proACTive

Number 235: June 2003

National Library Technicians Day

During Library and Information Week ACT technicians got together on Tuesday 13 May for breakfast to celebrate National Library Technicians Day. Twenty-five folks met at 7:30am at the Crowne Plaza for this popular annual event.

Georgina Dale from ALIA gave a brief talk on the theme of Library Week, discussed new web pages for ALIA members and CPD. She also presented Silver Awards to Marion Boyd, Lynn Bale, Margaret Drury and Beth Clary for serving at least five terms of office in ALIA related groups or activities.

Beryl Pedvin added a light hearted touch with some poetry reading. Amongst the morning coffee, sweet rolls and fruit much chatting, networking and catching up took place. This has become an annual breakfast event that ACT Techs really look forward to, before they head off to their work for the rest of the day.

Beth Clery

Australian Library and Information Week at the Academy Library, UNSW @ ADFA

During Australian Library and Information Week, we invited our staff and students to power their minds by accessing and experimenting with material available to them via our online resources and services and we also launched our online help service, 'Ask Us'. We ran generic 'Library @Your Desktop' information sessions to help staff and students learn about the many and varied resources and services available to them from their desktop, wherever they are located.

Academy staff and students can search our resources and have access to our information specialists. For example, they can search the contents pages of our book collections, reserve an item already on loan, or if the item is not part of the library's collections, place a request for material held elsewhere in the world and track the progress of that request. They can also access the full text of articles from over 7000 journals and obtain details of articles from thousands of more titles. Past examination papers are also a popular online item, as are the online theses via the Australian Digital Theses program. Access to information about our manuscript collections is also available online.

Our new online help service, 'Ask Us', was officially launched (with a very popular morning tea!) during Library Week by Professor Robert King, Rector, University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy. The service enables staff and students, whether on campus or at other locations in Australia or overseas, to search our Knowledge Base or ask for help with finding material on a particular topic. They can also report problems with accessing our many online resources and provide the library with feedback on our services and facilities.

As part of the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy, the library's resources and services reflect the university's teaching and research needs in many disciplines including Civil, Aerospace, Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, History, Politics, Language, Literature, Defence, Business Studies, Physical Sciences and Computer Science. While our undergraduate students are all officer cadets and midshipmen in the Australian Defence Force, our postgraduate students come from many walks of life, including Defence, and also international students.

More information about the Academy Library can be found on our website at: http://www.lib.adfa.edu.au

Jan Gordon

ALIAnet's 5th-generation website

The new website was launched on 15 May. Here's a brief summary of what has been built - or is about to be built.

Faster loading
Not only much, much faster to load, but also a much simpler interface. We've stripped the images to an absolute minimum.

Web-based e-mail accounts
The trial began early this year and has had a most enthusiastic response-so much so that we will be offering web-based e-mail to all members. So long as you remain an ALIA member, you can have an ALIAnet-based e-mail account and access it from anywhere that web-browsers are in operation.

Better printing
Many users of the site print what they see. Because we have previously fixed the page width, some content has not translated to print very well. We've addressed those concerns by placing the navigational elements at the top of the page.

Members only
We had to wait until we had a useful way of checking your personal credentials, and whilst we have had members-only access to ALIAnet ever since we first began, it has been too difficult to administrate an individual user-based login for 7000 members.

E-commerce
The ability to handle e-commerce (online shopping) goes hand-in-hand with knowing who you are-hence the delivery of this feature has been reliant upon our membership database communicating with the web interface. This feature should be ready in time for the membership renewal period.

Better search
Large websites rely on good navigation, good signposts, good content, and if all else fails, a good search engine. Members have been generally satisfied with the previous search engine, but the number of useful search results on any given search is gradually diminishing. This is partly because we have not properly implemented useful keyword attributes on every page, and partly because the search engine has not been flexible enough. We are now addressing both concerns, and will be employing extra staff to properly annotate keyword meta tags on every page. Each key area of the site has its own personalised search box.

Better chat
The original chat server was good but recognised as a lightweight solution. The new chat server offers a good deal more: such as customised private rooms, a wide selection of group-based rooms, the ability to log chatter, and a registration process which ensures that it remains a members-only service.

Standards-based
ALIAnet has always been largely standards-based (it now has the W3C validation tag). Not only are the pages coded more simply but they now rely on a single, standardised stylesheet.

APSIG seminar on Propaganda in Times of Conflict

Marie Sexton has sent us more details of this seminar, which will be held on Wednesday 25 June, 5:00pm to 6:00pm (see Events for more access details).

