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National Policy Congress 2003NPC Opening speech by the ALIA president - Christine MackenzieWelcome to the ALIA National Policy Congress 2003. The National Policy Congress is our most important consultative mechanism, and is the way that members can be engaged in policy making for our Association. The 2003 NPC represents a good cross section -. Eight of you are regional delegates:
Invited group representatives from ALIA committees and issues based ALIA groups are:
I would also like to offer a warm welcome to the local presence officers, who are here as observers:
Local presence officers are a result of NPCs past - so you can see that these Congresses do make a difference, and they do shape our policies and our directions. Welcome to you all, to my fellow board members
and to ALIA National Office staff,
I had the opportunity to speak to the National Technicians conference in Brisbane last week on what ALIA can do for you. I don't need to give the same pep talk to you committed members obviously, but I did a little bit of research, and I thought you might like to hear a bit about the history of ALIA. ALIA has been around since 1937 - it has a great history. Back in those days to be president you had to be an elderly, serious, learned gentleman. But these elderly serious learned gentleman established a great association - one that has endured for nearly 70 years and has promoted and nurtured countless librarians and library technicians in Australia. It has been a major contributor to fostering what Warren Horton at his great opening speech of the Melbourne biannual conference in 1996 described as the 'tribe of librarianship'. The Munn Pitt report of Australian libraries is a great read. Ralph Munn was the Director of the Carnegie library of Pittsburgh and Earnest Pitt was the Chief Librarian of the public library of Victoria and they wrote their report - Australian Libraries - a survey of conditions and suggestions for their improvement - in 1935. As well as giving a status of the major libraries in Australia at the time, Munn and Pitt also tell us about the early history of library associations in Australia. The first attempt to form an association embracing all the states was made in 1896, when the Library Association of Australasia was founded at a meeting of eighty delegates in Melbourne. The Library Record of Australasia was published as the official organ of the association from April 1901 to March 1902 but in 1902 the association practically ceased its activities. They say it is difficult to know why the association failed, as its records show it gave good service in its brief career. At the session held in 1898, 276 members were enrolled, and at the 1902 session, 198 members were enrolled. It was not till nearly a quarter of a century later that another attempt was made, through the initiative of the Institutes Association of South Australia, to form a new federal body. Various meetings were held and the Australia Library Association was formally established. Finally in 1937 the association as we know it today was born. One of the major roles of the new association was education. Back in those days there were no library schools or library courses, and the only way to obtain professional qualifications was through the training courses run by some of the state libraries. It was suggested that members with such training, or those who had attended some of the lectures and had relevant experience, or those who had been librarians in charge for more than 10 years could qualify as associate members. The other principle for the new association that Munn and Pitt suggest is that The president should be a man of such outstanding educational qualifications, that professional librarians would be glad to acknowledge him as their leader, even though he lacked acquaintance with library technique. And so you can see that ALIA has a very interesting history. Roll forward to today. Its easy to look back, its harder to look forward. At the May Board meeting we held a workshop to work out our vision for the association in 2010. What should it look like? What do we need to be thinking about as we go into the future? How do we ensure it remains relevant to the needs of our members? We had a good day working through the environment that we work in, the predictions for the future and what it all means. We came up with a vision statement that says that ALIA will be the association of choice for the information professional. We want people in 2010 to think I'm a librarian or a library technician and I want to join ALIA because that's the association that will give me the best professional development, the best networking opportunities, and is doing the most for my particular sector. We also want ALIA members to have skills that are highly valued and sought after, we want members that are valued for their innovation and creativity and we want members that are engaged with, and aware of ALIA's values, achievements, direction and expertise. We have distributed our 2010 document and we will be discussing the feedback we have received and your input tomorrow. Its hard to know what things are going to be like in 7 years time - 75% of the jobs in 10 years haven't been invented yet - or whatever that interesting statistic is. Think of all the jobs that didn't exist 10 years ago - web managers and mobile phone retailers and business analysts and knowledge managers and so it goes on. And it was not much more than 7 years ago that we got the World Wide Web and email - so who knows what the next 7 years will bring. But I think its important that we decide what key areas we want our association to concentrate on - and we hope we are reading the members right - that they want continuing professional development and they want our sector to be properly valued. So that's the future - what have we been up to over the past couple of years? The Association had a big change in 2000 when it changed its governance structure, and it has taken a bit of settling in to. When we got a Board to replace the old General Council, obviously the new board, like new things everywhere, wanted to make changes and to make a difference. One of the key areas it looked to making a difference was in the education area. I will talk a bit about LISEKA in a minute. But there have been other areas too that the Board has wanted to develop, and that are finally now coming to fruition. The REAP project has been an interesting one, it was launched at the AGM and it stands for Research Exchange and Partnership. REAP is about promoting and valuing research in practice, about acknowledging that a lot of research goes on, but that it is not very well disseminated or promoted. There is a list serve if you are interested in joining that. It also has an e print repository, so if you have done some research, you can mount it here, and so make it accessible to ALIA members. The Web-accessible membership database was also