1st Biennial IBBY Africa Conference: 31 August- to-2-September 2011

Background to the conference:

The biennial IBBY World Congress (International Board of Books for young People) is one of the most important international events that provides an opportunity for all those interested in children's literature and children's reading to meet and discuss matters of mutual interest. In addition to these international congresses, many national sections of IBBY organise either national or regional conferences. There is a regular regional conference in the USA that attracts delegates from North America, the Latin American sections of IBBY have a biennial reading conference in Havana, Cuba and the European Sections get together during the annual Bologna Children's Book Fair in Italy.

During the 32nd international IBBY Congress held in Santiago de Compostela, Spain in September 2010, the members of IBBY gathered together in their regional groups and discussed ways of future cooperation and possibilities. The Children's Literature Research Unit of the University of South Africa approached the delegates representing the African IBBY sections with an offer to organise a biennial conference in Africa. This was greeted with great enthusiasm and the first African Biennial IBBY Regional Conference is scheduled to take in Polokwane, Limpopo Province in South Africa at the end of August/beginning of September 2011.

The travelling of stories: children’s literature and reading in and of Africa

Call for papers
• 31 August-2 September 2011
• Venue: The Ranch, Polokwane, Limpopo Province
• Organised by the Department of Information Science, University of South Africa on behalf of the IBBY Branches of Africa
• Closing date for submissions: 15 June 2011

The following topics serve as suggestions:

• The travelling of stories across borders and cultures
• Children’s literature in translation
• Folktales and imagination
• Writing in indigenous/colonial/minority languages
• Colonialism and post-colonialism in children’s literature
• Traditional folktales and the modern tale
• Cultural relevance of children’s books
• The distinction between African children’s and adult books
• Oral narratives and literary research
• Converting oral literature into written literature
• Literature for didactic purposes
• The African diaspora and children’s literature
• Reading across cultures
• Library services for children
• Reading in the information age
• Comparative research in children’s literature and reading
• Depicting reality in children’s books
• Reading preferences of African children
• Teaching children’s literature
• Storytelling for young people
• Publishing for children in the 2rd World

Abstracts of not more than 250 words that address particular issues regarding reading and children’s literature related to Africa and the developing world are welcomed.

Mail abstracts and direct enquiries to:
Prof Thomas van der Walt, CLRU, Department of Information Science, University of South Africa, PO Box 392, 0003 Pretoria, South Africa
Fax: +27 12 4293792
e-mail: vdwaltb@unisa.ac.za

Prof Hester Meyer's retirement function

Professor Hester Meyer’s farewell lunch on 26 November 2010

On Friday 26 November 2010 the Department of Information Science hosted a farewell function in honour of Professor Hester Meyer. She was a member of the Department of Information Science for the last 26 years.


The guest of honour Hester and her husband Reinhard



What follows are photos of the venue and guests and colleagues who attended the luncheon.



Hester with her daughter Linda on the left, Madely and Adeline du Toit (a former colleague)



Thomas, Karin, Madely and Jackie Fourie (a former colleague)



Bosire, Nicoline and Karin



Mabel saying a few words



Linda, Hester, Marthie, Marlene and Jackie



Tina, Gontse, Sipho and Salmon



Veli and Luyanda



Sipho, Salmon and Jan



Nicoline, Karin, Namps and Tony



Tina, Sipho Salmon, Jan and Tony



Luyanda, Marthie, Marlene



Namps, Hannalie, Jan, Salmon



Salmon, Jan, Tony, Thomas, Luyanda



Marlene, Jackie



Hester



Luyanda presenting Hester with a gift from the Department



Veli giving flowers to Hester



Mabel presenting a gift on behalf of the Department to Hester



Opening the gift



Something to remember us by!

