ALIA Board Blog

 The team behind my earlier performance were particularly keen on a re-run; believe me we created a monster during that exercise when a borrowed video recorder and a whiteboard on wheels masquerading as an autocue created a sense of ‘Cecil B DeMille’ amongst my colleagues. Luckily fate in the form of the pre-Christmas rush put such silliness to rest and my on-line Yuletide presence is limited to this blog.  

We all have “must read” blogs in our lives. One of mine (apart from this one!) is written by Kathy Doughty from Material Obsession. Last week she captured my mood when she wrote:

I always find this time of year very reflective.  The calendar mind map is always interesting as the year stretches out ahead and then, as if by magic, it is so many pages turned.  I can’t help but stop and sit for a minute and review all the wonder of the past year.   

2009 has been a huge year for ALIA. I will remember it as the year in which we:

• Integrated the results of the member survey into our planning and as a result focused on your # 1 priority, lobbying and advocacy, at the National Advisory Congress

• Weathered the global financial crisis

• Contributed to the discussion on issues affecting our industry; the National Broadband Network, Parallel Importation and internet filtering (to name a few)

• Enhanced the range of PD opportunities including access to online resources and current awareness services

• Worked with fire devastated Victorian communities in the Rebuilding with Books project

• Hosted the first Australian Public Libraries Summit which has led to the development of a Vision and National Framework for the sector

• Delivered Library and Information Week, Summer Reading Club and National Simultaneous Storytime

• Collaborated with other library and information associations

• Held a stand out Library Technician’s Conference in Adelaide

• Worked with LIS educators to accredit courses

• Supported IFLA in their decision to relocate the 2010 Congress to Gothenburg

• Embraced Library 2.0 technologies

And they’re just the things I was able to come up with on a hot December afternoon following a lunch time of shopping.

None of this would have been possible without our:

• fabulous ALIA National Office staff

• Local Liaison Officers

• dedicated Board of Directors

• committed volunteers

• and you our loyal members.

To you all a huge thank you.

As we count down the final days of 2009 I would like to send you all my very warmest wishes for the festive season. It has been a great pleasure to meet, work and reconnect with many of you during the year and I look forward to more of the same in 2010.

Jan

Jan Richards, ALIA President

Spring in Canberra and the blossoms are out at ALIA House.

How time (and the travel kilometres) flies past.   The IFLA Milan Congress turned out to be a busy week of meetings and sessions for all the Aussies who attended.  The thing I like, is that even though you can’t be in many places at once, between all the 2.0 and other links from IFLA,  Flickr, Twitter and Facebook friends photos, I can piece together lots of the conference sessions that I missed out on.  

Over the past few months Dr Gill Hallam (acting as Chair of the Panels), Dianne Walton-Sonda (ALIA Education Manager) and a number of library technician practitioners have visited all nineteen Institutions and RTO’s delivering the Diploma in Library and Information Studies to undertake course recognition site visits for the first time in 10 years.  This has been one of our big projects over the past 18 months.  While the site visits have concluded, the reports are still being put together.  A representative from all institutions will attend the ALIA Annual Library Technician Educators’ meeting in Canberra in October to share best practice examples and talk more about ALIA Course Recognition processes.

Library technicians and significant others around Australia are planning their suitcase packing with only a few days until the ALIA Library and Information Technicians Conference in Adelaide.  Thanks in advance to the conference committee ‘Team Adelaide’, for their hours and hours of effort coming to fruition in the coming days.  It just seemed like yesterday that the committee and ALIA staff were having a drink in the bar across the road from the Grand Hyatt in Melbourne after the last conference two years ago, to start the enthusiasm and planning for Adelaide.   This year there will be abit of a theme at the dinner which should be fun –  “ It is 30 years since the first Library and Information Technicians Conference, so celebrate in style by wearing your favourite outfit from the past 30 years. A prize will be awarded for the best outfit!”   and keep up with things at http://twitter.com/LibTecsConf09

Over the past few weeks we have taken a slight breath after the ALIA Public Libraries Summit and have begun the basics of a plan for the next few months.  We will keep in touch with news to public libraries through our ALIA PLAssoc e-list (some of you would be getting the forwarded messages) as well as on the Summit website and blog and we will be meeting many public librarians at the PLA Conference in Townsville in October.

Two newer ALIA Projects also continue their important work :  The Living Libraries Australia website got transferred to ALIA this week, and the ALIA Disaster Recovery Project is getting ready for Rebuilding with Books - helping Black Saturday families.

I hope many of you are planning to attend a National Advisory Congress meeting near you – or why not join us on the phone if you can’t make it in person for whatever reason.  It is a great opportunity to have your voice heard as to how the Association can improve in the area of Lobbying and Advocacy (rated in our Membership survey as high importance).

