Back in cold and wet Orange after a few days in glorious Brisbane at the ALIA Access 2010 Conference and more importantly (!) the public library stream A suprise on every page.

Building on the momentum and direction of the 2009 ALIA Public Libraries Summit the focus of the day was on advocay and how we can gain support using the innovative and engaging programs and activities we offer. Participants  were spellbound by some fantastic case studies which focussed on the themes developed as part of the  Summit; ie children and early literacy, digital citizenship, social inclusion and health and ageing. I found myself scribbling madly, lots of ‘note to self’ shameless stealing of concepts and ideas.

At the end of the day our special guest, Grant Millington, a Director of Publicis Mojo, drew together the themes which had been discussed and talked us through how an advertisng agency would build on the strengths.

A definte highlight was the announcement of the 2010 Library Stars Awards which showcased some of the fantastic projects our collegaues across the nation are engaged in.Every 2 years ALIA recognises new, exciting and inspirational programs that are taking place in Australian Public Libraries. The accolade of ‘Library Star’ is given to those libraries that have developed outstanding programs and activities in various categories. We received nearly 60 entries which were scored by an independent panel of judges to produce the 12 finalists and from these the 4 winning entries. 

And the winners are (drum roll please!)

Category: Children and Early Literacy.

City of Greater Dandenong Libraries, Victoria for its early literacy outreach program which was awarded a Victorian Premier’s Multicultural award for Excellence in 2009.

Category:Digital Citizenship

ACT Library and Information Service, the Northern Territory Library and the State Libraries of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia for the MyLanguage national collaboration creating online access to information in mor than 60 languages.

Category:Social Inclusion

Logan City Council Libraries, Queensland for 171 Club Circling the Globe in Logan - the club is named after the number of ethnic groups in Logan. 

Category: Health and Ageing

The Hills Shire Library Service , New South Wales for its festival of Active Living at the Castle Hill Library. 

The 12 finalists will receive certificates and a letter of commendation from ALIA and their entries have been posted on the ALIA web site .  A huge ‘Congratulations’ to them all (I feel a Cliff Richards moment coming on)

The program was convened by ALIA Public Libraries Advisory Committee and it was great to have some of our members in the audience. It was also fun to know that so many other public library collegaues were participating in a virtual way through the web straeming option. We were very chuffed that 2 of our sessions were honoured in this way. As Program Chairperson it was challenging to monitor questions from the floor, from web stream participants and from the tweets which were being generated.

Time now to begin thinking about Library Stars 2012 which will focus on Reading (remember National Year of Reading!) - ever onwards.

Cheers

Jan

Jan Richards

Chair ALIA PLAC

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 9th, 2010 at 4:54 pm and is filed under ALIA, Library Stars, Public Libraries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.