PROLISSA CONFERENCE (9-11 March 2011)

Registration due dates (register online at: www.unisa.ac.za/prolissa2011 )


Early Bird: until 31 January 2011
Standard: from 1 February to 28 February 2011
Late: from 1 March 2011

1. Main conference (10-11 March 2011)
The DISSAnet series of conferences are intended as a biennial event to showcase South African and Southern African research in the broad field of Information Science. The first five conferences took place in 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2009. All five conferences were very successful, and were attended by a number of academics and information professionals from across South Africa, the SADC countries and further afield. Conference papers that were presented prior to 2009 can be found on the DISSAnet website at http://www.dissanet.com.

Themes
Information in modern society is valued as an essential component in the daily lives of people, both on individual and organisational levels. Increasingly we expect information to meet our needs through technological interventions or interactions. Indeed, recent technological developments have accentuated contemporary conceptions of the Library and Information field as an intersection of information, technology, people and society.

Contributions are invited that address current research issues related to the LIS field. Themes that may be addressed are wide and open, but an advanced academic level of discourse is required. Inter alia the following broad themes will be addressed at the conference:
1. Information and knowledge management
2. Information seeking and retrieval
3. Information organisation and representation
4. Information for development
5. Indigenous knowledge and indigenous knowledge systems
6. Information technology
7. Information law, ethics and philosophy
8. Information dissemination
9. Informetrics
10. Digital libraries and portals
11. Web development and web technologies

2. Doctoral Forum (9 March 2011)
The Doctoral Forum is part of the biennially held DISSAnet series of conferences which endeavour to showcase South African and Southern African research in the broad field of Information Science.

For more information (including preliminary programmes and registration ) about the conference, please visit the conference website: http://www.unisa.ac.za/prolissa2011 You can also contact Prof P Ngulube (ngulup@unisa.ac.za) and/or Dr. OB Onyancha (onyanob@unisa.ac.za) for more information.

Frankwell Wilson Dulle

CURRICULUM VITAE


DOCTORAL DEGREE


COLLEGE OF HUMAN SCIENCES


The degree of Doctor of Literature and Philosophy (DLitt et Phil) in Information Science
conferment on 04 October 2010


FRANKWELL WILSON DULLE
Frankwell Wilson Dulle was born on 10 February 1962.

In 1991 he completed his BSc (Agriculture) at Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania, after which in 1997 he completed his MA at the University of Botswana.

He is currently a senior librarian at Sokoine University of Agriculture in Morogoro, Tanzania.

Open Access has emerged as an opportunity for wider and unlimited access to, and dissemination of scholarly literature. In his thesis entitled AN ANALYSIS OF OPEN ACCESS SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION IN TANZANIAN PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES, Frankwell Wilson Dulle investigates factors that affect the adoption of Open Access in research activities within Tanzanian public universities in order to devise mechanisms for enhancing the use of this mode of scholarly communication. Finding positive perceptions among researchers and policy makers but negative facilitating conditions, he develops an Open Access adoption model for implementation in Tanzanian public universities.

Supervisor: Prof MK Minishi-Majanja
Co-supervisor: Dr LM Cloete

STORYTELLING FESTIVAL PROGRAMME

MIRIAM MAKEBA HALL, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA, PRETORIA

The storytelling evenings promise to be a great success with storytellers from our own country as well as from abroad. There will be contributions by our own children from the Information Science department as well as well-known persons such as Gcina Mhlophe performing.

More storytellers will follow ...
(Preliminary programme)

6 October 2010

17:30 Evening kicks off with a delicious cocktail in the foyer

18:30 Storytelling Festival starts

Welcoming address by Prof Rosemary Moeketsi

Mia Burger - child performer
Noma Jinyane - child performer
Gcina Mhlophe - Writing and Storytelling are the main foci of Gcina’s creative energies. She lives in Durban with her husband and their daughter Nomakhwezi
Brenda Shafir Performer, South Africa
Dieynaba Gueye - Storyteller, Senegal
Babila Mutia - Storyteller, Cameroon

Closure by ...


