ALIA Board Blog

It’s thankfully only a few days to the election and I have been reflecting on the last few weeks of campaign promises, squabbles about debates and town hall meetings, and the inevitable bidding war comprising various programs and payments intended to win our vote.

On Monday night, I heard the first mention of Arts Policy and it wasn’t from the mouth of a politician.  Perhaps I missed something in the all the interviews, debates and media reporting but I’ve heard absolutely nothing about the arts from those who want to lead our nation.  The first mention came from a male, 20 something who posed a question about support for the arts via an internet question to Tony Abbott during the ABC’s Q & A program on Monday evening.

Arts policy IS important to our profession – it’s most often the policy area at both the federal and state area that includes publicly accessible library services.  The National Library is the only federally funded publicly accessible library with the vital role of collecting, preserving and making accessible Australia’s documentary heritage.   

If you check the Arts policy for the three main parties, only one makes any reference to the importance of our national collecting institutions and has a policy of safeguarding and prioritising funding for them. 

One of the ALIAs election lobbying issues was support for the development of a national digitisation strategy to make available the rich and unique collections from

A national digitisation strategy, appropriately funded, is critical.  We know that in Europe and other parts of the world, hundreds of millions of dollars are being invested in digitisation so that local stories can be told.  These materials are being used for research and repurposed through all sorts of creative endevours that we can’t even begin to imagine.

Without digitisation of our rich and unique collections where will the Australian voice on the internet come from?  Will our collections remain locked away in storage, only available to those who can travel to access them? 

Why is it politicians at all levels don’t see this as important to our identity as a nation?  Why did recent advertising around the NBN boast that Australian children would be able to access cultural collections from overseas?   Does this mean our our own stories and collections and inferior or not so important?

ALIA works to raise these and other important matters with our politicians, but we need more individual voices advocating for what we believe to be important.  The ALIA election advocacy material can be easily translated to a state and local government context to continue the lobbying – there is almost always an election somewhere.  Regardless of the outcome on Saturday and the lack of policy position from the major parties, remember the next federal election is only about 3 years away – so lets keep our voices strong.

Margaret Allen

Vice President    

Yesterday I spent most of the day in the Management of Library Association’s session which has pretty much run the whole day. The main focus of the morning session was on advocacy, and it featured our own Sue Hutley as the major speaker. The other speakers were from Croatia, Lativa, Chile, UK,  and India - all speaking about advocacy but from their own perspective and within their own context.As you can imagine each country was at a different stage of development in terms of their social development. While we may complain in Australia that times are tough and money is hard to get, we are streets ahead of our colleagues in less developed countries in terms of library services, and the stage of development and sophistication of our professional associations. Nevertheless, many of the problems raised by each of the speakers are similar. One particular problem that had ressonance was the engagement with decision makers.  We seem to have done pretty well on this front in Australia given our engagement with government over the past 12 months or so. Given the way Sue was handing out her business card it was pleasing to see that some or our approaches could be adapted by colleagues in other countries. The afternoon session of the MLA stream focussed also focussed on but from the perspective of evidence based research. It certainly remined me that regardless of whether its a national issue being addressed by ALIA or a local issue in our own libraries we need qualitiative and quantitative evidence to support and substantiate our claims and issues.The weather in Gothenburg is warm, sunny, and on occasions wet. The locals certainly enjoy the sunshine but don’t seem too phased by the damp. At the moment the annual Gothenburg Cultural festival is on with free music and acts throughout the central city. Last night as I was returing from a catchup with colleagues at the IFLA nightspot - the basement of the central library, the streets were full people, old and young. It was raining and people were going about enjoying the music unphased by the elements!Now the Gothenberg Public Library was an interesting place. Its located close to one the main central squares near the concert hall and art gallery and its normal hours during the week are from 10am to midnght, yes midnight. As we entered the main door at about 9:30pm I thought people woud be in there sheltering from the rain. How wrong I was! (Well I think I was wrong) People were in there reading, playing computer games, and going about their normal library business.Graham Black, President

Thanks to Graham for his first impressions of IFLA!  My activities this year started earlier, as I was the organiser of one of the satellite events and spent three days in Borås, so I got to know the place pretty well!  I can confirm that it was a really pleasant little town, as Graham indicated.

