Helen Zwartz scholarship 2020

The National Librarian and Te Puna Foundation announced today that applications for the 2020 Helen Zwartz scholarship are now being requested.

Helen Zwartz

​Helen Zwartz brought to her library work a strong sense of social responsibility and service to the users of the libraries she worked in. During her career, Helen had the opportunity to spend time at the National Library of New Zealand, to further her professional development. She greatly benefited from the experience and in her memory, Helen’s husband David Zwartz, has funded this scholarship, to give other librarians the same professional opportunities that Helen enjoyed.

The Helen Zwartz Scholarship provides $3,000 funding to enable a librarian or staff member working in a public library serving one of New Zealand’s smaller communities, to undertake an internship at the National Library of New Zealand.
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The internship gives the recipient of the Helen Zwartz Scholarship the opportunity to experience working at the National Library and receive mentoring from National Library staff.

The programme is tailored to the recipient’s professional development requirements and can either be of a general nature, covering the range of work carried out at the library or focused on an area of interest to the recipient such as cataloguing, digitisation, conservation, digital preservation, literacy promotion.
  
Please visit https://natlib.govt.nz/about-us/scholarships-and-awards/helen-zwartz-scholarship for more about Helen and to read the criteria and download the application form.

​Sandra Haigh, recipient of Helen Zwartz Scholarship 2019, says:

“I was the fortunate recipient of the Helen Zwartz Scholarship in 2019, which enabled me to work alongside professional staff from the National Library of New Zealand (NLNZ), the Alexander Turnbull Library (ATL) and Archives New Zealand (ArchivesNZ), and learn from them over a period of three weeks, starting on Monday 29th April and finishing on Friday 17th May 2019.
During this time I was able to engage with most of the teams who work to deliver the many services which are managed by NLNZ. I also spent a day at ArchivesNZ which was both enlightening and enjoyable. I have had a little time to process the wonderful wealth of new learnings and ideas since I have returned to my workplace, and for me there are three broad themes which they fall under; best practice tools, relationships, and fragmentation v collaboration. I expect to continue to find new connections and ideas which I can use to enrich our community heritage as I continue in my role”