ALIA Board Blog

January sees the start of the ALIA financial year and by the end of the month our auditors have arrived to do the analysis of the previous year’s accounts.  Our Annual Report financials in 2008 were clearly affected by the GFC.   At the end of the first full ALIA financial year after the financial squashing our investments received, we are starting to bounce back slowly.  ALIA House continues to be a major (but aging) asset with the next 3-year-annual re-valuation to be reflected in the 2009 figures.   Salaries and staff movements continue to be our major expense, as would be expected in an organisation where providing professional services and facilitating the many groups, committees, events, campaigns and activities to members is our priority.  A restructure of ALIA National Office management staffing began in December 2009 and will continue though the first half of 2010.  Positions will be advertised during coming months. 

The Board of Directors election nominations closed on 13^th January 2010 and the unusual situation of having the same number of nominations for available positions occurred.  This means that the Association is not required to conduct an election this year.  A number of members considered nominating this year (and discussed their intentions with our current board members) but indicated that it was just not quite the right time for them either personally or professionally.  A director position not only comes with significant responsibilities (ASIC and AICD give good summaries) but also a great time commitment.  To enable greater effectiveness for board processes, the ALIA Board has implemented a few changes how the company’s board started out in the early 2000’s in regards to meetings and board decisions.  The board meets more frequently than in the past – with teleconference meetings (as official board meetings) in between the face-to-face meetings often held in Canberra or other capitals (as I write this I am on the plane to a board planning meeting in Brisbane, the closest location for three of our current board members).   We also have 6 Standing Committees of the Board, which a board member chairs. The focus of these SC’s is high level discussion, research, reports and recommendations also using key expert member input, for that board member Chair to bring to board meetings.  It allows a board member to focus on one or two area of strategic importance for the Association – while at the same time getting the summaries and overall picture by hearing from other board members and the Executive Director.  Our congratulations to Margaret, John, Andrew and Julie and we look forward to working with you all and getting ready for your official terms from May2010 to May2012. We also acknowledge their employers and staff and families who will be supporting them in their role as a board member (it really is a combined effort).

Other members expressed their interest in nominating this year, but after further information realised that they may need more background in finance or governance, or just learning more about the wide scope of work of the Association to become a more productive board member so that they might get the best out of their 2-year term on the board.  The ALIA Boardroom Bound program will continue and you can sign up for a board buddy.  Some potential board members have considered nominating for an ALIA Advisory Committee in the meantime.  We need quite a few more members to assist with these committees – nominations are being called again in the March edition of inCite, so keep a look out for that.

Advocacy will be a great focus for us at ALIA in 2010.  Over the past few weeks it has centred on the ISP filtering proposals and RC Classification and the ACMA blacklist.  Your case studies so far on examples of how library-related enquiries and research work can be inhibited by ISP filtering have been very useful for our submission – please continue to send your comments and responses to advocacy@alia.org.au by 10^th February so that we can finalise the submission by the due date.

Following on from the ALIA Public Libraries Summit we are also continuing on with the discussion around the social inclusion contribution that libraries make to society.  It’s sometimes interesting to see who reads blog posts – including comment from the Social Inclusion Minister these past few days (thanks Ursula for taking the time).  We are very much looking forward to working with DEEWR, the Social Inclusion Board and Senator Stephens’ office on continuing to place libraries at the centre of our community contributions in this area.  Her comments on literacy and reading and the national agenda comes at a time when our third ALIA Summer Reading Club is coming to an end and the announcement of the book for National Simultaneous Storytime for 2010 is made.  ALIA members should feel proud of the contribution that these national reading campaigns contribute to the nation’s literacy agenda – and they are great fun too.  We hope you have enjoyed ‘Reading on the Wild Side’ and are now placing your order for ‘Little White Dogs Can’t Jump’ and putting the date of 26 May 2010 into the diary to organise a reading session in your library – no matter what type it might be.  The importance of reading and literacy, and how literate citizens improve our society, can be highlighted by library staff everywhere.

Sue Hutley, ALIA Executive Director

 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

What’s the clue for you that summer has started? Is it the first cicada, the smell of Aeroguard or the drone of cricket on the TV/radio? For me it’s all of those plus the sure knowledge that Summer Reading Club has commenced!

At our staff meeting this morning Lisa, our ever enthusiastic Children’s Librarian, ran us through the plan and did show and tell with the merchandise. Those on the desk have been coerced into wearing a “Read on the Wild Side” badge and in my Presidential role one was passed to me with a “put this on”! I’d forgotten I had accessorised in library mode it until someone commented on it at lunch time - bit like wearing your name badge into the sandwich shop “would you like salt on that Jan?”! However it was a great way to generate some publicity so maybe it will become part of my summer wardrobe.

If you haven’t had a look check out the web site and start reading! - and with Christmas just around the corner think ’books’ for presents. There speaks the wife of a bookseller

Cheers

Jan

Jan Richards, ALIA President

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

Hello everyone, it has taken me awhile to get back into blogging. I’ll now try and get back ‘into the swing’ of it again.

This weekend is a big one at ALIA National Office. We are conducting a major upgrade of our computer servers and Microsoft software. Our email system is getting a major overhaul so do bear with us. Members are asked to limit their email contact with the ALIA staff this weekend, but we should all be back on deck by Monday afternoon 24th September 2007. See our notifications on the website and our messages to listowners etc.

The ALIA IT guys will be plied with pizza, diet coke and coffee as they sit by their noisy servers and pour over the code and conduct test after test. All the ALIA staff are excited with the anticipation of a more robust system to keep us going into the future !!

Staff are also volunteering this Saturday to pack the thousands of items into Summer Reading Club packs for 2007. This is the first year that ALIA has organised SRC and libraries around the country will be joining in from 1 December 2007 to 31 January 2008. We will be packaging up poster, wristbands, stickers and bookmarks for all the libraries involved. Find out more information at http://www.alia.org.au/src . The new website will be located at www.summerreadingclub.org.au and will be launched soon.

Sue Hutley

ALIA Executive Director