The satellite meeting was a collaborative forum on library and information science education and research, involving the IFLA Section for Education and Training (SET) [I am on the Executive of this section], the IFLA Section for Library Theory and Research (LTR), the American Association of Library and Information Science Educators (ALISE) and the European Association of Library Educators (EUCLID).  The program focused on cooperation and collaboration in education and research, attracting 70 educators from across the world, with a rich program of papers which highlighted the amazing amount of collaboration happening internationally, nationally and regionally. 

Australia was well represented, with Helen Partridge discussing the current national research project into the future of library education in Australia (visit http://www.liseducation.org.au/ for more information on this significant initiative that involves all the universities with LIS programs), Philip Hider from Charles Sturt University (CSU) provided insights into the program offered by CSU, and Ann Ritchie (editor of ALJ) and I presented a joint paper on the collaborative project that ALIA Health Libraries Australia (HLA) are undertaking to determine the workforce and education/training needs of the health library sector.  This work will also be featured at the ALIA Access 2010 conference.  Delgates learnt about the new directions in international librarianship and emerging developments in a number of European, Asian, African and North American countries.  The forum resulted in the stimulus for further collaboration between the three organisations - IFLA, ALISE and EUCLID.  We are working with Emerald on publishing the full papers, so that they are all readily available to everyone, as Emerald and IFLA work on new plans for open access (the theme of the IFLA conference). 

The satellite meeting was hosted by the Library School at the University of Borås - this is the only library school in Sweden, so plays a very important role in our field.  The conference dinner was hosted by the City of Borås - a fun evening with the delgates getting to meet many of our local colleagues in the library profession.   On the second day, the IFLA New Professionals Special Interest Group (NPSIG) ran their satellite event, also at the Library School, so it was great to share a networking session at the close, before everyone moved on to Gothenburg for the ‘main event’.

For me, so far, the main focus of the IFLA conference has been meetings - lots of them!  There have been meetings and strategic planning sessions with the IFLA Section for Education and Training, and I am also working with IFLA on a new intiative - the Building Stronger Library Associations (BSLA) program (http://www.ifla.org/en/bsla).  A familiar face, Fiona Bradley, is the project leader for the BSLA program, which incorporates five training modules which will help support library associations in areas such as organisational development, planning, volunteer management, fundraising and building partnerships.   Six countries have been selected for the first roll out of the program: Cameroon, Lebanon, Peru, Ukraine, Lithuania and Botswana, funded by IFLA in conjunction with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Global Libraries project.  I am about to go into a meeting where the selected trainers will test the online version of the training program. 

So - it’s all very interesting here in Sweden - and more reports and impressions will follow soon!

Gill Hallam, ALIA Director

Well the answer is, it depends. And it depends on a lot of things. Some variables that immediately spring to mind are – target audience, venue, who’s running it, the level of sponsorship, speaker costs. I could go on but I won’t as the list would be very long.

So how do you compare conferences? Again, variables that immediately spring to mind are – cost, value for money, the conference dinner, whether you had a good time with your colleagues, what new things you’ve learned or that excite you. Again, there are multiple variables that need to be considered. In considering whether to attend a conference or not I imagine one of the first things considered by the majority of people, after subject matter, is cost.

With ALIA Access 2010 the Conference Organising Committee aimed to do things differently and more inclusively. Unfortunately, differently and more inclusively doesn’t necessarily equate to more cheaply, nor does it necessarily equate to more expensively. While ALIA Access 2010 isn’t the traditional biennial conference, its organisation nevertheless is on the same dimension and similar scale. It is a sizeable, complex event that needs to be organised and run efficiently and profitably so that the returns can be invested in supporting the activities of the Association. Those who work for me can attest to the Scottish blood flowing through my veins, so I can assure you we have attempted to make this conference as cost effective as possible and that the budget is closely monitored.

For this conference we have a target of 450 delegates and to turn a profit of $50,000. The total budget for the Conference, including the profit, is in the vicinity of  $500,000. By way of comparison the ALIA Biennial Conference operates with  significantly larger profits, delegate numbers and overall budget.

