ALIA Board meeting 12 March 2007

Key items from the Board meeting:

1. ALIA Governance: Improving ALIA's governance remains a high priority for the Board.

• The Governance Standing Committee developed a model workplan which was adopted for all Standing Committees.
• The Modus Operandi was updated with revised guidelines on Committees and representatives.
• The Board agreed to update the By-laws to reflect the 2004 Board Meeting recommendation that 'An Honorary member who is a personal financial member of the Association at the time of Honorary membership being granted retains the entitlements of personal financial members'
• A policy on member submissions to the Board was agreed upon, and will be published on the ALIA website and in the Board of Directors Modus Operandi.
• Review of advisory groups and representatives will commence shortly.

2. ALIA Finances: The March meeting has a major focus of financial management as it signs off on the annual financial statement and reviews membership fees for the forthcoming year.

• Membership fees for 2007/08. Currently the CPI is 3.9% and the last membership increase was slightly higher than CPI. The Board agreed to a 3% increase in fees, noting that it was beneficial to members to keep fee reductions to a minimum and that this was possible because of the good financial management of the association. Two membership discount packages for 2007/08 were approved:
• Discounted membership in conjunction with conferences and major events.
• Discounted Life membership. To celebrate the 70th Anniversary of ALIA. The rate for the offer to be $2700 (a discount of $134.00).
• ALIA Annual Financial Report. The Board met with the auditor and agreed to the 2006 Financial Report with a surplus of $19,656 for the year. The Board noted the major financial change was a move to strategic management of cash reserves. The Finance, Audit and Risk Management Standing Committee is reviewing financial controls with the Executive Director.

3. Membership

The ALIA e-list review has commenced, led by the convenor of the Membership, Awards Standing Committee, Rachael Browning. The Board discussed many issues raised in the consultation with members and agreed to extend the consultation to 30 March 2007. A revised e-list policy will be developed. It should be noted that ALIA is responsible for e-lists, while groups, e-list managers and posters have different roles and responsibilities. The revised policy will be developed considering member views and will have a consultation period with members before finalisation.

4. Communications

With the forthcoming launch of The Librarians ABC television series in September ALIA is considering ways of linking in to promote libraries and ALIA members. Porter Novelli is working with the production team.

5. Awards

6. Promoting Library Careers

7. ALIA 70th Anniversary

8. National Simultaneous Storytime (NSS)

The Board congratulated Mylee Joseph in taking up the role as Chair of the NSS Committee and approved a change of date to Thursday 6th September due to APEC impacting on metropolitan Sydney.

9. Peak Bodies meeting

Dagmar Schmidmaier and Sue Hutley will attend this meeting on behalf of ALIA and will propose the following topics:

• Online content regulation and filtering.
• ALIA/ PLA partnership
• Education and employment in LIS.
• Leadership development and ALIA Board involvement.

10. IFLA World Congress Bid

IFLA 2010 will be held in the South East Asia, Australasia and Oceania region. The Board supported a bid for Brisbane, Australia for this conference. IFLA will shortlist bids in the near future as the first part of the selection process.