With it being the 9^th month of 2009, here is a list of 9 things to remember to do this month  :

1. Attend the 2009 ALIA Library and Information Technicians Conference (yes, you can still register at the last minute), or put it in your diary to keep up with the papers and blogging and tweets from 15^th-18^th September.
2. Renew your ALIA membership ( if you haven’t renewed in 09 yet, your access to Members’ Only areas and the online journals has now been stopped).  Even better - encourage nine colleagues to join as new ALIA members this month to help us make a strong library association.
3. Put in your diary to attend one of the (more than nine) ALIA NAC meetings near you, or comment on the papers or join one of the teleconferences.  (Adelaide and Brisbane are on on 09/09/09 b.t.w.)
4. Catch up on any missed episodes of the ABC TV The Librarians II series shows  - and watching it at 9pm on 9^th September (with lots of Victorian librarians featured tonight in this last episode).
5. Make sure you have registered for other library events happening around the country – ALIA Top End Syposium09 in Darwin, ALIA Acquisitions Seminar in Adelaide,  and ASLA09 in Perth, PLA09 in Townsville, CAVAL09 in Melbourne, PLM09 in Sydney.
6. Borrow nine items from your local public library this month – librarians are sometimes the best and worst library borrowers J
7. Brush up on your internet searching  skills to find a few more suggestions for how to celebrate on 09/09/09
8. Do a quick Benchmarking exercise -  your library service against nine others that might be similar – check out what they are doing and compare innovations, spaces, services, staffing.   Think of nine new things you would like to do @ your library.
9. Get back in touch with nine library colleagues you haven’t talked to lately – networking and sharing stories and experiences is a key part of our collaborative profession.

SueHutley,  ALIA Executive Director, sue.hutley@alia.org.au 

During the week a number of submission papers were loaded up onto the ALIA Education and Workforce Summit website.  They are good reading and our thanks to all of the individuals, groups and organisations that have already contributed.  Some late papers will also be added next week.

Invitations have gone out to all Australian LIS educational institutions, major representative Associations (all the usual acronyms - NSLA, CAUL, ASLA, ALLA ….etc)  as well as sector groups of ALIA.  We only have a room that can take 50-55 people and we are pretty much now at capacity.   Julie Sloan has been selected as the facilitator for the summit day which is Friday 28th March 2008.  The Summit is an initiative of the ALIA Education and PD Standing Committee. 

So what if you are not on the invitation list ?  If you work in one of the mentioned representative groups or are part of these other Associations, check out the Submissions Page and see what has already been said.  Find out who your nominee is and if you want to make your own comments, I suggest you direct them to your representative, or send a late submission for the website via email.  You can also attend a Pre-Summit meeting on the night of 27th March at the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne from 6pm to 7.30pm, but RSVP’s are required - again, check out all the details on the Summit website.

So what will the Summit discuss?  The background is available from the Summit website, and a further detailed program will be provided to participants and on the Summit website next week.  If you attended a National Advisory Congress meeting in 2007 you would have spoken about the issues with Board Directors which have been fed into the summit process, reports back will be conducted at this year’s NAC meetings around the country in July 2008 [details here ].

 Attention Bloggers :  it seems that some of our colleagues may have missed information about the Education and Workforce Summit  - why not add a note and a link from your blog to catch those that may not be on aliaNEWS, read inCite or watch this blog.  Thanks for helping get the last minute word out !  Thanks,     Sue Hutley, ALIA Executive Director

The Summit is approaching fast, and there is now a web page for it. As yet, there is little information on the web site. But there is a call for contributions. This asks anyone who is interested in library education in Australia, or in the future of the Australian library workforce, to make a submission to the Summit process, and it provides some questions and other information to help you.  The agenda for the Summit will be  determined by what ALIA members, and library employers and educators, see as the main issues. We hope to make all submissions and suggestions accessible on the ALIA Summit website, and for that reason there is a limit of 5 pages for submissions.

One of the most common questions asked is: who will be attending the Summit? The  capacity of the venue is 50, and we are still working out who should attend to ensure an effective representation of the three categories of people I mentioned above. The reason for limiting the Summit to fifty people is that we want to achieve agreement on a clear plan of action.

Have a look at the site, and then have your say. We are interested in hearing from both individuals and groups, and on any of the issues listed on the site, and others too. The Summit is being organised by ALIA National Office, and you should send your contributions to Sue Hutley.

I will keep you posted through this blog on how it is all going.

The ALIA board met by teleconference on 2 November and considered at the following issues:

·         2007 National Advisory Congress: the full report of the regional meetings and final teleconference are on the ALIA web site http://www.alia.org.au/governance/nac/2007/ and will be discussed in detail at the December Board meeting at the teleconference thsome major issues such as support for members in regional areas, employment, education and advocacy were discussed;

·         Federal Election 2007: The President and Executive Director have approached major and minor parties about library issues, further advocacy is continuing;

·         Conference manual: The Board agreed to extend the consultation period for the draft manual to 20 November 2007 and that a second teleconference be held in December;

·         Information Online 2009: A Professional Conference Organiser was agreed for this conference.  

Regards 

Roxanne

I have recently attended the second annual ALIA Library Technician Educators’ Forum, held in Melbourne on Monday. About 25 people from TAFEs around Australia got together, and the whole thing was organised and run by Professor Gill Hallam (QUT) and Dr Paul Genoni (Curtin).

There are in fact 16 TAFE locations and one private provider, in every state and territory, where you can study to become a library technician.  There were a little over 2000 enrolments in library technician courses in 2005, down from 3000 in 1995. My role at the event was definitely to observe - I went in knowing very little about library technicians’ education, and came out knowing slightly more. There are lots of things to know, and lots of concerns amongst those who teach.

The forum was held in the week of the Library Technicians Conference, which is now in full swing in Melbourne, at the Grand Hyatt and, last night, at the Melbourne Aquarium. The Conference concludes today (Friday), and so far my participation has been limited to registering, and attending the dinner. The dinner was great - the fish watching us eat certainly contributed to the ambience, and several hundred people had a lot of fun.

Naturally, all of this will feed into the Library Workforce Summit on 28 March next year.