Summary of regional meeting reports

Introduction
A total of twelve regional meetings were held as part of the ALIA National Advisory Congress, 2005. The meetings were held in:

Adelaide
Melbourne
Darwin
Perth
Sydney
Brisbane
Hobart
Canberra
Culcairn (regional NSW)
Launceston (Northern Tasmania)
Townsville (Far North Queensland)
Nhulunbuy (twelve hours by dirt road from Darwin)

The Nhulunbuy regional meeting held by a combination of e-communications, a face-to-face meeting between the members and finished with a teleconference between the members and the Northern Territory ALIA local liaison officer.

A meeting had been planned to be held in Bendigo, in regional Victoria, however only one member responded to the invitation to attend so the meeting was cancelled.

Meeting attendance
The regional meetings were well attended this year with more members participating as a result of the grassroots model that was adopted at the end of 2004 for the 2005 National Advisory Congress. Meeting numbers ranged from five in Nhulunbuy to 24 in Adelaide.

The program
The program for the regional meetings included the sharing of success stories, and discussion about the ALIA stars advocacy program; workforce planning and education; the proposed change to method of electing directors to the ALIA board; and ALIA research awards.

Celebrating success
This is the third year that the celebrating success item has been on the NAC program. Members value the opportunity to share their successes as members of an ALIA group, as a member whose achievements have been recognised by being presented with an award, and others share stories of particularly successful projects at work. Each meeting is then asked to choose one story to be presented by the meeting's representative to the NAC in Canberra.

Celebrating success was again a very popular item on the program. The stories presented by members can be read as a part of the regional reports available on the ALIA website. They will also be published in inCite throughout the year.

ALIA stars
Members attending the meetings were provided with a brief background on the ALIA stars advocacy program and asked to identify ALIA stars in their region; discuss methods for promoting ALIA stars to all members and regions [other than through ALIAnet and inCite]; discuss ways to use ALIA stars as advocates in promoting LIS; discuss ways to use ALIA stars to promote membership.

This item generated some good discussion and lead to local ALIA stars being identified along with how to promote the stars program within the association and also to those outside the LIS sector through the media.

Feedback from a number of meetings showed that there was some confusion about what the ALIA stars program was with members unsure of whether it was an advocacy program or an award. The program will be discussed further in the regional meeting roundup at the NAC to be held on 25 - 26 November in Canberra. The outcomes of this discussion will be fed back to those who attended the regional meetings by their representative to the NAC and through inCite and the website. The outcomes of the discussions at the regional meetings and the NAC will also be passed on to those who are responsible for managing the ALIA stars advocacy program.

Election of directors
This item was on the program to inform members of a motion that has been put for changes to be made to the ALIA constitution regarding election of ALIA directors and provide to members with the opportunity to discuss the proposed changes. The motion will be put to a general meeting of members on 25 November 2005.

All the regional meetings were in favour of the change even though it meant that the NAC no longer elected a director. Three meetings, however, recommended that ALIA's institutional members should still elect one director. The participants of these meetings were contacted after the meeting and advised of the protocol for amending a motion at a general meeting.

Education and workforce planning
Discussion points were provided for this item. Participants were asked to consider the topic in the context of their local region. This item was discussed at length at all of the meetings. Issues raised about the education for the profession included concerns that: specialisation subjects will be lost e.g. cataloguing, archiving and children's literature; that there be improved access to LIS courses to those in regional areas - including choice of course supplier; that the quality of courses be kept high; and that core skills needed are retained in courses. There was also much discussion and many ideas about ways to attract new people to the profession.

The topic of workforce planning also elicited useful discussion that touched on issues such as the greying of the profession; the trend of the casualisation of work; the role of the information manager; challenges to the specialised role e.g. teacher librarians; challenges of finding qualified staff in regional areas; succession planning; questioning of the impact that industrial relation reforms will have on employment in the sector; the desire of members that qualifications be mandatory for library jobs; the trend towards the employment of non-librarians; and the role ALIA should play in lobbying for recruitment and retention in the library sector.

Further details of the discussion of this topic are available in the regional meeting reports on the ALIA website. The feedback will be provided to the ALIA education committee for consideration in developing strategic planning and future policy in this area. The ideas about the recruiting of people to the sector will be forwarded to those involved in this activity as part of the ALIA 2005 - 2006 plan.

Research award
Only a few meetings discussed this topic - it would appear that the length of discussion of the other items on the program saw participants running out of time for this item. Those that did discuss the topic covered issues such as the need for the profession to develop a research base; suggested workshops about conducting research; that ALIA should work to develop a research culture where individuals and employers share their research and consider this as vital to the success of the profession; that employers should be encouraged to support research carried out in work time; ALIA members should promote awards at a local level; and that members should hold local peer mentoring workshops to brainstorm potential research topics.

Further details of the discussion of this topic are available in the regional meeting reports on the ALIA website. This item will also be discussed further at the NAC meeting, 25 - 26 November and the outcomes will be reported to members.

Questions
Most meetings ran out of time for this program item. Members were encouraged to contact local liaison officers, directors or ALIA National Office staff. Most questions asked were answered on the spot. A question about communication with groups from the Brisbane meeting will be responded to by staff at national office and will be fed back to participants of the meeting and through the OBBL e-list. A question about ALIA providing access to library related databases as well as creating a portal to information about library science will also be responded to direct to the meeting participants and in the report of the NAC on the website.

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