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

Before October slips off the calendar I best do a few notes on the month that was…..  

[and Happy Thanksgiving (to our Canucks), Pink Ribbon Day and Halloween as it’s the end of the month - and Congrats to a couple of the ALIA staff who got Married this month]

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the 2009 National Advisory Congress meetings, and the Board and staff who made all the arrangements.  Take a look at the reports on Your Thoughts about ALIA and Lobbying and Advocacy.  http://www.alia.org.au/governance/nac/2009/

The Gov2.0 #gov2.0 twittering has also been interesting this month and this mashup competition also looks good  http://data.australia.gov.au/  - will a librarian team win ? 

The applications closed this month for the 2010 Aurora Institute - check out the new Foundation website at http://www.aurorafoundation.org.au/ 

Developing the next generation of library leaders is something that ALIA supports and the ALIA Aurora Scholarship may be offered again to a successful ALIA Member and Aurora applicant for the 2010 Institute.

ALIA has many (many) Awards and Scholarships http://www.alia.org.au/awards  and the Membership and Awards Standing Committee has been discussing and reviewing these.   Speaking of committees, we have had alot of members joining and retiring from Advisory Committees.  Did you know that we have Advisory Committee guidelines now?  Take a look here:-  http://www.alia.org.au/governance/committees/   The new Library Technician Advisory Committee will be forming soon as well.

This month a hand-picked print edition of a Harvard Business Review arrived in a package in the mail (thanks Dad) and it was nice to read a print copy of a journal  - it is still one of the things I miss about not being in an actual library - being able to browse the latest titles and journals on display.  I also started the latest Dan Brown novel.  I often wonder what is on the bedside bookshelf of other library-types (?) The latest print publication from IFLA also came in the mail - with lots of Aussie authors (Congratulations on your articles about Regenerating the Profession).     The future of reading has also been a topic of conversation this month.  At ALIA we have had some discussions about a Year of Reading for Australia in coming years - a proposal out of the ALIA Public Libraries Summit.  ALIA has produced a consultation paper on the draft National vision and framework for public libraries and we are seeking feedback from Summit delegates and all ALIA members by 11 December 2009.

ALIA also hosted the Public Library Associations Meeting in Townsville prior to the PLA/QPLA Conference.  The project has now started to produce National Standards for Public Libraries - with Libraries Alive being the consultants assisting with the project - and with a completion timeframe in the first half of 2010.  More information will be posted on this project on the ALIA and Summit websites.

A number of the ALIA Board and Staff members attended the informative CAVAL People in the Information Profession conference.  There were many comments about ALIA’s role in education, collaboration with educators and practitioners, careers and course recognition.   Take a look through the Course Recognition pages (yes, ALIA is the only Association to do CR out of the 50-or-so Australian Library Associations and organisations)    and the new ALIA Career Connect information launched this month. http://www.alia.org.au/careerconnect/ 

Course recognition visits and reports will be one of the major memories of October 2009 - the number of reports written, proofed, redrafted, corrected, recrafted and then sent, followed up, discussed, commented on and replies made will continue throughout the next months.   Our thanks for the patience of all of the LIS Educators for some of the waiting periods this year.   The LT Educators’ Annual Meeting weekend, held in Canberra on 23rd and 24th October was a great success with around 40 educators meeting to discuss the site visits that were conducted during 2009, to deliver best practice examples and to share two days of professional development. 

Rebuilding with Books has also been a huge project this year.  Thanks to Jane Grace and Sue McKerracher as ALIA Disaster Recovery Project Managers during 2009.  http://www.alia.org.au/disasterrecovery - great photos and stories on this site.

We finished the month with sad news of the passing of Kay Poustie, a treasured and revered member of ALIA and a great contributor to the Association and the Profession.  Links here :    http://aliaretirees.blogspot.com/    http://www.alia.org.au/awards/fellowships/1997a.html   I have already received many sincere and thoughtful condolence messages from members, and these will be collated for the Poustie Family and the ALIA community.

Sue Hutley, ALIA Executive Director

Well you would be dreaming of summer when the temperature has dropped below 10 degrees again and everything is covered with a fine layer of red dust following the wild winds last night!

In the world of libraries summer can be a quiet period as our major client groups go on holidays. However in the public library sector it’s time to rev up for the Summer Reading Club! This year’s theme “Read on the Wild Side” has enormous possibilities for our ever enthusiastic and creative children’s librarians. Without having even spoken to them I know that my collegaues up the highway at Macquarie Regional Library will be planning something in conjunction with the Western Plains Zoo - I think it’s the monkey on the web site that inspires this confidence!

Together with Library Lovers’ Day, Australian Library and Information Week and National Simultaneous Storytime the Summer Reading Club is one of ALIA’s major campaigns. but do these campaigns count as advocacy? That’s one of the questions we’re posing at this years National Advisory Congress. Mylee Joseph has written an thought provoking submission on this topic which I would encourage you to read. If the NAC roadshow hasn’t yet reached your town there’s still time to participate. 

Love it or hate it there is no doubt in my mind that the Summer Reading Club has real impact at a local level positioning the public library as a major player in the “summer fun” sphere. Combine this with the media exposure that a news slow period provides and you have the makings of an awareness campaign.

My recent visit to England coincided with the wind up of Quest Seekers, the 2009 Summer Reading Challenge. It had an amazing fantasy theme where participants were in search of the “golden” book, at their local library. One of the requirements for a read to be “recorded’ was for participants to talk about the books they’d read to a member of library staff. I can almost sense your reaction “how much time would that take!”, as it was my first thought too. However having spoken to my UK colleagues about the benefits of this approach, and seeing first hand the delight that my neice Lily had in telling the Librarian at her local library about the books she’d read I changed my mind. Some of the larger services were using volunteers to assist and one library I visited had a special “Quest Lounge” where you could wait - a bit like the Drs but a whole lot more fun, which is what reading’s all about.

Cheers

Jan Richards

ALIA President

The new ALIA Board met on 14 May, following a meeting of the old ALIA Board the day before. What were the highlights? Here are mine.

• Online voting for ALIA elections has got to be a highlight. We have a terrible rate of participation in our elections, and maybe one reason is that it is complicated to vote. So in 2009 we will have online elections, and we hope that they will be simpler and attract more of you to participate.
• We decided that the main theme for the National Advisory Congress this year will be professional development. The NAC is a series of meetings around the country for ALIA members and their friends. It is a chance to provide input to ALIA’s planning.
• More opportunities for input too - in the second half of 2008 we are planning a survey of all ALIA members, and we are placing great trust in this as a means of finding out what our members’ priorities are for ALIA, as well as how they see the current range of services.

These three highlights are all about your participation. And there are more opportunities for participation too - three conferences coming up:  Dreaming08 in September, the New Librarians Symposium in December, and Information Online in January. Something for everyone, or you can participate in all six. I will be.

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 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