Our conference on Friday 16th November at Blackrock College, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, is called The School Library: Reaching out to our Communities. The conference features short presentations from school librarians on collaborating with their school communities, and contributions from book shops, Children’s Books Ireland, the Irish Film Institute and academic librarians.

This conference is ideal for those new to libraries (librarians, teaching staff or those responsible for the library), but will also appeal to those with more experience.

We will have a pop-up bookshop from Dubray Books, a book swap (bring along books and take some home), the launch of the SLARI Mentor Scheme, and a networking lunch to get to know your fellow librarians.

To sign up for the conference please fill out the Booking form and return to our secretary in advance of 16th November, either by post or by emailing it to secretary@slari.ie. Delegates can pay in cash on the day. Our full SLARI Conference Programme November 2018 is now available.

All are welcome to attend this important AGM as we will be looking to fill a number of executive and committee posts. A strong committee is our best guarantee for a strong SLARI and a group that can work to achieve our policy statements. Hope to see you there!

Our conference with Juno Dawson will be held in the National Library Kildare St. on April 20th. Make sure to book your place for what should be a terrific talk from the fantastic YA and mental health author Juno Dawson.

SLARI April Conference 2018 Booking Form

The November conference is to be held in the National Library on the morning of the 24th. Our main speaker will be from Jigsaw, an organisation that specialises in helping teenagers deal with the pressures of modern day living and staying mentally healthy. They will be giving us an oversight on how teenagers see themselves and how they tend to deal with their day to day lives and problems that arise. Jigsaw will be followed by a teachmeet, which will have four librarians give short presentations on activities they use in their libraries for supporting student wellbeing and mental health. The topics will include ideas on using yoga, meditation, mindfulness, restorative justice, solution focus therapy and music.

Booking Form and Brochure November 2017

The SLARI Spring Seminar and AGM will be held on Friday 24th April 2015 in Pearse St Library from 9.30 am to 1.30 pm. Our speaker is Chris Powis and he will talk about teaching skills for school library staff. The conference brochure can be found here: SLARI Spring Conference 2015 brochure and the booking form here: SLARI Spring Conference 2015 booking form.

A big thank you to everyone who attended and contributed to our conference.

Christina Clarke’s presentation can be accessed here.The booklet referred to by Christina, ‘METHODOLOGIES TO SUPPORT LITERACY & EFFECTIVE PRACTICE’, can be found here: School Support Literacy Booklet. Planning and evaluation templates can be found here; and checklists here. 

Charles Quain of Interleaf presented about a new e-books platform for schools, Leabharlann. More information here. To see what the Digital Library looks like, click here

A copy of Mary Gilbride’s presentation can be accessed here: Good literacy practices observed during inspection

A toolkit of document templates to help in a Whole School Evaluation, devised by Katherine Ryan of St Andrew’s College, can be found here: WSE folder Katherine Ryan