Costs are fixed or variable and fall into five main categories – Venue, Marketing, Organisation and Administration (including IT and AV), Food and Profit.  There are two revenue streams – Registrations and Sponsorship and Trade Displays. Assuming we reach our target of 450 delegates the following tells the story of our expenses and revenue streams.

Expenses

• Marketing - 6%
• Venue - 30%
• Organisation and Administration - 30%
  (includes IT and AV)
• Food - 24%
• Profit - 10%

Revenue

• Registrations - 71%
• Sponsorship and trade exhibits 29%

Yes we could do things cheaper, but it gets to a point where for every saving made there is potentially an equal or greater tangible and/or intangible cost.

The proposed registration difference for non-members is $300 which is greater than the cost of one year’s membership of ALIA. If we really want to maximise the profit that we plough back into the Association for the benefit of members we all should encourage as many non-members as possible to attend!

So now you have an overview of the budget and costs associated with running ALIA Access 2010.

I’m aware that some people are comparing the cost of attending ALIA Access 2010 with the cost of attending IFLA in Gothenburg. IFLA is a five day conference (including a tour day for most delegates) with a registration fee of approximately $620. What is often not realised is that IFLA doesn’t include meals and that it receives a very generous subsidy from the host city or country. (Think of our budget, double it, and add a bit more) I’m afraid that in Australia unless it’s for something like a major sporting event, obtaining similar levels of government support is very difficult.

In essence, the decision to attend a conference is based on weighing up cost and benefits for the individual or the organisation at a given point in time. Comparing conference isn’t like comparing apples, its more like comparing oranges and lemons or rather oranges, lemons, grapefruit  and all the other members of the citrus family.

We seek your support to register for the conference. Registration opens on 1 April and the Early Bird rate will end on 7 July. Over the next little while we’ll be providing tips for you to convince your manager and some information on the tax deductibility nature of the conference.

I look forward to meeting you at ALIA Access 2010.

Graham

Graham Black, ALIA Access 2010 Conference Convenor

What does the ALIA President do on Sundays? Has a leisurely breakfast, catches up with family and friends, takes a long walk, reads, enjoys a glass of wine and a good meal, and ends the day feeling content, ready for the week ahead. This Sunday I am far from home but my routine has been remarkably similar.

I left Melbourne bound for Queensland mid morning. For me flying is dedicated to reading of the recreational variety; long ago I developed a rigid personal policy of no reports or business papers en route, why waste a dedicated space of total enjoyment where someone else runs around and makes the coffee? By the time we began our descent I’d finished my novel and had time to contemplate it. I did have a second book ready to go in the overhead locker but it was too much trouble to climb over the passenger in the aisle seat dig it out(besides which she was engrossed in her own book). On Sunday there’s no need to rush!

Brisbane is a great city to explore, even on a day with intermittent rain. Four hours later I had roamed far along the river, on foot and by ferry. There’s such a holiday feel about being in a different environment, especially when it’s sub-tropical. I wasn’t surprised that my travels took me to the beautiful State Library of Queensland building which hugs the river and looks across the water at the funky Brisbane City Library. Nor was I shocked to discover myself buying something in the Art Gallery store which is another favourite!

Here we are at the end of day 7. So how did my week conclude? Would you believe standing the middle of the aptly named Goodwill Bridge which spans the Brisbane River, soaked to the skin and laughing wildly with fellow ALIA Directors Graham Black and Philip Keane! Yes we shunned the offers of lifts and decided to be healthy and walk back to the hotel after dinner unaware that the heavens were about to open. Philip’s fold up umbrella and the badly broken one Graham had rescued from a dustbin were no match for the downpour and in the end we gave up retiring to a nearby pub and calling for a taxi.

As I write the rain has started again, a wondrous sound for this drought effected city, and the perfect lullaby on which to close.

Jan

Jan Richards, ALIA President

  librarydayinthelife

The Conference wrapped up yesterday with more passionate and inspirational speakers demonstrating the width and depth of the topic encapsulated in those  two words, ’social inclusion’. As always I came away with a head spinning with ideas and how they could be implemented or adjusted into my own situation/s (ie ALIA and ‘real’ job). After many years I’ve learnt that attendance a conference/workshop/seminar is not a mandate to go home and change everything. If there’s something which moves you to act, great! … if it’s for the better. It may also cause you to re-assess what you’re already doing and reaffirm that you’re on track. From my perspective PD in the form of conferences etc is really about taking off the blinkers and opening up your mind; it is legitimised day-dreaming :-).

