April items
What have you been viewing, reading and listening to this month ? Here are a just a few on my list for the month of April :
Catching up again on some very interesting TV episodes of Q&A and InSight – with Minister Conroy … and reading the papers and reports from the Cyber-safety Working Group meeting I attended. Listening again to the ABC Radio Ideas Festival episode in Queensland with lots of familiar ‘library’ voices from around the country. I am catching up on some professional reading through our new ALIA LIS Journal package. Full-text articles that I have missed having access to (back to a little bit of librarian heaven).
This month we advertised the part-time contract position of ALIA Disaster Recovery Project Manager and applications have now closed, which I am now going through. I am also reading the updates from Jane Grace, currently acting in this position – and she’s doing a great job. Check out the BACwiki linked from the ALIA Disaster Recovery webpage. Related meeting documents include starting to finalise the Blue Shield Australia Operational Guidelines and Forward Plan and MayDay material.
More reading – with the call for submission documents for the Not-for-Profit review and the FOI Legislations review. Hoping that some of our members and colleagues from other Library Associations in Australia will assist us with good quality joint submissions. Speaking of submissions, there are some really interesting one’s that we have received for the ALIA Public Libraries Summit – with the new date being announced as 16 July 2009. Take a look! There’s also the recent Canberra Times article written by ALIA Government Publications Advisory Committee Chair, Roxanne Missingham. Guess I should add up these reading points for my ALIA PD Scheme documentation, and see what other things are included in the latest PD postings and the new Institutional member newsletter LIS Management in Focus . I have been attempting some Web2.0 professional development reading too, on Twitter in particular. Thanks to my friends who have suggested some good videos and websites for me to ‘get ready’.
I looked through the websites and picked out some ALIA & IFLA information and transformed them into Trivia Questions that we all did after-dinner at the 2009 ALIES Conference in beautiful Mt Macedon at the EMA Training Centre. I had forgotten how ‘particular’ librarians are with trivia questions and answers, and will refine the questions much better if I do that again, but it was lots of fun :-) I’ve been looking through a lot of Association websites recently - especially the 52 or so library associations and organisations in Australia. Jan Richards (incoming ALIA President) and I will be contacting all of the Executives of all of these Associations and Organisations in the coming weeks.
Some of the other reports crossing my mouseclicks include the PWC CEO’s Report for 2009 - with the phrase “We’re all in this [the GFC] together” ringing true.
And lastly, my ipod music - what I really can’t do without. Top 10 to Classical downloaded this month … a good mix to listen to.
I hope that you too have had some interesting reading, viewing and music that has helped you along this month.
Sue Hutley, ALIA Executive Director