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ACTive ALIA

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Number 246: September 2004

Library Technician of the Year

Beth Clary, from the library of Radford College, Belconnen, and Lothar Retzlaff of WA shared the LTOTY award for 2004. Beth's accolade came from three separate sponsors: her college, the CIT where she has been teaching for many years, and the ACT Library Technicians group. Her outstanding performance in her college library has been enhanced by the help that she gives to colleagues and to staff from other schools. She also mentors CIT students.

In the ACT group, Beth has played a vital role ever since the group reformed after the 1993 ALIA Library Technicians Conference in Adelaide. Since then she has held every position, for several years being the convenor and moving force in keeping the ACT group alive and well. She has encouraged the exchange of ideas and knowledge between technicians and has represented technicians at ACT Branch Council and ACTiveALIA meetings.

Beth was a member of the committee of the 9th National Library Technicians Conference (1997) - this was the same inspirational team that organised the 20th and 25th Canberra Institute of Technology reunion dinners. She has always been enthusiastic, reliable and a great motivator at these functions. She has been a very loyal supporter of ALIA for many years and is a great supporter of Library Week and the Library Technicians Day breakfast, which is always keenly attended.

Material kindly supplied by Margaret Drury

AGLIN training and development seminar

Knowledge Management and the information professional
This one-day seminar on 28 July was well received and attended by approximately 75 librarians, knowledge workers and others from across the ACT and from interstate. Thanks for the support from both the National Library who provided the venue and One Umbrella who provided sponsorship as well as folders, pens and pads. The seminar looked at Knowledge Management with the librarian in mind. It served as an introduction to KM and concentrated on the human aspect. The group were challenged by several speakers to 'realign' librarians and librarianship to ensure professional survival. There was a mix of speakers from the APS, private consultants, academia and private industry. Each presenter covered a different aspect of the topic and this really added to the information gained. Copies of some of the speakers' papers and all of the PowerPoint presentations will be available soon on the AGLIN site.

Roxanne Missingham

Lianne Gratton retires

Lianne Gratton retired from the ABS Library on 5 August, after 13 years with the ABS. She was Technical Services Librarian for many years and then headed Client Services and Systems Operations. She had previously worked at the Mitchell College of Advanced Education (1974-1980) and the State Library of Victoria (1981-1983).

Many of you have known Lianne as an active member of the Canberra library community. She was the Convenor for the SPYDUS User Network (1999-2001) and was on the ACT Kinetica Users Group before becoming Secretary 1999-2000. The ABS Library was one of the initial 10 members of the ABN, from November 1981 - Lianne and her team catalogued ABS output to the National Bibliographic database on the day of its release.

Lianne also managed ABS's move from print to the electronic environment. When the ABS Library moved to ABS House, Lianne and her team assessed over 1500 linear metres of the library's basement collection and withdrew a third of them in 12 months. A huge job for a small team.

Lianne cared about her colleagues, her profession, her work, the collection and the future of scholarly research. Today she has time to garden, catch up with old friends, paint and go to the movies. Thank you, Lianne.

Karen Vitullo Director Library and Extension Services ABS

ACT Library Technicians

ACT Library Technicians continue to meet socially to network, exchange ideas, welcome new technicians to Canberra and encourage CIT library studies students to join in our activities.

National Library Technicians Day, held during Library and Information Week in the form of a breakfast at the Crowne Plaza, has become a traditional and popular event and we will endeavour to continue this celebration in the coming years.

Members of the group represent ALIA at the Annual Presentation Awards of the CIT Faculty of Business and Information Technology, Diploma of Information Services. The group sends a representative to the National Policy Congress regional meetings to discuss and plan future directions for ALIA.

We are supporting our NSW colleagues with the neXt conference in 2005 in Sydney by keeping ACT Technicians informed of its progress. For future activities and notifications look at our e-list on the ALIA website or contact Beth Clary (please remove '.nospam' from address).

