ALIA NAC 2005 Brisbane report

1. Roll attendees

Steph Capra, Trish D'Arcy, Joy Goldsmith, Margaret Rol, Heather Burrell, Denise Cadman, Rachel Crowe, Margaret Mowberry, Fiona Doyle, Jann Dowsett, Kathryn Harding, Merindi Derrick, Lachlan McPherson, Sue Hutley, Sarah McCallan, Jenny Slattery, Macushla Boyle, Simone Hys, Rachael Browning (director), Gill Hallam (vice president)

2. Selected representative to attend Canberra NAC

Name: Sue Hutley

3. Celebrating Queensland success

Awards:

Bronia Renison was the 2005 Queensland Library Achiever of the Year Award recipient. She is based in Townsville, and was able to visit Brisbane for the LIW trivia night where she was presented with the award. Thanks to One Umbrella for continuing to support this award.

Congratulations to Sharon Uthmann who is the 2005 Dunn and Wilson scholarship recipient. Sharon has created a blog detailing her research.

Margaret Mowberry won the Library Technician of the Year award. This was presented at a great LIW Technicians dinner with bellydancers for entertainment. The dinner was sponsored by CapraRyan.

Congratulations to Kate Watson and Chelsea Harper from CQU who have been awarded the Ray Choate Scholarship.

It was noted that Queenslanders have done very well in winning so many ALIA awards and scholarships this year.

Events:

The Queensland LIW trivia night was once again an excellent night. Thanks to Fiona Doyle for all her efforts in organising the 2005 event. The Quorum Group made $1500 profit from the night which has gone towards the deposit for the 2006 Careers and Employment Expo. (This will be a collaborative project between ALIA Quorum, the New Graduates Group and the Queensland Library Technician's Group, with assistance from ALIA National Office). As well as being a fun night and a good fundraising event, it was a good opportunity for participants to network. The trivia night was also very well supported by industry vendors through attendance and donations of prizes.

The @ your library campaign in Queensland is a combined effort between libraries from all the sectors in South East Queensland. Posters, bookmarks and a website have been produced to support the campaign.

The Third International Evidence Based Librarianship Conference held in Brisbane in October 2005 was a huge success with a large representation of South East Queensland people both as delegates and as presenters. There has been a lot of positive word of mouth feedback since the event. The positive feedback has also been reflected in the returned evaluation forms. Gillian Hallam and Helen Partridge have been invited to be a part of the program committee for the next conference.

The EBL mini-conference was a great opportunity and well received. The mini-conference organisers created a welcoming and comfortable environment and there was no charge for participants. The mini-conference was sponsored by QUT, demonstrating another industry partnership within South East Queensland.

Groups:

Quill. This online publication is published every month and this year has included many photos. The number of hits to the Quill website have been increasing over the year. Thanks to the ALIA Board and ALIA National Office for allowing Quill to be openly available on the ALIA website, as it has dramatically increased hits to the site.

The Queensland Library Technicians Group have maintained a program of library visits throughout South East Queensland, including the Gold Coast. While the Library Technician's Conference was held in Sydney this year, there was a large contingent of delegates and presenters from Queensland.

The Queensland OPAL Group remains very active with regular meetings throughout the year.

The NGG also remains very active with the national convenor located in Brisbane and also a SEQ Group forming.

Congratulations to the North Queensland Group who have re-formed this year.

The Central Queensland members was encouraged to re-engage this year with a visit by Gillian Hallam and Sue Hutley.

It was noted that Queensland is a very strong and engaged state when it comes to ALIA and library issues.

4. ALIA stars program

There was some discussion at the meeting about the ALIA stars program. The following issues were raised:

When starts are given to collective organisations (eg Music Australia), how can they be approached at events, or their bio placed online?
What is the criteria for selecting stars?
Is there a limit to the number of stars selected each year?
Queensland already has a Library Achiever of the Year award and a Library Technician of the Year award. What is the relationship between these awards and stars? Should the recipients of the awards also be nominated to the stars program?
Is there any quality control of the recipients - It was noted that all of the current stars have been the recipients of other awards. Is ALIA piggy-backing on the selection criteria and judging of these awards?
Has there been any international comparison?
The meeting was reminded that stars receive honour rather than financial awards.
There was some confusion between the awards program and the advocacy program.
There is nothing on the stars website allowing contact to be made with the stars, which is odd if they are advocates. We need contact details or website details of the ALIA stars to be provided, or at least a contact at national office.

On the basis of these concerns/questions the meeting felt unable to nominate any Queensland stars at this time. Meeting participants requested that a copy of the criteria be made available before nominations are called for.

5. Election of directors

The motion was explained to the members at the meeting.

Members were reminded that if they are unable to attend a general meeting, there is a proxy form on the ALIA website. Because many people were not aware of this provision, the information will be e-mailed to the ALIA Qld e-list when elections occur. It was suggested that a message to all ALIA e-lists explaining the proxy form (with a weblink) would be useful.

