet Explorer you may have to create a blank HTML document. If you use a browser other than these, you may well find a start-up option which works in similar fashion.

You may already use the Back button on the toolbar to get to the previous page. If you need to go back several pages, you will find that the Go drop-down menu may list several pages visited earlier. Click on a likely address (or key in the number) and go directly there. Clicking the down arrow at the right end of the location toolbar will also list recently-visited addresses (URLs). A further possibility is to check out your browser history; in Netscape Communicator 4.6, it's under Communicator >> Tools or try <ctrl>+<h>. Explorer in Internet Explorer does the same.

You should also note that when you are typing in a URL on the location bar, the software may attempt to complete the line with a recently visited site which starts that way: If this is indeed the site you wish to visit, just hit the <enter> key; no need to finish typing it in!

Your screen will show more of the documents you find if you deselect some or all of the toolbars. When scrolling, use the Page Down and Page Up buttons rather than the line down and line up arrows at the bottom and top of the scroll bar. You can also see more of the screen if you decrease the size of the font: go to View and choose Font Size or Increase/ Decrease Font.

If you have loaded (or are loading) a long document, you may be able to save time by using the Find function to find a keyword on the page. You don't have to wait until the page has finished loading, although you will get no hits if the target word has not yet loaded! Just choose Edit >> Find in Page or <ctrl>+<f> and type in your keyword or part of it. You will be taken straight to the target word, and be able to judge whether in context this is what you are looking for.

If you frequently visit particular websites, it is worth bookmarking them. When you want to revisit a bookmarked site, just click on Bookmarks (or Favorites) and choose the one you want. This saves you having to type in the address each time you visit - and that means you have less opportunity to make typing mistakes!

If you are writing email, do it offline! This saves online time. It also reduces the pressure to get it done and get it off, mistakes and all. If your software insists that you connect before writing email and write your email on-line, try writing it in a word-processor. Then when you go online, copy and paste your letter into the email message window.

Online or offline, do spell-check your email before sending it off. This won't save you time and it won't save you money, but it will maintain your credibility. My Netscape Preferences are set to spell-check before sending Edit >> Preferences >> Mail & Newsgroups >> Messages >> Spell-check. And if (like me) you don't always see your grammar errors on the screen and you don't like your grammar checker, print out and proofread!

If YOU have time or money-saving tips to share, please send them in!