proACTive

Number 217: October 2001

ACTive ALIA convenor's column

ACT website leads the way
A first for the ACT is the great new authorised website for ACT legislation. On Thursday 13 September the Parliamentary Counsel's Office of the ACT Legislative Assembly launched its new 'ACT Legislation Register' website. The register has two main functions: to make authorised versions of new and up-to-date ACT legislation freely accessible on the Internet and to provide a mechanism for notifying new laws electronically.

This website is particularly significant because the ACT is the first jurisdiction in Australia to make authorised legislation available in electronic form. People attending the launch indicated that other jurisdictions, including NSW and the Commonwealth, may be soon to follow the ACT's lead.

The web address for the ACT Legislation Register is http://www.legislation.act.gov.au/

The site includes:

acts (acts as made and republished)
subordinate laws (regulations, rules and by-laws as made and republished)
approved forms (forms approved under ACT laws)
notifications (acts and statutory instruments notified)
bills (bills presented to the Legislative Assembly Information)
information (legislative information prepared by the Parliamentary Counsel's Office).

The Ninth Special, Health and Law Libraries Conference
This conference was held in Melbourne from 26 to 29 August. Unlike previous conferences, where there were separate streams for each of health, law and specials, the conference program mixed them up. There was no obvious streaming and participants were encouraged to attend any session that was of interest. I was uncertain about how successful that would be but found the breaking down of the barriers between the different groups of special librarians worked well. They had some sessions aimed at all three sectors and some that mixed two sectors.

The opening address to launch the conference was given by Di Fleming, CEO of Digital Harbour, who offered her thoughts on future directions for the profession. The pace of change facing businesses today is such that strategic planning is done in shorter and shorter cycles, to the point that 'planning is dead and improvisation is king' - innovation is now cheaper than competition. Di believes that the advent of the microchip has 'disconnected results from time and effort'. The microchip 'disintegrates all human work except creativity'. A cybrarian working in this context needs to be proactive and capable of predicting trends. Cybrarians need to move away from content towards context, from specialist to alliance, and need to be able to analyse trends and anticipate change.

The theme of perpetual change was picked up by another keynote speaker, Richard Hulser, director of Content Development for Infotrieve whose motto is 'plan for change, it is the only constant'. He echoed Di Fleming's characterisation of the librarian of the future by itemising his perception of the skills that are needed. At the top of his list were skills in collaboration, flexibility and team leadership. Project management, strategic planning and co-ordination, and marketing ability will also be essential. Professionals working in the information industry also need to have expertise in a variety of technologies. He was an entertaining speaker and mentioned some of the shorthand phrases used by information professionals today. A couple of favourites are 'MYMS (meet your milestones)' and 'take that offline (discuss in private)'.

My talk on 'Winning in dealing with vendors of electronic products' was on Tuesday morning, so after that I could relax and enjoy the conference. The talk was very well received. To my surprise I found I was talking to rows of vendors as well as librarians, as there was a large trade show associated with the conference. The room was packed and many people commented that they appreciated my frankness in discussing the pitfalls of negotiating with vendors. A number of vendors who were previously librarians sought me out and said that their bosses were at my talk and they found it really helpful to have a confirmation of what they had said about librarians' needs. I found a great benefit of giving a paper is that a lot of people approach you afterwards and tell you about their experiences in the topic you have spoken about. So you immediately meet interesting new people and gain new perspectives on the topic.

ANZACLL Group
I also attended the half-day meeting of the Australian/New Zealand Academic Law Librarians (ANZACLL) Group which was held on Monday 27 August. Twenty attended. It was extremely useful to meet many of the librarians I have only 'met' by e-mail. The group discussed a range of issues including development and application of law library standards and statistics, the ALTA law journal exchange, Weblaw and the status of legal information literacy programs. It was a wonderful opportunity to put faces to names and to develop networking contacts.

Helen Roberts
ACTive ALIA convenor

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