The ALIA National Advisory Congress 2006

ALIA Sydney Regional NAC Meeting Report 2006

1. Attendance:

19 members were in attendance, representing an interesting cross-section of the Association. We were pleased to welcome Alex Byrne, IFLA President, and two brand new student members to the meeting. Dagmar Schmidmaier AM, President, and Sue Hutley, Executive Director, were in attendance. The meeting was chaired by Niki Kallenberger, NSW Local Liaison Officer.

2. Selected representative to attend the national meeting of the NAC

Name: Maxine Pauley

3. Celebrating success

Alex Mills from the NSW Children's and Youth Services Group reported on the 2006 Book Week Extravaganza, which this year attracted 125 participants. The Group has worked hard to promote its activities, recruit new members and facilitate access to meetings by holding them at various locations across the metropolitan area.

Alex Byrne, IFLA President, spoke briefly about the recent conference in Korea, with over 4000 delegates. He was particularly pleased with the coverage of the conference by the Korean media, and the opportunities this offered him to suggest that there is still much work to be done to improve Korea's libraries.

Kevin Dudeney reported that the National Library Technicians are hosting online chats sessions from 8 - 10 pm on the second Wednesday of each month. Participation varies, but the sessions are very well received, and are easy to run. It's an effective use of an Association resource.

Alyson Dalby, co-convenor of NLS3, reported on the steep learning the Symposium Committee is on, and what a great opportunity organising an event of this nature is. She also foreshadowed reporting a highly successful Symposium at the NAC meeting in 2007!

Sue Hutley shared four highlights of her first nine months in the Executive Director's role: launching the member benefits program, ALIA's participation in the Queensland Careers Fair in collaboration with Records Management Association of Australia, the appointment of more local liaison officers, and @ Your Library becoming a nationwide campaign.

President Dagmar Schmidmaier noted that the best part of being president is the opportunity to meet members in their workplaces and communities. She also noted that she endeavours to meet with senior political figures as well as senior members of the profession at each location she visits.

An ALIA Silver Pin was presented to Maxine Brodie in recognition of her ongoing contributions to the Association and the profession.

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

In general, there was active discussion of a number of issues as well as questions for the President and Executive Director, including

• Questions on membership renewal rates (it's looking good to date, and new membership is growing, too)
• Support for the idea of one membership stream
• Request for a generic powerpoint presentation that groups could use to promote the Association and recruit new members
• Discussion of free and fee-based activities, and the value of each to members, as well as their value in attracting new members. In particular, there were mixed opinions as to whether e lists (which are highly valued) should be free or not - however, there was no consensus on this issue.
• Suggestions for more value added member content (eg, CYS is working on copyright FAQs for its members, and will make this available on the members only section of the website)
• Suggestion that groups be profiled on a regular basis in inCite
• Ideas and discussion on how the Association might improve its relationship with employers
• Support for targeting growth of corporate and institutional membership
• Concern for the complexity of the CPD scheme, and suggestions that it be more closely linked to workplace performance or staff development programs
• Concern on the difficulties of finding information on the ALIA website
• Request for more training for group office bearers
• Support for the concept of regular meetings of office bearers coordinated by the Local Liaison Officer

Proposed changes to governance
The group took the opportunity to clarify a number of the proposed changes with the President and Executive Director. Alex Byrne shared the experience of IFLA, who have made a number of recent changes to its governance. In general, members at the meeting seemed to support the proposed changes, but were split with regard to preferred transition arrangements.

5. Local issues

We ran out of time to discuss local issues specifically, but much of the discussions reported in 4, above, have local implications.

6. Evaluation

In general, the meeting was well received, with the most valued aspect being the opportunity to meet with a range of members, to have direct access to senior members of the Association, being brought up-to-date with what's going on, and the 'positive atmosphere of attendees towards improvement of ALIA'. Suggestions for improvement included aiming for a larger attendance and holding meetings in regional areas.

Niki Kallenberger
Local Liaison Officer, NSW
3 September 2006