Two speakers will present first-hand reports of materials documenting times of conflict held in national institutions in two countries.

Rob Hurle will talk about resources in Vietnam where he has been recently undertaking research on 'Prelude to the Vietnam War from the Vietnamese side: looking at the treasures in the war museums and the National Library of Vietnam. Views on their conservation and digitisation.'

Vietnam was under the control of France from the middle of the 19th to the middle of the 20th century. By 1954 the Liberation Army of Vietnam was able to defeat the French Army at the battle of Dien Bien Phu. Rob is studying for a research Masters degree on the topic of mobilisation of the Vietnamese population during this period, the propaganda used and how it was directed and developed.

The Australian War Memorial's outstanding collection of materials on the nation's role in war will form the basis of an interesting talk by Emma Jones from the AWM Research Library. Emma's topic is 'Propaganda leaflets of the Japanese and Australians in the South East Pacific War Theatre in World War II'. Emma will include in her talk a history of the Far East Liaison Office (FELO), the Australian intelligence office which produced the Australian leaflets. There will also be a display of some of those marvellous World War I posters. Not to be missed!

Changes to the Graduate Diploma and Masters degree in Library and Information Management at the University of Canberra

The University of Canberra has just approved a series of changes to this program, all intended to offer students increased flexibility. The Graduate Diploma now consists of four core subjects (Foundations, Cataloguing, Information Retrieval and Supervisory Management) and an increased number of options. To upgrade the Graduate Diploma to a coursework Masters, a third semester of equivalent full-time study is needed - and this may now be any combination of subjects adding up to the required number of credit points, 16. However, we expect many of our students will continue to undertake our 'micro thesis' subject, involving the preparation of a professional journal article for publication (or the equivalent). For those with older first professional qualifications from the University, or elsewhere, only a year of equivalent full-time study is now needed to complete the coursework Masters - and once again, this can be made up of any of the subjects currently on offer. This is intended to provide a great opportunity for professionals to update their qualifications mid-career.

For more details, contact Peter Clayton: ph 02 6201 5431 or prc@comedu.canberra.edu.au.nospam (please remove '.nospam' from address).

Additional places for postgraduate research students

For the past couple of years the University of Canberra has had to limit the number of postgraduate research students it's been able to accept because DEST had reduced the number of Research Training Scheme (RTS) places allocated to the University. However, the University now has places available again, so is looking for capable potential students. In the library and information studies field, the University offers both an MA by research and the PhD. Again, contact Peter Clayton if you are interested: ph 02 6201 5431 or prc@comedu.canberra.edu.au.nospam (please remove '.nospam' from address).

A warm URLs lunchtime event for chilly July

We hear about academic publishing from the perspective of librarians, and academic staff and students, and even occasionally from booksellers and distributors. Here's an opportunity to hear about it from the perspective of the publisher! On Wednesday 2 July (see Events) Andrew Schuller, Commissioning Editor with Oxford University Press, will talk about academic publishing from the editorial perspective: how a publisher assesses the financial viability of individual titles; what the picture looks like for a subject list; what the financial imperatives are and what the alternative strategies are that publishers can adopt in the face of current market conditions. This promises to be a really interesting occasion.

Nancy Clarke

Reinventing the Special Librarian

FLIN has set up a new taskforce to promote training and development in Federal Libraries, with Convenor Nerida Hart (FACS), Alison Carter (FACS), Kim Farley-Larmour (ABS) and Kym Holden (ITR), starting from the belief that librarians need to re-position themselves if they are to continue to add value to their organisations, their clients and the profession. The first Seminar, on 'Reinventing the Special Librarian', will be held on Wednesday 25 June, 9:00am-12:30pm at the FACS Auditorium, Tuggeranong, with registration from 8:30am. The speakers and their topics are:

Jann Cruttenden, Air Services: Empowering staff to lead, through excellence and innovation.
Fran Heap, DOFA: Who needs a library we have the internet!
Nerida Hart, FACS: 'The oldest profession': client relationship management and knowledge in special libraries.
Steve Taylor, AusAID: Yes Minister-aligning information products to strategic outcomes.
Papiya Chakravati, Centrelink: Anyone can re-invent themselves, if they want to.
Roslyn Hay, Dept. of Health and Ageing: Borrow a librarian.

Cost $60.50, including GST; half price for subsequent members of the same library. A 10 per cent discount is offered to ALIA members. RSVP is essential. Please respond by Wednesday 18 June to Kym Holden, ph 02 6213 7455 or kym.holden@industry.gov.au.nospam (please remove '.nospam' from address)

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