ALIA New Librarian's Symposium Report

By Kylie Smith, State Library of WA, and Constance Chew, Curtin University of Technology. We are both very grateful for the financial assistance provided to us by our organisations.

A bright and funky website. An interesting list of speakers. The chance to meet other new librarians from the Australia-Pacific region. What more could a couple of new librarians want? Constance and I, and our respective employers, thought that this sounded like an excellent opportunity to network, do some career planning, discuss the issues facing new librarians today and see some Brisbane libraries. Other West Australians who attended were Terena Solomons, who was on the organising committee and presented a session about Myers-Briggs personality types, Virginia Dickson, Arlene Ernstzen, Samantha Hughes and Anthea Whittington.

The Symposium more than met our very high expectations. All the speakers were inspirational and thought-provoking. We both learned so much in just two days; some of the recurring themes were Myers-Briggs personality types, marketing both of yourself and within libraries, and aligning your personal values with those of your organisation to achieve maximum satisfaction and perfomance. The final session, about managing upwards, held our rapt attention as we learned all about how to deal with senior management - your boss is also a person doing their job, same as you!

Networking was another highlight of the Symposium. I did so much talking that I came back with laryngitis, and couldn't speak for 5 days! The presenters were all extremely approachable, and it was a wonderful opportunity for us 'bright 'n' funkies' (the collective noun for the delegates) to network with people in very senior positions. This was especially the case at the Bigwigs Cocktail Party, at which all the bigwigs wore wigs.

While we all learnt a lot, we also had lots of fun, and Constance and I even managed to squeeze in a bit of sightseeing in our one spare hour each day. The next New Librarian's Symposium is going to be held in Adelaide. If this inaugural Symposium is anything to go by, it should be an essential event on every new librarian's calendar!

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Left to right: Samantha Hughes, Terena Solomons, Constance Chew, Kylie Smith

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