 home > groups > active > proactive > 254 > February 2006 |
|||
ACTive ALIAproACTiveNumber 254: February 2006[ ALIA national achievements - Highlights for 2005 | Your local ALIA group - ACTive ALIA's Annual Report for 2005 | Welcoming Sue Hutley, ALIA's new Executive Director | URLs' St Valentine's Day breakfast and call for URLs committee members | Emerging technologies: Blogs, Wikis, RSS, Flickr : their use in a library context | Geoscience Australia's Australia Day Award to Bev Allen | Forthcoming local events ]
ALIA national achievements - Highlights for 2005Roxanne Missingham Advocacy ALIA made two appearances at public hearings federally. One was about ensuring parliamentary papers were available to the public (through public and other libraries) - where we were quizzed about technology, use of government information through public libraries and also generally about issues in access to government information. [See the ALIA Submission] The second was about the technological prevention measures inquiry, which received excellent submissions from the LIS sector, clearly spelling out issues and the need for a fair approach to assist Australians, libraries and information creators.
Internet filtering and internet access in public libraries - Gillian Hallam, ALIA President wrote to the Tasmanian Minister for Education, the Hon Paula Wreidt, about her decision to put filters on all public library internet access terminals from 2006. The president has also written to the federal minister who is looking for support against the push for mandatory filtering. ALIA has undertaken a survey updating the 2002 survey of Internet access on public libraries, and the detailed collation and analysis will be done in January. [See the 2002 survey Information about public-access internet services, including links to the letters and submissions mentioned here are available on the ALIA website. This will be an area of further work in 2006. National Broadband Strategy - Dagmar Schmidmaier, ALIA Vice-President and President-elect been on the national advisory committee, and ALIA has been providing considerable information. Advocacy for funding for broadband upgrade in public libraries continued. Copyright exemptions and definition of a library - lots of advocacy work as part of the review of the copyright legislation and harmonisation with the US - Australia Free Trade Agreement. The Attorney-General's Dept was provided with information by ALIA. Moyra McAllister (ALIA's copyright officer) is liaising with A-G's, putting forward details on the various licensing arrangements in our sector such as Cochrane Library and the National Site Licence initiatives, and CAL's inability to produce a corporate licence that would satisfy corporate libraries, despite our best efforts to assist CAL. ALIA was invited to join the Australian Financial Literacy Foundation, a very well-funded government program - ALIA has suggested they discuss partnering with ALIA for Library and Information Week as NetAlert has done in 2005. On other fronts it was also a successful year: Membership / retention rate: at the end of November was 88 per cent, well on target to meet the goal of 90 per cent retention rate set out in the plan and above the Association norm of 86 per cent. Events / conferences: a very successful event was run for special libraries - New Directions in Special Librarianship. Successful training programs were run in many states as a result of an agreement with Elizabeth Swan of Information Edge. ALIA also has an agreement with CAVAL for discounts for members. National Simultaneous Storytime: very successful with public libraries - in terms of increasing visibility to the public and Ministers/MPS and funding - Hachette has agreed to significant sponsorship and an offer with Australia Post for further sponsorship has been received. ILRS code review: undertaken by the ALIA group - proposal sent out for discussion, amended proposal to be put to libraries, CASL, CAUL, NLA. The peak bodies meeting agreed ALIA should continue to take the lead on filtering, education and employment - Gill Hallam will be undertaking a six month study project on demand for LIS staff in Australia and will investigate labour and education issues. She and Helen Partridge did a detailed study [120kb pdf] in Queensland on skills demand and implications for education. ALIA and the National Library of Australia (NLA) will hold a resource sharing forum in April 2006 to foster wide discussion about interlibrary loan, electronic resources and licences, and end user access. Library and Information Week 2006 - the Public Libraries Reference Group will manage and link with the states '@ your library' campaigns through the @ your library co-ordinators in each state. Very close liaison is occurring with Public Libraries Australia (PLA) who are delighted that ALIA has given management of LIW to the Public Libraries Reference Group and that a public libraries conference will be held by ALIA in 2006. Relationships with other groups - ALIA has MOUs with a range of associations including the Australian School Libraries Association, Public Libraries Australia, RMAA, AIIA, Australian Society of Archivists which offered various opportunities in 2005. Report by Roxanne Missingham, Parliamentary Librarian, Parliament of Australia
Your local ALIA group - ACTive ALIA's Annual Report for 2005ACTive ALIA's Annual Report for 2005 is now available on the ALIA website. It reports on the successful series of activities held in 2005, such as the joint information sharing sessions held with the Australian Government Libraries and Information Network (AGLIN), and the Annual Prize-giving Dinner and Awards night. Over 500 people attended the information sharing events, and 50 attended the dinner. Reports on most of these activities appeared in ProACTive with links to speakers presentations. Welcoming Sue Hutley, ALIA's new Executive DirectorAround 30 members of ALIA in the ACT gathered on 1 February to welcome Sue Hutley, recently appointed as Executive Director of ALIA. Most recently the manager of the University of Queensland Ipswich Library, Sue brings to ALIA her broad experience in the academic, TAFE, public library and special library sectors, underpinned by postgraduate qualifications in business and library science. Sue has a long-established record of contribution to the library and information profession through her active roles with the New Graduates Policy and Advisory Group, New Librarians' Symposium, ALIA Quorum, the Queensland Library Promotion Council and the Aurora Foundation.