The meeting was generally supportive of the changes and there were no further questions or comments.

6. Workforce planning and education

The identified issues in relation to workforce planning were:

The aging of the profession
The demographic changes
That fewer young people are entering the profession
The changing IR legislation
The competition between professions will intensify, and has already begun in some countries, with library jobs getting harder to fill
ALIA Quorum, in conjunction with NGG and Qld Library Technicians will be promoting library work as a career option by participating in the 2006 Brisbane Career and Employment Expo.
The image of librarians was discussed. The meeting was reminded that other professions also have negative stereotypes. The @ your library campaign is also an opportunity to change the librarian stereotype.

Discussion about the library labour market:

It was felt that the labour market was tight, especially in terms of permanency and full time contracts.
People often start out with multiple part time jobs, juggling rosters, employers, sectors and even industries. This is a real issue for people starting out.
Some newly qualified people are unwilling to leave a more secure job in one sector, such as retailing, for a temporary contract in the field in which they are qualified.
Some larger libraries are not getting a high response rate to job advertisements. This could be because the jobs advertised were not permanent. It was noted that some of the Queensland jobs recently advertised were in senior management, and that many librarians felt that they lacked the experience to apply.
It was observed that the piecemeal (temporary) career paths have led to a loss of the accumulation of management skills.
It was mentioned that there has been some de-skilling, in that jobs are being advertised that don't state ALIA recognised qualifications as mandatory.
Some members noticed that job advertisements are not being specific. For example, a job recently advertised contained five pages of position description and selection criteria, but the expected duties of the position were still unclear.
Some organisations continue to ask all new staff to start in one area, such as technical services, and 'work their way' into other areas such as reference services.
It was observed that many job advertisements do not require ALIA membership.
The issue of the skills required to manage people who are looking towards retirement was discussed. There is a need to retain and transfer their knowledge and skills, and to retain interest and enthusiasm for the job until their retirement.
The example of senior management who will stay in their permanent job rather than take a higher position which is on a contract was mentioned.
Succession planning, only a couple of major institutional libraries in Queensland have a plan however it was felt that knowledge about these plans was only at the senior management level. Other staff were still waiting for the initiative to trickle down.
Succession planning needs to be viewed not as de-valuing older staff members, but rather planning for the future.
At other large libraries there has been a lack of staff who are willing to act in higher level positions. It was sometimes felt that there is little financial incentive for progression up levels. It was noted that acting in higher positions should be seen as a skill building opportunity rather than as an opportunity for financial gain.

Education:

There is a perceived lack of cataloguing and collection development skills in the current library courses. It was noted that cataloguing training is offered as professional development courses, and that people could also undertake these by distance education.
There was some discussion about professional development being made available by institutions only if it directly impacted on the person's current job.
The point was made that individuals are also responsible for their professional development.
There are online training options available.
There is a need to identify the current skill set, and the skill set that librarians will need in five years time.

7. Research awards

The REAP program was described. Part of the reason for raising awareness of research has been the lack of nominations or applications for the research awards.
ALIA Quorum is planning a workshop in 2006 about planning and writing papers/research/conference presentations.
A questions was raised about how well the research awards are promoted to library students? It was felt that library educators could do more in promoting the research awards.
The promotion of research and awards within South East Queensland libraries was also considered.
The need was identified to form mentoring groups or create forums to discuss and develop ideas for research. It was felt that this would be best at a local level rather than at a national level.
The meeting identified the need for more research into practice to be fostered rather than the current academic-based research.
There is a need to talk to senior management in libraries to promote research in the workplace, which includes making the time available to staff to conduct research.
Mentoring is needed at both the dissemination end of the research process and at the beginning when the research question and method is formulated and finalised.
A research blog was suggested as a forum where people can throw ideas around. Possibly this could be housed on the REAP site.
The meeting was reminded that REAP is both a forum for discussion about library-related research and a repository for research papers.
How is ALIA encouraging institutional members to support their staff to do research?

8. Questions

As previously mentioned in other forums, members would like to see ALIA negotiate access to library-related databases as a membership benefit (similar to what CILIP currently offers it's members). This would be especially useful for new graduates and smaller library services. It was also suggested that ALIA could create a portal to information about library science from the website.
As previously requested, improvements can be made in the area of communication to members by national office staff. Specifically the timely distribution of new member's lists to convenors can be improved.

9. Evaluation

Originals of the completed evaluation forms were returned to national office. The Queensland meeting received ratings of four and five in the feedback and a number of useful comments on the evaluation.

10. Any other comments from the meeting?

Members felt that the NAC meeting was more organised this year, as the papers to be read before the meeting were available on the ALIA website a good length of time prior to the meeting.

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