Knowledge sharing at work

The Tanglin community went home with lots of valuable knowledge recently in February. Who were the guest speakers and what did they share? Let’s hear more from Kimberly Beeman, Head of Senior Library.

The library team at Tanglin was thrilled to host more than 80 librarians and teacher-librarians from sixteen countries throughout the region for the Librarians Knowledge Sharing Workshop (LKSW) on 17 and 18 February 2023. LKSW started at the Alice Smith School in 2012; this was the ninth annual workshop, and the first post-Covid. LKSW was founded with the idea of professional sharing at its heart--it is not tied to any particular curriculum, so delegates came from British, American, IB schools and more.

Language Of Comics

Sonny Liew was the workshop’s second keynote speaker. He talked about his slightly unconventional career path, which took him from reading Philosophy at Cambridge to a degree from the Rhode Island School of Design and ultimately back to Singapore, where he wrote his best-selling, award-winning, genre-bending graphic novel, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye. Sonny drew while he delivered a brief lecture on the language of comics to the audience.

Over their two days at Tanglin, delegates also listened to more than 30 presentations from their peers. Topics ranged from AI writing and research tools (delivered by Katie Day, from Tanglin) to creating a student-led learning centre in the library to highlights of the Cheltenham Festival of Literature (delivered by Janine Murphy, from Tanglin) and more. The Senior Library also hosted a book fair for workshop attendees, with two local booksellers and two local publishers in attendance.

Importance Of Libraries

Emily Drabinski, president-elect of the American Library Association, was one of the keynote speakers. Emily has worked in libraries for more than twenty years in positions ranging from looseleaf filer to interim director of the City University of New York Graduate Libraries. This June, Emily will become the next president of the American Library Association, the world’s oldest and largest library association, with more than 50,000 members worldwide. Emily is an author, an academic librarian, and an advocate for libraries everywhere.

In addition to her keynote speech at LKSW, Ms Drabinski also delivered a public talk at Tanglin on 15 February, “Working Knowledge: Libraries and the Way We Learn.” Her talk was generously funded by the Tanglin Foundation. Librarians from throughout the Singapore library community came to see her, as well as Tanglin parents and teachers. Emily spoke about the importance of libraries and the ways their structured approach to categorising information affects learning. In small groups with Tanglin students and teachers earlier in the day, she also spoke about making the transition to researching in a university setting and about the complicated politics of the recent wave of book bans in the United States.

Visits To Tanglin Libraries

Delegates were also able to visit all three Tanglin libraries. Janine Murphy, Head of the Junior Library, and Michael Kelly, Head of the Infant Library, led bespoke tours of their spaces, including the gorgeous new renovations to the Infant Library. Delegates spent all day on Saturday in the Senior Library and were able to explore it at their leisure.

All in all, it was an incredible opportunity for our library teams to both share best practice and learn from other librarians in the region. ■