Services to Schools is a business unit of the National Library of New Zealand

National Library of New Zealand

The National Library of New Zealand is New Zealand's legal deposit library charged with the obligation to "enrich the cultural and economic life of New Zealand and its interchanges with other nations"...

(Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa). They provide curriculum and advisory services to support New Zealand schools.

Curriculum Services (CS)

The CS lends items from its Schools Collection to enhance the teaching and learning in New Zealand schools. Every teacher in a New Zealand school is able to access and borrow from over 600,000 items that comprise the Schools Collection. The collection holds a unique range of New Zealand and international curriculum resources including books, CDs, and DVDs.

The CS issues nearly 1.5 million resources each year, and is currently used by over 98% of New Zealand schools. CIS staff are trained to advise and assist teachers on appropriate resources and also select and send items in response to teachers topic requests.

Teachers are able to visit their nearest CIS centre to select resources. The centres are: Auckland, Palmerston North, and Christchurch. These centres provide walk in and distance services for teachers via free fax, phone, email, postal and an online request form.

Advisory Service

The other strand to School Services are its advisory service. This service supports school library development and offers free information and advice on school library management as well as providing professional development. Every New Zealand school is able to access the Advisory Service. School Service library advisors are in 14 locations around New Zealand and can help and support schools in planning and development these area through the following:

Guidelines for School Library development

The publication The School library and learning in the information landscape: guidelines for New Zealand schools provides a framework of six guiding principles for school library development