proACTive

Number 222: April 2002

Become an e-delegate
The ALIA 2002 Conference has the Issues Forum e-mail list (alia2002ISSUES) which is associated with the Conference. A major objective of ALIA 2002 is to galvanise our profession to develop a new information-based public policy agenda. A special purpose Issues Forum e-mail list has been set up so that people from all levels and across all sectors of the profession - irrespective of geographical or economic constraints - can contribute to the information agenda prior to and during the Conference.

The list is for discussion of important service and technical issues facing libraries and information services and those who work in them. Issues contributed to the list will be included in the Information Agenda discussions prior to and during ALIA 2002. Issues will be summarised for participants by the list moderators (Ian McCallum and Sherrey Quinn of Libraries Alive!) prior to the Conference.

During the Conference e-delegates will be able to join interactive online chat sessions. The final Conference session will feature presentations by Malcolm Gillies (University of Adelaide) and Neil McLean (ALIA 2002 Program Committee) who will draw the threads together by synthesising the remarks of invited speakers and e-list contributions.

Further information: http://conferences.alia.org.au/alia2002/issues.html

Sherrey Quinn
sherrey.quinn@alianet.alia.org.au

HCL Anderson Award for Ian McCallum
Ian McCallum, a well respected local library professional, has been awarded the highest honour for an Associate member of ALIA: the national ALIA HCL Anderson Award.

The HCL Anderson award is peer nominated; a National Awards Panel then makes a recommendation to the ALIA Board of Directors. John Metcalfe was the first recipient in 1973. The award commemorates the contributions to librarianship of HCL Anderson, principal librarian of the Free Public Library of NSW from 1893 to 1906. Anderson had a vision of a great public library and developed a collection of national significance. He also promoted the education of librarians and development of the library profession. His achievements provide a model for those nominated for this award.

Ian McCallum is currently a director of Libraries Alive Pty Ltd, an Australian consultancy company based in Canberra, with a mission to add verve and zest into library and information management with a customer-centric and pragmatic approach. Ian has been active in ALIA for many years as a longstanding member, a Fellow and as president of the Association in 1986.

His career began in 1969 at the National Library of Australia where his interest in library automation led to him being seconded to the IBM Systems Development Institute to work on Australia's first batch and later online information retrieval system. Ian continued to contribute to the development of information management through his role with ACI Computer Services (later Ferntree Computer Corporation, then GE Capital IT Services); AUSINET; the Curriculum Corporation schools' database project and the structured information manager commercialisation with RMIT. Ian was a member of the Ferntree executive until 1997. In 1983 he was the recipient of the RD Williamson Award for making an outstanding contribution to the development of information science in Australia. His interest and knowledge of information systems and management continues.

Another area of Ian's continued professional contribution has been his interest and work in the development and support of new library professionals. Ian has played an important role in the development of the Aurora Leadership Institute, which began in 1995 and is held at Thredbo. The Institute provides an opportunity for selected participants to interact with like-minded colleagues and to learn together about leadership. Ian has been a mentor at the Institute since its inauguration, demonstrating his strong belief in professional values in a leadership role.

Congratulations Ian!
Judith Brooker

Health Forum to go informal
The ALIA ACT and District Health Forum has decided not to renew its formal group affiliation with ALIA. The group looked at how other health groups had proceeded under the new ALIA structure and determined that its objectives could be achieved just as well by operating as an informal group.

Where appropriate meetings will be held under the auspices of Health Libraries Australia (the national health group) or ACTive ALIA. Individual members will continue to undertake important roles within Health Libraries Australia. The group also intends to work closely with ACTive ALIA and is keen to collaborate in organising local meetings and events.

The main avenues of communication for the group will be the aliaHEALTH discussion list and proACTive. Jill Buckley Smith jill.smith@health.gov.au and Prue Deacon prue.deacon@health.gov.au will continue as group contacts for the time being.

Conference Report: Off-Campus Services
In the March proACTive I wrote about two recent conferences: ALIA's Off-Campus Library Service Conference, 'Your Time, Your Place, Your Off-Campus Library Service' and the VALA conference 'Evolving Information Futures', focusing very much on the VALA conference. This month I should like to add a few notes on the Off-Campus conference.

Several portals were demonstrated at both conferences, together with papers assessing their design and evaluation. An interesting paper at 'Off-Campus' saw Ron Sawyer of Monash University concluding that while portals are going to be around for a few years, they are on their way out as we move towards intelligent information systems.

Information literacy featured strongly at both conferences. At 'Off-Campus', Anne Luzeckyj from University of SA and Sylvia Ransom from UNE focused on mechanisms to teach information literacy skills to off campus students. Their efforts to translate facets of the traditional reference interview, as part of the process, could be applied by any library keen to deliver services to clients who are happy to use the online environment, whether on or off site.

Lesley Ngatai and Julie Sweeten from UNSW Library presented a very interesting paper on issues dealing with information ecology ('ˆ human activities which are served by technology.' Nardi and O'Day, 1999). They examined the library as an information ecology, and the role of librarians as a keystone species in that information ecology and concluded that the human touch is going to be of increasing importance in an increasingly electronic environment. After looking at attempts to describe the many and varied roles of a librarian, Lesley and Julie concluded that since much of what we do is invisible to the client, we should consider giving some indication of the effort or time taken to find that particularly difficult piece of information, and not just say 'it was no trouble'!

Nick Smith from the Digital Alliance presented a paper that highlighted the current trend to embedding DRM (Digital Rights Management) code into software and hardware and the tensions between copyright provisions and contracts for licenced products when dealing with issues of access and use and by whom.

As I explained last month, the conference papers are not available on the websites for either of the two conferences, but the conference programmes are. For Off-Campus go to: http://groups.alia.org.au/off-campus/

Jan Gordon

New Information Program at ANU
Colin Steele now heads a new Scholarly Information Strategy Program within the ANU Division of Information. The Program will produce position papers, plans, policies and submissions in relation to advanced research-oriented information services, based on emerging scholarly communication patterns. In this position, Colin continues as a Director within the Division of Information, reporting to the PVC (ADIS), and will be supported by the other Directors in the Division. Arrangements for his former position will be announced shortly.

River of Opportunities II - Technicians Albury Workshop, 20-21 April
It is not too late to have a weekend with NSW, Vic and ACT Techs in Albury! You'll hear about Genealogy and the Internet; Internet training modules; resumes and interview skills; using IMPACT; National Library; EBSCO online; copyright; proQuest and much more. For more information, registration and accommodation details, and transportation enquiries, please contact:
Beth Clary ph 02 6234 2225 or beth.clary@radford.com.au

APSIG Travellers' Tales
On Tuesday 14 May, 12:30pm to 1:30pm, in the Conference Room, 4th floor, NLA. APSIG will present another in the series of Travellers' Tales:

Nat Williams, director of Exhibitions, NLA, will tell us about his travels in Asia for the 'Treasures from the World's Great Libraries' exhibition;
Deveni Temu, librarian at St Mark's, will report on the Australian and NZ Theological Libraries Conference in Auckland.

Richard Stone travelled extensively in Indochina earlier this year and will bring his photos from Cambodia. Your invitation is in the Events column!

Marie Sexton

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