ALIA NAC 2005 Perth report

1. Roll attendees

Camille Peters, Deanne Barrett, Lothar von Retzlaff, Judy Allan, Narelle Beebe, Marjory Taylor, Kerry Smith, Paul Genoni, Alison Sutherland, Jeanette Hill, Cheryl Hamill, Carol Newton-Smith (director), Kay Poustie (ALIA LLO).

2. Selected representative to attend Canberra NAC

Name: Alison Sutherland.

3. Celebrating success

Cheryl Hamill - National health libraries - National inroads into having input into Commonwealth Health Department who were going to licence data bases nationally. CAUL, national health libraries and national library are the partners in this venture. Health libraries made a submission to the dept of health and ageing who took notice of the submission.

Kerry Smith asked a question about health librarians not getting a salary increase when other health employees had an increase. Cheryl Hamill said the librarians are appealing this and taking advice from Phil Teece. Union will take to arbitration.
Judy Allen - Technicians organised a session giving feedback from the NeXt Conference within a week of the conference. In conjunction with WASLA and ECU made a submission to the minister for education re staffing in school libraries. The technicians group ran a careers workshop at the state library which was over subscribed.
ALIAWest - Biblia is well received. Camille's contribution, diary dates was missed when Kerry needed it. An evening of excellence was celebrated during Library and Information Week to celebrate the receipt of the ALIA National Excellence Award by Natasha Griggs youth services co-ordinator at the Belmont Public library for her Finding my place programme and the awarding of the Sharr Medal. Competition was high for the Sharr Medal this year and the award was won by Michelle Campbell. Local professionals had a great evening celebrating success. The event was held at the Belmont Public Library and was attended by the minister for education and a number of City of Belmont councillors.

The ECU Early Careers Achiever Award was also an opportunity to give great focus on the profession in Western Australia.
Alison Sutherland - Perth is the location for the next ALIA Biennial Conference. The profession has got behind the event and the conference planning committee is proving to be a great opportunity for profession to work together. The theme for the conference is CLICK06 and the planning of the programme and social events is well underway. The conference committee have limited committee membership to those who are members of ALIA which also resulted in a small increase in membership.
Kerry Smith - ARL - Academic and Research Libraries Group have had a leaders forum - four university librarians and state librarian spoke on the evening and this attracted a great attendance. A research forum was held last night where students doing research are encouraged to come and speak about the research being undertaken. (Written up in Biblia)

4. ALIA stars program

Lennie McCall would be an excellent ALIA star for her role in the Historical Records Rescue Consortium, which, after much hard work made a submission to the Lotteries Commission on funding for documentary preservation for the state library and received $3 million for equipment and labour to carry out further preservation work. Lennie was suggested as a potential member of the profession to be put forward for an award.

Methods for promoting ALIA stars - have a party, local press, promote stars so that they can go out to groups etc to promote the profession, talk to/meet students, 'Ask now programme', use ALIA stars awards. Go back into records to look at who made contributions to the profession and propose them for stars awards.

Should be able to nominate people even though they are no longer a member.

5. Election of directors

Pleased NAC no longer has a vote
Method in past has puzzled, particularly re Institutional members having their own representative
Much better and simpler model
Will encourage personal members

6. Workforce planning and education

12 - 15 high quality applicants for manager positions in defence but trying to get defence to recognise qualifications required for position. Could appoint anyone who is a public servant, but not qualified.
School libraries not giving recognition to technicians.
More contract positions rather than permanent.
Positions for library technician but not requiring qualifications.
Age of people when they come into library studies courses. Not attracting young people into the profession. Give them work experience in the profession so that they can see that it is an exciting profession. Young people are attracted to jobs where they see other young people.
Need to put in graduate positions for young people.
Older work force want to work less hours and then positions are only part time.
ALIA should have guidelines for students on practicums. Universities provide these and it requires the supervisor to read this. Should have things on the website to alert people about the different types of libraries to work in.
Web site boring and hard to find your way around. Need a young person to do web site design. CILIP website very good.
Need PD information available for non members so that you can see what is available and required. If you are an institutional member you can't join this program.
Longitudinal study undertaken by Curtin, casualisation trend has slowed and heading towards full time employment.
Curtin graduates less students than they used to and most people become absorbed into the workplace.
Employers are coming to Curtin asking for suggestions for people to fill vacancies.
Greying of the workforce.
Plans to prepare succession plans in some institutions.
Five University libraries in WA preparing a plan for trainees/interns.
Scope of employment needs to widen - health informatics, management data, knowledge management.
Skills set that will be lost - where are we going to find librarians with experience in cataloguing for data management.
Curtin has retained cataloguing in course so graduates are in high demand here and over East.
Courses need more IT components.
ECU course for technicians has a good IT component.
Don't understand three year ECU course for technicians. Allows you to upgrade skills. (Technician response).
Like to see post graduate qualifications in specialist areas, doesn't help our cause that this is not available. Need information literacy, web site design. Impedes ability to get recognition for specialty skills when arguing industrial cases. Universities won't allow you to do it, they are driven by money. Pressure to close niche market courses from university administrations. Paying for courses makes people more demanding about the courses they do.
Two courses in WA is probably over supply and one will probably have to close in the future. ALIA needs to be prepared to take a position on the minimum threshold of course numbers.
Face to face versus distance is not an issue. Some students prefer distance learning. On site education is very expensive.
No board of education and no selection process for Education Reference Group. Carol - target people with required experience and interests. Achieves what is required. Leaner and meaner format compared with board of education.
Industry needs to look at pay levels and conditions to attract more people.
As there will be fewer young people entering the work force it will become more difficult to find good people.
Need to sell the career to young people. People will look at members of the profession to see whether they want to join the profession.
Need to work harder at taking in year eleven practicum students from schools.
Target career advisors and have an information session for them.
Traditional market comes from career change people - nurses, teachers etc. These are a big pool of potential workers.
Career advisors don't know what we do.
Need to promote the stars in the profession and the variety of what we do.
Start focusing on what we protect - a good example is the good press US librarians have had for protecting the free flow of information.
We need a seminar on guidelines on what to do when federal police come to visit you.

7. Questions

No time for this. But contact Alison, Carol, national office or LLO.

8. Evaluation

9. Any other comments from the meeting?

Apart from the evaluation forms everyone agreed that they had found the meeting worthwhile.

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