vanzijlp

Philip van Zijl (pronounced fun sale!) I started out my professional career as a high school teacher–librarian in Cape Town, South Africa. My next job was Campus Librarian at the University of Bophuthatswana (one of the so-called “independent” Apartheid states) before taking up a position of Manager of the Resource Centre at a Polytechnic, just outside Durban, South Africa. I then started a restaurant, specialising in traditional South African food in Durban, before coming to NZ as a tourist in 1996. I really liked what I saw and after seeing a job advertisement in a Fish and Chips wrapper, successfully applied for a job at Waiariki Polytechnic in Rotorua, starting in January 1997. I was manager at the Bill Robertson Library (serving the Dunedin College of Education and the Otago Polytechnic) in Dunedin from April 2003 to the middle of January 2007, when there was a merger between the University of Otago and the Dunedin College of Education. My next position was District Library Manager at Taupo, before I was made an offer I could not refuse by Jill Best in Tauranga, in August 2008! My position as Collection and Information Service Manager in Tauranga, where I was responsible for Collections, Reference as well as the Children and Teens’ teams, offered great opportunities for innovation, working under Jill. The challenge however, was a Council that wanted to virtually privatise the library, but we made some inroads, thanks to massive community support. I have started my present position as Waitaki District Library Manager, based in Oamaru, in February 2011. Oamaru is a wonderful place to live and it’s just over an hour from Dunedin, where my children and recently, two mokopuna, live. In South Africa, I served on the African National Congress (ANC) (Natal) Education Desk, was invited to serve in the first core group of the Centre for Education Policy Development to develop library services for the Post Apartheid South Africa. I was elected National President of the Library and Information Workers Organisation (LIWO), an organisation that was formed as an alternative to the conservative pro-Apartheid library organisations in place during the 1980s in South Africa. In NZ, I served on the Bay of Plenty and in Dunedin on the Otago/Southland LIANZA (Library and Information Association of NZ/Aotearoa) executive and LIANZA Councillor, representing the BOP. I was awarded a LIANZA Associateship in 2007. The goodwill, friendliness, and magnanimity of Kiwi librarians, colleagues, Kiwis in general, have made the adjustment to my adopted country very easy. The last 15 years have been a great learning curve, culturally, politically and professionally. My special areas of professional interest are Library design, Information Literacy, e-Books in Public Libraries and Bi-culturalism, the latter having many parallels with the situation in South Africa. In my spare time I do tramping, fishing/fly fishing, gardening and spearfishing (I have had to upgrade my wet suit to a 7mm here in the cold southern ocean!) And, yes, I support the All Blacks!