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ACTive ALIAproACTiveNumber 239: October 2003ACTive ALIA convenor's columnHelen Roberts is taking a short break, but will be back next month. Which talk to attend?September has seen plenty of activity among the library and information sector in Canberra - we ended up having rather too much to choose from all on the one day! From the many events available on 24 September, we have coverage of the talk given by Vic Elliott, University Librarian at the ANU, on 'the elusive quarry' of information resource management in an academic library. Christopher Dawkins and Margaret Henty summarise Vic's talk overleaf. We also have details of the intriguing Professional Perspectives talk at the University of Canberra given by Nerida Clarke from Telstra, hinting at librarians as terrorists in disguise. Sevi Esat outlines on page 2 what Nerida had to say about the 'terrorists', as well as the key competencies sought by government and how librarians can match their skills to those competencies. National Policy Congress newsInformation on the regional NPC meeting held in Canberra, where some good news stories were highlighted, is available on the ALIA website at: http://www.alia.org.au/governance/nac/2003/reports/act.html. The successes listed include the inCite article on Iran, the local presentation on propaganda in wartime, meeting with speakers describing library experiences during the Canberra bushfires and ACT government funding for a new public library at Kippax (with advocacy support for the proposed new location from ACTive ALIA group and ALIA president). But you should also take a look at some of the questions raised, for example, the transparency of ALIA's operations and seeking news about the achievements of the New Generation group. Jeanette Regan was selected as our regional representative to the NPC and she contributes a report on it to this month's proACTive. Quirky tales and more!Don't forget that on 15 October ACTive ALIA Outreach will be visiting the ACT Heritage Library for a tour and 'quirky tales! See 'Events' on the back page for details. E-books are back in the newsFinally, in one of life's small coincidences, I was looking back through some previous issues of inCite and noted that the October 2001 issue featured e-books and asked if this was the end of the printed book. Happily that hasn't yet occurred, but you may have seen very recently that a company called Ebooks Corporation, based in Perth, WA, announced that it is collaborating with leading international university and research libraries including CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) to develop an ebook lending platform, called eBook Library, which is scheduled for release in select university and research libraries in September 2003 and will be officially launched in January 2004. The company has also gained government research funding for the project. Librarians and publishers here and overseas are very interested and will be watching this development carefully. More details about Ebooks Corporation can be found at the company's home page at http://www.ebooks.com and detals of the eBook Library at: http://www.ebl.ebooks.com. Jan Gordon |
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