The ALIA National Advisory Congress 2005

ALIA NAC 2005 Melbourne report

1. Roll attendees

Still to come.

2. Selected representative to attend Canberra NAC

Name: Tanya Barry

3. Celebrating success

Victorian Library Technicians Group

This group formed a strong partnership with the Morning Peninsula Library Service to provide tours of the regional library branches in the Peninsula area. This enabled members to tour library services outside the Melbourne metropolitan area and gave staff in the area an opportunity to meet with members from outside their own geographic area and service sector. School, special and public libraries in the region participated in the program. 27 people attended the session.

This program was voted by the meeting to be reported by the Melbourne representative at the national NAC.

ALIA Vic

This group has concentrated on forming a strong committee that will represent all sectors within the Victorian membership and to provide a mixture of professional development opportunities including guest speakers and tours of facilities such as the state records office.

Their most successful tour for the year was a joint venture with the Special Libraries Group to visit the Victorian Parliamentary Library. The function combined an extensive tour of the facilities of the parliamentary library guided by parliamentary library staff; a presentation by the parliamentary librarian on the library's services and philosophy, and concluded with drinks and a networking opportunity.

RAISS Victoria

This group held a very successful program of library tours. In addition to the tours their most successful function was a panel discussion featuring members who had changed sector within the information industry and reported on how they had managed the moved to another services area (eg from public to academic library) and how well their skills met the needs of both sectors.

4. ALIA stars program

Carol Newton-Smith provided the meeting with background information regarding the ALIA stars program including discussion of the two stars from Melbourne. Discussion from the meeting focussed on the following issues:

How are ALIA stars nominated?

• Can anyone nominate a potential star?
• Is there a written criteria covering the nomination process?
• Are nominations anonymous?
• Do all ALIA stars need to be senior members of the profession or can they be drawn from younger members of the association?

How can we use the ALIA stars to promote ALIA and the information profession?

• Use the stars as patrons of the ALIA groups.
• Use the stars as keynote speakers at conferences and meetings, making sure their profiles are provided as part of the proceedings.
• Use the stars to help build ALIA membership by including information about them on the ALIA website, and getting them involved in functions such as visits to library schools, career forums and graduation ceremonies.
• As advocacy tools outside the profession by promoting them in the general media eg: Australian story, employment section of the newspapers, on ABC radio.
• Enable to stars to participate and present at conferences outside the library sector eg. local government.

The meeting was concerned about the costs involved for the time and travel expenses of ALIA stars performing the above functions and a whether groups inviting stars to speak would need to cover costs involved.

5. Election of directors

Carol Newton-Smith provided background information on the proposed changes to the election of directors. There were no questions from the meeting.

6. Workforce planning and education

The meeting in general felt that the library and information sector was facing an employment crisis, as it was not seen as a desirable career due in part to the following factors:

• There is confusion over what work information professional actually undertake. This lack of professional identity means that school students and their parents, tertiary students undertaking I.M. courses, employers and co-workers had little idea of the skills I.M. professionals possess nor the kinds of roles they could undertake.
• I.M professionals are undervalued in the workplace and therefore underpaid. Hence the career does not attract new graduates.
• Increased pay rates achieved in the NSW Government pay case have not flowed on to other sectors or states.

The meeting felt that there needed to be greater co-operation and information sharing within the profession to assist members in overcoming some of the above obstacles including:

• Encouraging the sharing of stories about how libraries and I.M. individuals have increased their profile and perceived value to their employers.
• Provide statistics on employment growth/decline in the industry including future projections, case studies and research on the topic of career growth within the sector.
• Facilitation of members of the profession to work together on projects to create a sustainable workforce eg. Victorian Public Libraries are currently working on a project in this area and would like to work with ALIA to develop strategies.
• Victorian government libraries are working together to ensure sustainability and share information and resources.
• Succession planning needs to be a key issue for employers with secondments and job swaps being encouraged. (It was recognised that pay discrepancies between sectors hinders this).

Eduction

The discussion focussed on the lack of understanding about what the tertiary course in Victoria actually covered and the general confusion from current I.M. professionals, employers and the students currently undertaking the courses about what jobs they would be able to undertake upon completion of the course. Problem with the professional eduction in Victoria included:

• There is no face-to-face course available in rural areas.
• There are no traineeships for new graduates.
• There is little willingness to employ new graduates in meaningful roles.
• Expectations of new graduates does not match the workforce reality.
• Courses at RMIT and Monash University focus on training business information specialists and hence students and not skilled for other roles nor have and understanding of other jobs within the information sector (eg. public libraries).

How can we attract more people into the library and information sector, as students and into professional jobs?

• There needs to be closer ties between the library schools and employers.
• ALIA should have a presence at career expos and provide information to members who can attend these sessions at a local level.
• ALIA needs to develop closer relationships with career staff at a high school level.
• ALIA could develop a kit for employers to use when they have a work experience student so that the success of the placement is maximised.

7. Questions

None.

Margie Anderson, LLO Vic, 21 November 2005