Katie Day, originally from Maine (USA), has lived overseas since 1986 - in the UK, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, and Singapore.
In Singapore at the United World College of South East Asia, she worked in various roles, starting as their PYP Teacher-Librarian for two years at the Dover campus, serving 1,000 students, and then for three years at the temporary site of the new (East) campus in Ang Mo Kio, beginning with just 400 primary school students. When the permanent East campus opened in Tampines in 2011, she became the Head of Libraries and Secondary School Teacher-Librarian, eventually serving 1,500 students in middle and high school.
In 2017 she moved to Bangkok to join NIST International School, a full IB programme school, as their Secondary School Teacher-Librarian, with 800 students in middle and high school.
In 2020 she moved back to Singapore to join Kim Beeman in the Senior School Library at Tanglin Trust School, which has 2,800 students in total, with 1,300 in the Senior School. Note: Tanglin offers both the IB Diploma and A-levels.
EDUCATION
Her educational background includes: a Bachelor of Arts degree in Russian Civilization from Smith College (USA), a Masters of Children’s Literature from the University of Surrey - Roehampton (UK), a Masters of Information & Library Science and a Graduate Diploma of Secondary Education from Charles Sturt University (Australia).
PROFESSIONAL NETWORKS
In Singapore Katie is on the executive committee of ISLN (International School Librarians in Singapore) and over the years has held various positions, including President. She has also managed their blog and website. Together with Barb Reid, she was instrumental in the establishment of their annual Red Dot Book Awards and Readers Cup competition in 2009.
In Bangkok, she was on the BLISS (Bangkok Librarians in International Schools) committee for the Bangkok Book Awards and was the Thailand National Coordinator for the Kids Lit Quiz. She was also involved in Thai IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People).
In the US, Katie is a member of the American Library Association (ALA) and regularly attends their annual conference held in June.
Online, Katie participates in various Facebook groups for librarians, e.g., Int’l School Library Connection and Global Literature in Libraries, and is one of the organizers of the Moodle space: inTLlead (international teacher-librarians lead). She also is on Twitter as @librarianedge.
LEADERSHIP - ORGANIZING CONFERENCES
Besides presenting at conferences, she has helped organize professional development events.
Hands on Literacy one-day conferences in Singapore: Katie Day (while at UWCSEA) and Barb Reid (while at Tanglin Trust) were the driving forces behind establishing the ISLN “Hands on Literacy” conferences — held in 2008, 2010, and 2012.
School Librarian Connection conferences in Asia and Europe: Dianne McKenzie, who worked in Hong Kong for years as a teacher-librarian, now runs an independent consultancy — School Librarian Connection — as well as being an IBO Workshop Leader. Katie has been a co-organizer for several librarian conferences with Dianne: “Beijing - Context & Conversations” (2016) and “Prague - InSPIRing Conversations” (2016) — as well as the upcoming “Bucharest — Disruptive Conversations” one in April 2020.
Librarians Knowledge Sharing Workshop (LKSW) conferences: Started by Barb Reid (together with Rob George) in 2012 when she moved to Malaysia after Singapore, these two-day events are held at different international schools each year (e.g., Kuala Lumpur, Brunei, Bangkok, Singapore, and Ho Chi Minh City). Katie and Barb Reid organized and ran the February 2017 LKSW at UWCSEA East in Singapore, and she and Kim Beeman organized and ran the February 2023 LKSW at Tanglin Trust School in Singapore.
EARCOS (East Asia Consortium of Overseas Schools) - Librarian-focused conference offerings:
Katie was one of the librarian leaders invited to prepare workshops for the EARCOS Teachers’ Conference held in Bangkok in March 2018.
She served on the organizing committee of the March 2019 EARCOS Librarians’ Weekend at the Taipei American School.
LEADERSHIP - BOOK AWARDS
The Red Dot Book Awards in Singapore were the brainchild of Katie Day and Barb Reid, inspired by other teacher-librarian networks in Asia. The story of how they came to be can be found in this blog post. She has been actively involved in the longlist and shortlist process for these awards during her years in Singapore.
The Bangkok Book Awards (now the Siam Book Awards), started by BLISS (Bangkok Librarians in International Schools), were modeled on the Singapore Red Dot Book Awards (and other similar awards). For the three years she worked at NIST International School in Bangkok, Katie served on the committee that reads and chooses the shortlists.
The Neev Book Awards are an initiative that encourages and promotes Indian children’s literature globally. Sponsored by Neev Academy in Bangalore, India, the awards seek to recognize outstanding writing that leads to a fuller understanding of Indian lives and stories — books that build empathy and resilience, explore conflict, negotiate identity, and inspire change. Katie was one of the inaugural nine jury members and is currently one of the co-chairs of the jury.
The GLLI Translated YA Book Prize, run by the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative (GLLI), was started in 2019. Katie joined the jury for the 2023 award.