Beth Clary Convener ACT Technicians

ACTive ALIA midwinter dinner and prize-giving

A very convivial dinner was held by ACTive ALIA at the Canberra Club on 20 August. Some 50 ALIA members and their guests enjoyed the company and the fare (with pre-dinner drinks and nibbles sponsored by Kinetica, Australia's Library network). After dinner, prizes and awards from ALIA and the University of Canberra were presented to students from the University of Canberra School of Information Management and Tourism for 2002 and 2003.

ALIA Awards are for the highest achieving students, nominated by UC from its undergraduate and graduate diploma courses in library and information studies in each year. The award gives a year's ALIA membership and subscription to an Association journal. ACTive ALIA added a presentation set of Australian coins.

The John Balnaves Award for Information Retrieval and the Nancy Lane Award for Academic Excellence and Professionalism are awarded by the University of Canberra.

ALIA Awards were presented to Alison McCrindle and Sue Dawes; Nancy Lane Prizes to Ian Barton and Joanne Paine, and the John Balnaves Award to Fiona Angus. ALIA Award winners Connie Koh and Melissa Tierney were unable to attend.

Roxanne Missingham put the finishing touch on the evening with a highly entertaining address on a timely topic: Librarianship, an Extreme Sport.

Sherrey Quinn

Using the internet smarter

Four of us from the ABS Library attended the Web Search Pacific 'State of the art web research' course, presented by Mary Ellen Bates and Gary Price in July. It was much more than just web searching. I gained a lot of practical knowledge from the course - and so did a librarian in training, a new librarian and an experienced searcher and internet trainer.

I'd like to summarise some of the highlights of the course, using Steven Covey's model The seven habits of highly effective people (this had to be drastically cut - apologies. Ed).

First habit - be proactive. Use more statistics in promoting library staff capabilities. You can also use Mary Ellen's 'Free, Fee-Based and Value-Added Information Services white paper' [.pdf 156k], for ideas on how to promote the value of fee based services.

Promote Library staff capabilities by using training to ensure better awareness and use of both free and fee-based services. Collection development of electronic resources is scarcely spoken about, but it is helpful to have a collection ready to use.

Second habit - begin with the end in mind - the result for the client. Think creatively about some of the non-traditional sources.

Third habit - put first things first. Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter the least.

Learn from the Google marketing campaign, using champions in our organisations and key people like journalists to write more about the value of libraries and librarians - it costs only time.

Fourth habit - think win-win. When presenting results to the client, take the time to present them in a way that they are familiar with - perception trumps content every time (it's as important). Also summarise and analyse the results.

Use SNIPURL to shorten URL links when you send out notes - the library looks more professional and it makes it easier for the client. A win on all fronts.

Fifth habit - seek first to understand and then be understood - seeing the world from other people's point of view. See the web from another point of view - explore other search engines besides the one that starts with the big G!

Sixth habit - synergise - habit of creative co-operation - teamwork will lead to better results. Apply the subject specialist model of creating university subject pages by using subject specialists across our government libraries.

Seventh habit - sharpen the saw - habit of self renewal.

Remember the lumberjack who was so absorbed in cutting trees that he forgot to take a few minutes to sharpen the saw, to make his job easier. Take a few minutes each day to update search skills.

Find more information at WebSearchPacific.com.

Karen Vitullo Director Library and Extension Services ABS

Librarians have a balanced work life

'If you want a healthy work/life balance and a healthy pay packet, you should consider a career as a midwife, court reporter or librarian', Anneli Knight wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald on 21 August.

The best value-for-time occupations, which pay good salaries and enable workers to clock off after between 35 and 40 hours, are librarian ($997), midwife ($954) and court and Hansard reporters ($852). What Jobs Pay 2004 and 2005, a book that offers a comprehensive analysis of the average earnings and standard hours across 340 occupations, shows there is little correlation between hours and pay...

Helen Roberts

proACTive - free to good home!

Over the years the editor has kept on file a couple of copies of every issue of proACTive (just occasionally somebody has asked for a missing issue or whatever). For sentiment's sake he'd like to hang on to one set but, if nobody wants it, the other will be thrown to the recyclers or perhaps shredded for use as particularly nutritious garden mulch.

Is it of any use to anybody? First in, best dressed...

E-mail your request to Peter Judge (please remove '.nospam' from address).

Peter Judge

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