7 October 2010

17:30 Evening cicks off with a delicious finger supper in the foyer

18:30 Storytelling festival starts

Welcoming address by:

Denes Asad - Palestinian storyteller from Haifa. She has taken part in many storytelling festivals and conferences all over the Mediterranean, as well as in several European countries
Ida Gartrell - Performer, South Africa
Stephen Augustine - Storyteller, Canada
Francis Firebrace - Storyteller, Australia
Closure

Jenny Hatton's Biography

“What South African English books can you read with your Senior Phase Additional Language learners?” – Jenny Hatton.
This workshop will offer the opportunity to talk to other teachers about novels they are reading in English classrooms. The focus will be on a number of questions such as: How much has changed since the new curriculum was introduced? Are readers more current and local? Which novels work with learners and why? What other South African fiction could you read with your grade 7, 8 or 9 learners? Participants will go away with a bibliography and some practical suggestions on how to use readers in the classroom.

Jenny Hatton was a teacher, Head of Department, Media Advisor with the ex-TED, First Education Specialist and then Deputy Chief Education Specialist with the Gauteng Department of Education before leaving to freelance in 2000. She began writing while working for the Education Department and as a consultant to the Gauteng Institute of Education Development. Since then she has been involved in writing, editing, compiling and project managing as well as training. Her work has been published by a number of organisations and publishers including Jacana Media, Heinemann and Macmillan. Her English textbooks include the Expressions Grades 10-12 and All Aboard Grades 7-9 series. In 2007 she started a branch of the South African chapter of the international Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators in Gauteng. For more information on this, see http://www.SCBWIGauteng.blogspot.com. To see some of Jenny’s publications, see http://www.Jenny-Hatton.blogspot.com

Marita de Sterck's Biography

All over the world folktales are told in which girls become women. Young heroines survive outside and inside lightning and thunder, earthquakes and floods,... In spite of bodily harms, jealous kin, animal suitors,... changing women emerge, alive and kicking, rooted in firm female flesh after their second birth in rituals and stories. For the last 25 years Marita de Sterck has recorded folktales in South-Africa (Sepedi and Griqua) the Amazon Forest, Navajo reservation, Trinidad, Surinam, Alentejo-Portugal, South-Algeria and in Congolese, Indian, Moroccan and Roumanian families in Belgium. She imported ancestral stories and ‘stories from afar’ in classrooms in the Low Countries and composed an anthology with 60 folktales from all over the world that could make a woman out of a girl: Bleeding Beauties. The book appeared in 2 editions: one for adults and one for youngsters from about 12 years on. Title and cover of the juvenile edition are more concrete but the inside is exactly the same. How cruel, aggressive and erotic some of the folktales are, not a single word was changed. Included are a great diversity of folktales that could promote growth in a methaphorical, subliminal, implicit way, leaving interpretations to the young adults. This intergenerational cross-cultural anthology invites grandmothers, mothers and daughters, and grandfathers, fathers and sons as well on a worldwide narrative expedition on womanhood. In her keynote lecture Marita de Sterck will invite you to fasten your seatbelt and come along. She will discuss the mixed blessings of retelling folktales on paper. Can there be a substitute for the unique experience of actually listening to a storyteller?


Marita de Sterck (°1955) studied languages and communication sciences at the University of Ghent and Anthropology at the University of Leuven. She teaches literature, children’s literature and anthropology at the school for librarians in Ghent. She has published picture books, fiction and non-fiction for children and young adult novels. There is a direct line between her research about initiation rituals and her recent novels for young adults: Bad Blood (Book Lion; Silver Kiss Award); The Dog Eaters (Golden Owl Public Award).
In 2009 she made a graphic novel out of an animal bridegroom story of the Ticuna Indians, Boto, and in 2010 she published her collection with 60 oral folktales that could make a woman out of a girl: Bleeding beauties.

Marita de Sterck
School for Librarians Ghent, Belgium
marita.de.sterck@telenet.be, users.telenet.be/marita.de.sterck
Telephone: 00 32 3 664 61 41.