The ALIA National Advisory Congress 2006
Melbourne regional meeting report
1. Attendance
Kay Steel, Ebe Kartus, Alyson Kosina, Trevor Wakley, Michele Gaca, Moyra McAllister, Christine Mackenzie, Craig Anderson, Mary Ayling, Bruce Davidson, Laura Foley, Michelle Thomason, Kerrie Kelly, Gail Schmidt.
2. Selected representative to attend the national meeting of the NAC
Name: Gail Schmidt
3. Celebrating success
Celebrating Success stories were not presented at the meeting due to time constraints
4. Planning - achievements in 2006, forward planning for 2007
Proposed changes to governance:
There was lengthy discussion on this topic, as there had previously been on the aliavic elist.
- Members of the Board are elected for a 2 year term in a single election.
- The meeting discussed concerns about this action leading to a lack of operational continuity purposes for the Board as a new Board would need to come up to speed every 2 years and this would disrupt the 10 year plan which was already in place.
- There were concerns that the entire Board would turnover at once.
- There were concerns that a 2 year gap between elections would mean that ordinary members would not engage with the election process.
- There were concerns that the Vice President would miss out on the important learning role they now have prior to taking on the Presidential year.
- Two past Presidents voiced their support for a two year Presidential term as they felt this would enable the President to complete more projects.
- It was agreed by the whole meeting that saving on costs of running the elections should not be a primary concern of the Association and should not be done at the risk of providing a democratic and inclusive election process.
- President and Vice President are elected separately.
- The meeting agreed the President and Vice President do need to be elected by the ordinary members and that process be separate from the election of the rest of the Board.
- The Exec Director become a voting member of the Board.
- A unanimous 'NO' on this point. The meeting strongly expressed that the ED should not be a voting member as this confuses governance and management. A non-voting ED protects both the ED and the Board.
- Co-opting of experts to fill up to two additional Directors positions.
- The meeting disagreed strongly with this proposal. They felt that experts should be co-opted to assist the Board and work with the current standing committees, but should not be given a Directors role, nor voting rights. They did not want to limit the number of co-opted experts to two.
- All Directors positions be elected by all members.
- The meeting felt that it was not necessary to have a Director elected by Institutional members as no Director should represent a particular sector.
- The meeting agreed that the Assoc need to find better ways to support institutional members, but that providing a Director who was selected by institutions alone was not an effective support mechanism for those members.
- Transition to the new election model
- The meeting felt discussion of this point was premature, as the new model had not been agreed upon.
- They felt it would be safer to wait another year to employ a new election model rather than institute it in the next election as they felt the prospective Board members would not have time to undertake the necessary preparation to be 'Board ready'.
Membership Growth
- The meeting agreed that when the assoc looks at potential members from students that we need to consider students from other areas as well as traditional LIS students.
- Professional learning was seen as a key factor to attract new members and that it was vital for ALIA to build a stronger interest and commitment in the profession to ongoing learning and education and for the Association to be seen as the leader for acknowledging ongoing professional learning.
- The current PD scheme needed to be strengthens and to be seen as more valuable to both employees and employers.
- A suggestion was made that we should offer members reciprocal access to ALA journals which are specialised and currently only available to ALA members.
- An anomaly was noted in that currently students who are working full time whilst studying pay the full fee amount for membership, however once they have completed their studies are eligible for a reduced fee as a new graduate.
Groups
- It was unanimous that the Groups are of the utmost importance to the organisation and should be a primary focus of the Association for support and assistance.
- It was noted that members and Group office bearers still do not understand how the Group structure works, nor what is expected of them. There needs to be more dissemination of information regarding the roles of the Groups and their members and office bearers.
- Groups need to be supported more when making application to host a major event or conference. Lack of a clear conference model for the Association and understanding of what is expected of the organisers/proposer, including what national office support will be available, has reduced the likelihood of Groups proposing conferences and major events.
- There was great deal of discussion about the need to hold more conferences even if they do not make a profit. This in turn led to discussion of why functions that made a loss could not be held and the need for great understanding and distribution of information regarding ALIA's financial constraints.
- It was agreed that Groups need to be supported so that they can smoothly provide activities. Hence we need to find a way around the current limitation on state arms of national Groups being unable to charge for events as they are unable to write recepts for monies taken. Eg. New Grads Group.
Education and work place planning
- It was agreed this was a major issue and would be an ideal topic should future NAC meeting be changed to concentrate on one major issued.
- The meeting suggested that the Association should be doing more to place emphasis on ongoing professional eduction and learning and in convincing members and employers that the profession need to have a greater value on managing their own PD.
- The suggestion was made that ALIA should put more emphasis into recognition of ongoing development rather that recognition of first degrees. However it was important that ALIA continue to been seen as the standards body that provides validation of first degrees in the area.
- The meeting agreed that the Association need to develop and industry that is responsive and dynamic, however there were no suggestions on how this was to be done.
Ongoing operations
We need to build a broader range of partnerships with relevant organisations - however none we suggested.
Research
ALIA need to advertise research grant more and be more proactive in encouraging a greater level of participation within the profession to high quality research.
5. Local issues
Local issues were not raised at the meeting due to time constraints.
6. Evaluation
Mailed
7. Any other comments from the meeting?
In the current environment of anti-terrorism laws there are now greater numbers of banned books and materials. Can ALIA provide a service that will point members to a centralised list of banned material.
Margie Anderson
6 September 2006
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