The ALIA National Policy Congress 2004

Report of the Darwin Regional NPC meeting

24 August 2004

Roll

Robin Hempel, Ana Govan (ALIA local liaison officer)

Election of one delegate to attend Canberra NPC

Robin Hempel?

Celebrating success

Staff from NTlibrary and information science, Darwin Public Libraries and Charles Darwin University banded together to man a stall for the two-day Darwin event in August. The success of the event was indicated by Kaye Bartlett, co-ordinator of Library Studies at CDU who had over 250 students taking university library studies information packs. Information related to specific library careers was also provided by Darwin Public Libraries and NTlibrary and information science who have are putting concerted efforts into promoting librarianship as a profession to solve the continuing problem of lack of qualified applicants for positions in the Top End.

Enhancing the involvement and engagement of members in ALIA

Strengths of groups

• Relationships with other related groups such as ASLA and Children's Book Council

Effectiveness of groups compared with other Association structures and activities

• Monthly meetings

Succession planning and encouraging involvement

• Students

ALIA 2005-2006 draft plan

Sharing the vision
Initiatives:

• Public libraries are pursuing a campaign to encourage Librarianship to be taken up as a profession to stem a problem of low applicant numbers for advertised positions. This fits initiative 3 'Research and report on the changing demographics and trends in employment in the sector'
• Participants expressed that there was too much documentation for members to read, digest and comment on for NPC, indicating that the NPC format was not effective leading to low participation

Success measures: Looking at ways to get the NPC information out to increase member participation.

Skilling members for the future
Initiatives: Concern was expressed that it is difficult to maintain the thrust of traditional mentoring

Success measures: CPD to remote areas such as Nhulunbuy would add value to members in these areas

Promoting innovation
Initiatives: No comment

Success measures: No comment

Communicating well
Initiatives: The group is concerned about the pursuance of the website as the means of communication. E-mail and monthly meetings are better for Top End group to communicate.

Success measures: No comment

Professional practice
Web is not the only means of communication

How can we ensure that substantial information addressing issues of professional practice arising from ALIA symposiums and the work and priorities of ALIA self-nominated and advisory groups is better captured and disseminated? No comment

How can ALIA groups help to ...identify areas of professional practice where resources and published information are lacking? No comment

...undertake and/or propose approaches for addressing the gaps? Top End would like to see more communication with convenors.

Group communications with members and non-members of ALIA
How can we encourage groups to make better use of the ALIA website in order to communicate their purpose and activities to members and non-members of ALIA?
Top End finds that information is difficult to navigate to/find on the website (ie. car rentals was recent example)

With the wide number of options available for groups to communicate with members and non-members should group newsletters be made freely available to non-members of ALIA?
Top End does not have a newsletter but the minutes of the monthly meeting are distributed to the members e-mail list for Top End

Questions on notice

None

Questions without notice

None

Any other comments from the meeting?

Participants found NPC documentation provision and process cumbersome and off-putting requiring a simpler way to gather information on crucial items through the LLO to NPC. It was felt that the number and length of documents may have contributed to lack of contribution to the NPC process. Question from the meeting was 'Is there a better and accessible way to get the information out to members?' Other than less documentation to read and respond to no other solution was recommended. The meeting was poorly-attended after being advertised four times over six weeks. Several apologies were received due to members being on leave.