launched at the AGM - Ivan Trundle and his team did a great job with this major refresh of the ALIA website. There are lots of benefits to the members-only area - and there are more coming. There have been a few grumbles about what's behind the members only area - and that we should not put so much there. But hey - we also need to be able to demonstrate the benefits of membership to people, and if they can get everything they need without joining - why bother? The new membership database will also allow us to do much smarter things with the CPD program. We are looking forward to the new look CPD site that will be launched in the next few minutes. This will allow people to keep track of their CPD activities and points much more easily. We have had a special push to encourage new graduates to join and participate in ALIA. We have a new generations advisory group and there are some core people in Queensland who are driving the 'Bright and funky' conferences and doing a great job in engaging the newcomers to our sector. Another great initiative in Queensland is the Mentoring program run by QUT and Gill Hallam. These are some of the things we've been doing - as well as the ongoing things - producing Incite every month, and the other specialist journals, maintaining the web site, appearing at government enquiries - we got to present to the Senate enquiry into online library services last year - lobbying and promoting libraries in lots of different arenas, like regional arts councils, and museum boards and other areas. There's a policy area of ALIA that looks at our policies and makes sure they are up to date and relevant for our needs. There's a research area that ensures we keep at the forefront. And there's the administration area that supports the groups and pays the bills and makes sure that the Association is run in a professional way. We did a governance workshop at our June meeting, and the facilitator of that told us that he thought ALIA was in the top 10% of not for profit organisations - he didn't have to say that, but it made us feel good and I hope it makes you feel good too. When I was at IFLA in Berlin last month, and talking with other associations it is clear that they too admire what ALIA does. I met the past president of ALA, Mitch Freedman, and he told me how helpful Phil Teece had been to him. Mitch had improving the salaries of library staff as his platform when he was president, and he found Phil's work on the NSW pay case in particular most valuable. I met the Executive Director of the Swedish Library Association and she too was very impressed - what particularly struck her was how well the different sectors work together in Australia - the association, the educators and the employers. And CILIP - the old Library Association - is very interested in what we are doing with LISEKA as we are leading the way in that too. It's a bit like the saying that pops up on my computer every so often - if there was no coffee, someone would have to invent it. It's the same for our professional association - if there was no ALIA we would have to invent one, because we need the services it provides, and the stature that it gives to our profession. So now if I change gear and move from my welcome to the NPC to launching the career long learning user guide virtual handbook. The ALIA Education Framework (formerly known as LISEKA) is the biggest thing we've been doing over the past 2 years, and it has taken a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of consultation, and its not over yet. The aim of the project was to look at library and information education and make it relevant to the future. You will all know that the education sector is changing. When I did my qualifications, it was all pretty cut and dried. You finished school and if you got good enough marks you went to university and you did an undergraduate degree, and then if you were lucky you got into a library course for a one year full time or two year part time diploma. Then you were a librarian. And they didn't have RPL - and I didn't know what that stood for prior to my working on the LISEKA project, and for those like me, it means recognition of prior learning. So now people can apply to have their life or career or other qualifications recognised, and institutions will accept that it is not necessary to just go along a straight and narrow path to progress. I think that this new way of looking at education - not by ALIA particularly, but by the universities and TAFEs, probably impacts most on technicians. If you can establish that you have the equivalent of a degree, it will obviously make your life a lot easier if you wish to build on your qualifications. So ALIA really needs to be aware of what is happening in the wider sphere, and ensure that we keep aligned with that. The two major things that came out of our consultation about the education framework was firstly that members wanted ALIA to remain as the standards body, and secondly that we offer a good Continuing Professional development program. So the Board has been very conscious of that and made sure that these two things are kept at the forefront. I'd like to talk a bit more about CPD - There are many ways of making sure you keep up to date and the ALIA CPD program acknowledges that reading professional journals, or going to seminars or going on a visit or exchange to another library or doing staff development provided by your employer or going to conferences are all ways that you can make sure you are an aware and knowledgeable practitioner. At Brisbane City Council Library Services we run what I think is a terrific program called streams. We have identified 9 areas of skills that we need our staff to have. We have developed a 12 month course around each of these skill areas - things like reference, children's, teenagers, local history, marketing - and our staff sign up for them and attend workshops and undertake a workplace project. This is the second year we have done this, and we have been working with ALIA to get our courses recognised for CPD points. We want ALIA to be working in partnership with different sorts of providers, whether they be other professional organisations, employers, or education providers to facilitate the best program that we can. I would like to pay special tribute to all those who have been involved in LISEKA and most especially Professor Mairead Brown. After two years of tireless work on LISEKA, she is now standing aside from the project. Thanks also to Kate Vale who has also contributed greatly. Here at National Office Marie Murphy has been the main champion for LISEKA, and it is a particular tribute to these three people that we have got where we are today. So these are the first real and tangible products from the project, and it gives me great pleasure to launch the Career long learning user guide virtual handbook and to show you what the CPD database is going to look like. |
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