Back to the hotel to find that I had neighbours in the adjoining room - I knew because I had one of those linking doors which are usually pretty soundproof, though not in this case! I pretended it would get better but I knew I had to do something when a friend asked who else was with me when I was taking a call from her in the furthest reaches of my room. Gold star to the young lady on reception who acknowledged and took ownership of the problem and had me moved and settled into an upgraded room within 5 minutes of my plea for help. I’ve already sent a message to the hotel management acknowledging her.

This brings me to the April issue of inCite which is about customer service - our editor Kate is currently looking for stories and I’ve been pondering what I’ll write about in my Frontline article. My library prides itself on customer service and over the years as a staff we’ve attended multiple training courses, include it as a regular item on our meeting agendas and have champions in place to keep us on track. Despite this from time to time we fall by the wayside and I find the dreaded letter of complaint in my in-tray, ditto with ALIA. 

Often we make a mistake in trying to fix the problem without involving our client. Last night the young woman at reception gave me several options, some of which were unnecessarily over-the-top. In a session at the Social Inclusion Conference yesterday a speaker was reflecting on disadvantaged communities and he urged participants to ask them what the solution was as usually they have already figured it out, they just don’t have the resources to do it. Something we can all learn from.

Jan

Jan Richards, ALIA President

 librarydayinthelife

Some days it’s just too hard to blog. Yesterday was one of those days. I  spent  a good part of the day travelling between home and Melbourne (more of that in a later post) but with the technologies so abundantly available to us at our nation’s airports that’s not an excuse.

Rather I spent the day with a heavy heart following the tragic, accidental death of a friend’s 19 year old daughter. Eliza was a beautiful young person with a great future ahead of her. Despite her youth she’d already done and given so much. One of the stories her proud Dad loved to recount with a mixture of horror and admiration was of her riding pillion on a scooter down the Champs Elysee on New Year’s Eve during a student exchange. When choosing a volunteer project for her Duke of Edinburgh Award, Eliza came to my Library, bringing a ray of sunshine with her. She’ll be sadly missed by many, many people.

Last week I attended the funeral of former CSU Librarian and ALIA member Margaret McPherson in Bathurst. Margaret’s death too was totally unexpected. Since her retirement she had pursued her many interests with even more enthusiasm and when I  caught up with her late last year she was eager to fill me in on her many plans and schemes. The funeral service for Margaret was testament to the high regard in which she was held in the many areas of her life, and to her love of church music; breathtaking.

Both Margaret and Eliza have gone too soon but they both embraced life with a passion and made their dreams a reality. I think that’s a lesson we can all learn from. One of those fridge magnets I normally eschew has a message I can really relate to “Life is not a dress rehearsal”. Please reflect on that.

Jan

Jan Richards, ALIA President

 librarydayinthelife

Writing the Frontline column for inCite is a little like shouting into the wind, you’re never sure where your voice will go and will your sentiments register. That’s why it’s a delight to get feedback.

This morning I flung myself into my chair after a meeting fraught with pre-Christmas urgency (why do we haveto get stuff done by 25 December?) to find an email from Brenda Strachan, Campus Librarian (Fraser Coast) at the University of Southern Queensland. She wrote:

‘When I departed Brisbane for a job in the newly built TAFE campus in Gympie (1991), I certainly felt isolated as the only librarian staffing the library. So I established a regional TAFE group called SNOBS (Slightly North of Brisbane Section), with staff attending from Bundaberg, Hervey Bay, Sunshine coast and Maryborough. We met a few times per year for training and the usual sharing of info. This soon expanded to include staff from Kingaroy and Toowoomba, so we became WANOBEs, (West and North of Brisbane) but pronounced wannabees.

I do relate to everything you said in the article. I did go back to the big smoke for 4 years, but absolutely hated it and now I am working in a little piece of heaven. Far enough away from the politics of the larger library in Toowoomba, and I am able to ride my bicycle to work, instead of sitting in traffic for 90 minutes.’

