Australia Day #libday6
It’s Australia Day today, a typical hot summer Canberra day (37 degrees), a public holiday and a chance to catch up on a few things.
Also a day to be proud of library leaders and supporters for the latest Australia Day Awards. ALIA works with the Dept of PM&C to encourage more library staff to nominate their peers and leaders for Australian Honours (they even exhibited at our 2008 ALIA Conference to chat to people about how to nominate someone). At any one time I usually have one or two Honours nomination letters awaiting responses, as we are often asked to provide comments on contributions to the library profession. It is also the case that you may submit a reference and months or a year or so later (it is a lengthy and stringent process) you will see their names announced on the lists. This year we say a special congratulations to ALIA members Spencer Routh and Ron Store, other librarians Aladin Rahemtula and David Clune as well as James Sourris, supporter of the State Library of Queensland. There is also this great story from the National Library of Australia today about volunteers assisting digitisation. Our ALIA Twitter, Facebook and e-Lists communicates the good news (yes, very much part of my job now too).
Librarian searching skills are still so important in my job - for news and media stories, finding people, gathering information, industry intelligence, collating facts, articles and contacts. I continue to use these skills to my advantage all the time.
It’s Back-to-School in the ACT in two weeks time, so I spent some time using my past library skills in covering school books today with my daughter :-) The public holiday also gives me time for some reading, writing and music and app downloads (more on that in another #libday6 post).
Unfortunately part of my job is hearing the sad news of the death of members and library friends. There seems to be a few lately, with more news coming in today via LinkedIn and email. We make contact with families, ensure membership details are amended and if appropriate, ask people to write obituaries. All part of the cycle of life with 6000 ALIA members. Our ALIA Retirees Group also does a great job of keeping up with who is where, including their blog.
Tonight finished with a cold Australian Sparkling Shiraz (because it’s so hot), lamb and pavlova - all typical Aussie food :-) Happy Australia Day all!
Sue Hutley, ALIA Executive Director sue.hutley@alia.org.au LibraryDayintheLife