URLs' St Valentine's Day breakfast and call for URLs committee membersTwenty very happy people attended the University and Research Libraries (URLs) breakfast on the 14 February. They came from a variety of libraries and organisations - the Universities, ACT Library and Information Service (ACTLIS), ALIA, CAUL and Government libraries. It was a very sociable and cheerful event and the cross-fertilisation was enjoyed by everyone. Sue Hutley (Executive Director, ALIA) and Georgina Dale (Manager, Member Services and Groups) were there. Sue distributed trendy wrist bands saying I love libraries' - most appropriate for St Valentine's Day. A few dropped in on the way to work to see the nicely refurbished (though not completely finished) Lewins Library on the Australian Catholic University Signadou Campus. During the breakfast a call was put out for new URLs committee members - anyone who is working for a university or research library and has energy and enthusiasm to spare would be most welcome to join the committee. Anyone who is interested can contact me (please remove '.nospam' from address) for details. Nancy Clarke, ACU
Emerging technologies: Blogs, Wikis, RSS, Flickr : their use in a library contextALIA/AGLIN information sharing forum 2006 4:30pm-5:30pm 22 February 2006, National Library of Australia Theatre Report by Alison Carter, FACS Library
Chair: Roxanne Missingham (Parliamentary Library). Over 120 people attended the first AGLIN/ACTive ALIA information sharing forum for 2006. The presentations will be available on the AGLIN and/or ALIA websites as soon as possible. Wikis Wiki means quick in Hawaiian. A wiki is a simple database and is used for exchanging information. Some notable wiki's are Wikipedia with 3.3 million articles, and the Hurricane Katrina Wiki. Kate Bunker talked about wikis at the Brisbane Campus Library of the Australian Catholic University, where they are used for procedural manuals. Why a wiki? Quick, one click editing, no code or language to learn, low cost, ease of use and its encourages sharing. Issues with wiki's: Vandalism and editing wars, for instance George Bush's wiki has had to be closed due to constant editing and changes. Is the information in a wiki authoritative or reliable? Where do wiki's fit in the library world? Librarians can use a wiki as a knowledge base and for collaborative writing. Our users can give advice, and it can enable users to help other users. Kate finished off with the following advice to set up a wiki:
Kate's presentation is on-line [1.5mb ppt]. RSS Feeds (Really Simple Syndication) Catherine Gilbert spoke about how parliamentary library had implemented RSS feeds to disseminate information on publications produced by the Australian Parliamentary Library. There are two ways to manage RSS: one is to use a feedreader, which is fine if you only have one or two blogs. It will alert you by flashing on your desktop. The other way is to use an aggregator to manage your feeds. You have to go to the aggregator to see your feeds. http://www.bloglines.com/ is an example of an RSS aggregator. It will also help you save useful articles for later use. RSS is popular, but it does need software. The next version of IE6 will enable RSS feeds on the desk top. For more information see Catherine's presentation [888kb ppt] Paulette Patterson talked about harnessing the RSS feeds into parliamentary databases, such as newspaper, press releases, and bill digests. This would enable the library to keep the databases up to date more easily. Paulette also hopes to automate the press clips to an RSS feed that can then be sent to parliamentarians by 9:00am each morning. In the future the parliamentary library wants to improve the delivery of news clippings to the members' and senators' portal and to enable the development of a daily news service. Flickr Tony Boston talked about a new initiative between Picture Australia and FLICKR, an online photo sharing process. Picture Australia is using FLICKR to collect digital material from members of the community. People can nominate pictures into two categories, Australia Day and People Places and Events. Picture Australia will collect the metadata and thumbnails of images each week. This is making Picture Australia more contemporary. FLICKR has 7 million images; Picture Australia has 1 million images. Tony discussed the issue of copyright, they have developed guidelines for contributors and users. 73 per cent of the pictures are all rights reserved, the balance are not copyright protected and are available to share. This way of sharing information is a way of connecting our services with the user. Instead of asking the user to come into the library, the library is going to the user. One of the benefits of the current wave of new technology, Blogs, Wikis, FLICKR etc, is that it is good enough to work, easy enough to use and encourages all to participate. For more information see Tony's presentation [8.7mb ppt]. ALIA Blog Sue Hutley, Executive Director, ALIA, had hoped to launch the first ALIA Blog at this Forum, however it is not quite ready yet, and will be available to all shortly. The evening closed at about 5:45pm. Report by Alison Carter, FACS
Geoscience Australia's Australia Day Award to Bev AllenAt the annual Geoscience Australia's Australia Day Awards, Bev Allen, library manager was awarded a 2006 Australia Day Award. The citation reads: Bev Allen is a quiet achiever in the best tradition. She believes passionately in the value that effective library services can add to a knowledge-based organisation such as Geoscience Australia. Bev provides outstanding service: no query for information is ever too hard and she always delivers the results with a wonderful enthusiasm for her craft together with a cheerfulness that encourages library users to return. Over the years Bev has helped most of the staff in Geoscience Australia, and many visitors to the organisation, to seek out critical information in the most effective way. She has been an avid implementer of new technology whenever that technology has been able to deliver a significant improvement in the cost-effectiveness of acquiring information. Over the years her commitment to excellence in service and her outstanding ability to seek out information has added significantly to Geoscience Australia's capability. Geoscience Australia's library staff are proud of Bev's achievement and are delighted she has been recognised in this way. Well done Bev! Mary Teague, director, information services, Geoscience Australia
Forthcoming local eventsPlease check the events notices on the ALIA website for up-to-date details. Changes and new events will also be publicised in the ACTive ALIA e-list.
|
]
|
