Rivkah at Rodney & North Shore

Yesterday Rivkah Sass started her grand NZ tour with a library management seminar followed by a presentation to Rodney Libraries. Rivkah, American Librarian of the Year, is in NZ thanks to eLGAR and the 3M Innovation Award. Rivkah also presented to the North Shore Libraries yesterday evening.

Her wide ranging presentation includes Rivkah's thoughts on the need for librarians to be open to risks and challenges and try new things, if they don't work it doesn't mean the end of the world. It is interesting how some things are universal, challenges for here are shared by librarians around the world. Increasingly librarians are having to manage the expectations of staff, political and financial stakeholders, and customers. Rivkah also says "Omaha is Omaha" meaning we all need to serve our own community and there is no single solution that will fit across the entire Libray world.

The tour continues at Manukau and Waitakere today (Thursday) and Auckland City tomorrow. Next week Rivkah travels south as far as Invercargill, which must be about as far away from Omaha as it's possible to be.