 In a follow up email Brenda informed me she’d just ridden her bicycle home for lunch along the beach from, ’so refreshing’ was how she put it :-).

It’s always great to read our Association’s magazine usually curled up on the lounge with a glass of white wine. To all of you have contributed over the past 12 months a huge thank you, it’s the diversity of perspectives that adds vitality to our profession. There are some great themes planned for 2010 so do start thinking about how you can showcase your library and or projects.

Stay sane in the lead up to Christmas.

Jan

Jan Richards, ALIA President

I’ve just arrived home from Canberra after having spent yesterday at ALIA National Office catching up on a few things. It’s a public holiday today in our Nation’s capital (though I think they may call it something like “Family and Community Day” rather than Melbourne Cup Day!). Naturally a number of staff had taken yesterday as a leave day to give themselves a long weekend and the office was “person-ed ” by skeleton staff. To make the day fun a lunch had been arranged and hats were de rigueur. Consequently I left here at 6 yesterday morning with my hat and date chocolate and almond torte strategically placed in the car (and for those of you who know me, yes, I’m still dragging that recipe out; it is after all a cake that will survive the 3.5 hour drive).

Sitting in the sunshine in the ALIA courtyard I was reminded of the many Melbourne Cup lunches I’d shared with colleagues over the years, always staggered to allow for rosters; the plethora of sweep tickets on your desk all allocated to different family members including pets;  the mad dash to the TAB by someone who purports to know what they’re doing to put some bets on; the phone call that always comes just as the race is about to start and the “is that it?” sensation once it’s all done and dusted.

I hope your lunch was fun, thanks to the team at ALIA for allowing me to be part of their celebrations. As for the race I think I’ll be watching it, hat-less, with Holiday (my black Labrador) and a small something I picked up in the bakery in Boorowa on the way home.

Cheers

Jan

Jan Richards, ALIA President

Like Jan I too have been busy representing the ALIA Board over the past couple of weeks.I was fortunate enough to attended the last two days (17-18 September) of the very successful National Library and Information Technicians Conference in Adelaide. The conference certainly had a buzz about it, and that buzz even prevailed on the closing day, after the every energetic conference dinner. I’d have to say, and I think many agreed that band, “The Smarty Boys” were fantastic.  The lead singer actually works in the University of South Australia Library, which just goes to show what a versatile bunch we library workers are.

On a more serious note, the conference demonstrated the versatility and depth of talent we have in the Library Technician ranks. Congratulations to the award winners, and in particular to the organizers who hosted an engaging and stimulating conference. The next National Library and Information Technicians conference will be held in Perth in 2011.

While Jan was in Perth attending ASLA, I was up in Darwin attending the Top End Symposium. The symposium is an annual event that provides an opportunity to showcase initiatives and achievements by Top End library staff. The symposium theme was Exploring Library Spaces for Learning and Elearning.  Topics explored include new libraries and technology, online tutorials, creating new spaces in aged buildings, the use of libraries by disaffected indigenous youth, and setting up an elearning environment within the NT health system.

The symposium attracted approximately 80 delegates, most of whom attended the final session on Saturday (yes Saturday) morning. Once again congratulations to the organizers for putting together the symposium at such short notice, and my thanks for the hospitality offered to me while I was there.

I can recommend Darwin as a place to visit, it has its own tropical style (and climate), the people are friendly, the sunsets are beautiful, and its a good place to buy wedding anniversary presents. I don’t recommend the red-eye flights in and out of Darwin though.

While I was in Darwin, and just before I left Rockhampton to attend the ‘Tech’s conference in Adelaide, I hosted NACs. The first one was for rural and remote members, and the Darwin  one was obviously for NT members. Some of the key points to come out of the meetings were:

• the need to focus on special and other libraries, in addition to public libraries,
• for ALIA to make submissions to government bodies on matters of importance to members,
• to somehow bridge the proliferation of library and related information bodies, and
• the importance of providing independent industrial relations advice.

Next week I’m in New Zealand  representing the Association at LIANZA and attending CONZUL, while Jan is in Townsville attending the Public Libraries Australia/Queensland Public Libraries Association conference. I think the weather will be somewhat  warmer in Townsville than Christchurch.

Till next time,

Graham

Graham Black
Vice President