1 April 1999

In this aliaNEWS broadcast...

GC call for nominations

GC meeting imminent

Workwatch now online

ALW 99 news, please!

Vital link updates required

What's new on ALIAnet?

What's coming soon on ALIAnet?

Yet more feedback requested

General Council call for nominations
Nominations are called for two institutional members and two personal members of the Association to fill four new positions created on General Council under Principle 1 of the Charter of Renewal. You have until 14 May 1999 to post your nominations. http://archive.alia.org.au/gc/

General Council meeting imminent
In less than two weeks time, the next ALIA General Council meeting will take place in Canberra. Issues for discussion include the charter of renewal, the renewal working group, incorporation, copyright arrangements, as well as a review of existing policy statements, our by-laws and regulations, and much, much more! The agenda papers are online at: http://archive.alia.org.au/gc/online/agendas/a9904.html

Workwatch now online
In response to a number of requests, the ever-popular and very useful industrial relations column from inCite magazine - Workwatch - is now online. We are in the process of archiving and posting the older columns too, but it may take a few more weeks to dig back through the last three years or more of inCite's and place them all online. We're working on it, though... http://www.alia.org.au/publishing/incite/1999/

Australian Library Week news, please!
With less than 7 weeks to go, Australian Library Week 99 is looming large on the horizon. We are looking for more news and information to spread across our website on any ALW activities, either planned or realised. The more news we have the better to publicise the event. If you are developing a webpage or two (or more) in relation to ALW99, don't forget to send a note to us so that we can offer a link to your pages - and don't forget to plaster the official ALW images and logos all around the place. Sales of merchandise are going well - but order soon if you wish to avoid shortages! To use the official ALW logo on your site, visit this URL: http://www.alia.org.au/advocacy/alw/web.images/

For general information and news on ALW activities, visit: http://www.alia.org.au/advocacy/alw/

...and don't forget the very special ALW oration, to be delivered by the National Library of Australia director-general, Warren Horton. Pencil in your diary the date and time: 11:30am, Thursday 13 May, at Parliament House, Canberra.

Vital link updates required
Another request: The April issue of inCite includes a copy of the February 1999 edition of our ALIA office-bearer index, Vital link. As everyone knows, it becomes out-of-date the moment it is printed (in fact, it is out-of-date before it is printed...), and we have been planning an online version that is extracted directly from our membership database. Now that we are in the final stages of the development of the online version (we're almost there), we need to be sure that we have the RIGHT information. Please send any notifications of office-bearer changes or additions, address changes, e-mail changes, etc, to enquiry@alia.org.au, or use the form at: http://www.alia.org.au/vital.link.html

What's new on ALIAnet?
We have recently made some significant improvements to accessing ALIAnet, some of which you may already be aware of, some not.

By now, those of you who use the site will no doubt appreciate the new search engine, which now gives more comprehensive information about what it finds. Some of you have asked how each page is scored in the results listing, since it seems that a search for, say, "Virginia Walsh" brings up a number of instances, but only rates the first item at 100%, with the other instances at less than this. Put simply, the rating of a text string is mostly dependent upon its proximity to the head of the document, or to the style of text (a heading scores more highly than plain text). There are other factors at play, but these are the most significant. http://www.alia.org.au/search/

What's changed? We've been running a "what's new" page for a long time now, but it only highlights those pages that we feel are important enough to rate a mention. I have also added a "what's changed" page to allow users to find ANY page alterations in the past 1-7 days. This tool is linked from the "what's new" page, but is processor intensive - so please use sparingly. Note also that whilst it will list EVERY change or addition in the period defined, it does appear to do nothing for some time after clicking the "go" button. Please be patient! Don't send more than one request in 5 minutes, or the server will have a tough time sorting out all of the requests. http://www.alia.org.au/whats.new/

And I've saved the best for last... Ever made typos when keying in URLs? Let's face it - we all do it. Trying to remember the full URL can be tricky. Remembering the case sensitivity across the 4500 pages of ALIAnet can be tricky too (though we generally use lower case). Getting it right when you are a two-finger typist is harder still. But now, we've fixed all that! We've added more bells and whistles to our web server which tries to second-guess these common errors. Typing in uppercase or mistyping or forgetting the odd character will bring home the bacon. ALIAnet now tries to correct your spelling and find the nearest approximation, and correct your case insensitivity. Voila!

What's coming soon on ALIAnet?
In the last issue we mentioned that Vital link online is in final developmental stages. We've solved the security issues and have an interface that delivers the right quantity of information when making a query of any given division (there are more than 100 to chose from, so the interface has been tricky), but we are still working on adding the option of finding office-bearers by a name search function. As I mentioned earlier, individual divisional pages continue to offer the latest contact details.

In response to the level of queries on the topic, we intend to post as much of the ALIA Handbook online as we can, and especially focussing on our Constitution, By-laws and regulations, and division office-bearer's guide. The division guide is being rewritten at this stage (and the print-version of the 1999 Handbook is also underway), so we hope to launch both in a joint online-and-in-print venture.

Also coming up soon on our list of things to do is a much-needed revamp of inCite on ALIAnet - we intend to offer links to each available issue, with the major stories and regular articles, and even more if we find the resources to do so.

Yet more feedback requested
We have been thrilled by the response to aliaNEWS from subscribers. It is gratifying to know that we are providing a useful and timely information, and in a format that is easy to read. We now have countless supportive and constructive compliments (but are always eager for more!). As always, though, we would like to know your thoughts on what you would like to see in this broadcast, and how you would like to see it.

Send your comments to Ivan Trundle, manager, communications and publishing (please remove the '.nospam' from address).

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