The ALIA National Advisory Congress 2006

ALIA NAC Hobart regional meeting report 2006

Wednesday, 9 August 2006, 5:30-7:30pm at Hobart Mercure Hotel, 156 Bathurst Street, Hobart.

Dagmar Schmidmaier AM, ALIA National President- ALIA Board representative. Jane Jeppson, ALIA Local Liaison Officer, Tasmania - meeting organiser/note taker.

1. Attendance:

Posted separately.

2. Selected representative to attend the national meeting of the NAC (they must be a member)

Name: None

Only one ALIA member in southern Tasmania was identified as having registered for the Click 06 conference and that member had already registered for library tours on the same day as the national meeting of the NAC (and was also unavailable to attend the Hobart regional NAC meeting).

3. Celebrating success

1. LIW quiz night 'Pearls and Specs' was well attended and has become a stand out feature on the social and networking calendar of ALIA members and non members for the last 4 years running. New Graduates have been responsible for planning and organising this event for the last 2 years with some assistance from ALIA Tasmania. It attracts high levels participation from across the sector.
2. Richard Dearden, Morris Miller Librarian, University of Tasmania and local ALIA member has been awarded a Carrick Institute Award for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning. He was in Melbourne on the night of the Hobart regional NAC meeting receiving his award.
3. 3 new graduates from Tasmania will be presenting a peer reviewed paper at NLS Pathways and Possibilities in December this year - one of these, Rachele Carnevale, is a local ALIA member and she is very excited to be doing this.

4. Planning - achievements in 2006, forward planning for 2007

Membership
ALIA is struggling to hold the line with membership and this is a common theme for all associations.

Focusing on LIS students & new graduates entering the workforce and institutional members is important if membership is to grow. It was noted that the Tasmanian LLO and ALIA Tasmania have put considerable effort into supporting the Grad Dip Info Mgt students at UTAS by offering a 'welcome to the industry' function and an employment seminar for the students each year since 2003 as well as ensuring that students are invited to all local ALIA events and activities throughout the year. This could be extended to include library technician students at TAFE as well.

Need to target library schools and TAFE - there are low levels of membership and participation in the profession amongst educators.

Groups
More support for groups at the local level is needed. Groups want access to more operational support (as opposed to administrative support) from LLOs. It was recognised that this was a resourcing issue.

However, it was noted that a new Groups Liaison Officer commenced in National Office recently and that this is welcomed by groups and is recognition of the need to put extra resources into supporting groups.

Groups are working well in Tasmania. They have active programs of events and activities and TALIATecs, which went virtual about a year ago, remains active on the elists providing opportunities for members to discuss important issues/topics.

Under 35s are into email and SMS communication- they are interested in content and entertainment.

Timing of events is important.

Professional education and workforce planning

Education for the profession and the need for clear articulation of the values and role of the profession in the 21 century are critical issues. We need clear statements.

We need to redefine the library - we haven't been promoting new products, services, etc as well as we should be. We need to change the way we communicate.

Gill Hallam is currently undertaking research on education for the profession. There is a need to make changes, redefine the curriculum; e.g. may be time to introduce a Masters qualification as the entry requirement for librarians and a bachelor degree for library technicians. We need clarity of definition between Library Technician and Librarian qualifications.

Need to make people see that our skills are transferable outside of libraries, e.g. a number of librarians have become Pro Vice Chancellors.

Need strategies to increase institutional member's involvement in education for the profession. Dagmar is currently travelling to the states to talk about advocacy and improvements in education with major institutions. The major push for improvements in education needs to come from the institutions.

We need to increase information organisation skills (including metadata skills), project management skills, computer literacy and information literacy skills [e.g. International Computer Driving Licence (ICDL) is being used at UTAS Library as a way of recognising staff's computer literacy skills]. Metadata is being taught to library technicians at TAFE but it isn't being used in employment.

Need to look at ways of making PD more engaging for members so they can get more traction out of it - not just a record keeping exercise.

Large institutions run their own PD - ALIA needs to look at partnering with them rather than run its own training e.g. look at establishing a relationship with CAUL.

Leonie Atkins, TAFE Tasmania, Hobart Campus, Course Coordinator Library and Museum Technology Program would like to have TAFE short courses evaluated and recognised by ALIA and PD points accredited.

COAG is focusing on man power planning, buildings, etc - ALIA needs to get the message out that its not just all about physical infrastructure.

Governance and management
ALIA is a company with 2 main roles-:
Services to members
Managing the 'legislative bundle'

ALIA needs members for 2 reasons -
Money from membership fees
Access to their expertise

A forum with state libraries and ministerial advisers is a first step to help promote the profession/sector. The meeting agreed this was an important strategy.

Member Advantage is seen as a service/member benefit that an association should provide - for those who use it the costs of membership can be offset.

Governance
Meeting agreed that we need a 2 year presidency to take the pressure off the Executive Director.

Need to line up the financial planning with the strategic planning.

Continuity needs to be built back in - rather than a complete change of Directors at each election it should be _ and _ .

Meeting agreed we should move to a 2 year election model. The Board would then need less meetings if Directors held office for a longer period of time.

Meeting supported the completion of 'Board readiness' training (through Women in IT in Brisbane initially) as a prerequisite for members standing for election as Directors.

Need a specific director rather than an 'elected by the institutions' director to act as the main point of contact for institutions.

A discussion paper is being prepared to engage CASL (new name?) and CAUL and special libraries.

Need to put a structure in place to enable institutions to feed in directly to ALIA and it is important to work on the mechanism together.

Financial Sustainability
The meeting agreed that a skilled Board was the key to effective management of the Association and agreed that completion of appropriate training for members standing for election as Directors was important if members were to have confidence in the Board's ability to effectively manage members' assets.

5. Local issues

Lack of a representative from the Hobart regional NAC meeting to attend the national NAC meeting.

Members expressed concern at the model for selecting members to represent the views of regional meetings at the NAC national meeting. This model used this year meant that the Hobart meeting was unable to select a member to represent it- which in turn means that the NAC national meeting will not be fully representative.

If this model is to continue then ALIA needs to look at how it can support small states/regions to enable them to participate in the national NAC meeting , e.g. shared funding, partial funding, fully funding, etc.

6. Evaluation

Posted separately.

7. Any other comments from the meeting?

None.