ACCESS - Current Edition - Editorial

Rachel Hoare, Editor

Welcome to the first issue of the new-look ACCESS. I hope you like it! It was time for a new design for the journal and a change of publisher after several years with Cambridge Media. Thank you to Mark Orange, graphic designer, and Greg Paull, publisher, for their great service to ASLA since 2012.

I would like to welcome our new graphic designer, Deb Wilkes, who has refreshed the ACCESS logo and created a more contemporary and very engaging style for our journal. Please let us know what you think of the new look. ACCESS is now published in the members-only section of the ASLA website. I hope you found it easy to navigate to the section to download your copy. Again, we would welcome your feedback on this new publishing format.

In this issue, we bring you an excellent peer-reviewed paper by Liz Derouet about her action research project where she conducted a reading challenge to encourage Year 8 boys to become more adventurous readers. Liz’s research produced interesting results that I am sure will be helpful for other teacher librarians. Liz provides lots of useful resources within her paper to assist readers, including detailed notes about and references to the books her students chose to read.

Aleesha Paz presents us with a range of useful resources that Reading Australia provides to help teacher librarians and teachers. We then bring you the news about the new Australian Children's Laureate, Ursula Dubosarsky, whose theme for her two-year tenure is Read For Your Life. Do check out the website with posters and other resources to use in your classroom or library.

Catherine Barnes follows this with a fascinating article, ‘Inquiry leaning: Beyond the school walls’, where she discusses the pedagogy of inquiry learning and ways to drive exploration, investigation and the search for understanding through ‘the inherent curiosity of our students’.

Then Ben Chadwick and Rachel Elliot bring us ‘The SCIS APIs — Life beyond MARC and Z39.50’, which is an update on Ben’s previous article (Chadwick, B 2018, ‘SCISData: Catalogue data into the next decade’, Vol. 32, No. 1, p. 18) about the new SCISData resources for teacher librarians.

We have lots of ASLA news and updates in this issue, including details about the ASLA Board, upcoming AGM and the ASLA 2020 Literacy Research Summits. Please check out the information about our keynote speaker at the summits, Dr Margaret Merga, and other presenters in Western Australia, South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria. Make sure you book soon to attend these important professional development events.

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