May Board of Directors meeting

The May Board meeting was held during a very busy Library and Information Week which also saw the launch of the new ALIAnet and REAP, two new members on the Board and the Association's AGM.

New ALIAnet

The new website was launched on Thursday evening prior to the ALIA Annual General Meeting. It has taken three intensive months of solid work to build ALIA's '5th-generation' website. Ivan and his team hope that you like it, and hope that you enjoy the faster speed of loading, the new chat server, the e-prints repository, the database-driven events pages, the new conference pages, and the members-only material.

Here are some numbers from Ivan to dazzle you: to move and convert the existing 20 000 pages, it took 4 staff working solidly for 3 months to bring you the new site. Integration with the new membership database was handled by contractors who are building the membership database, but essentially the bulk of the work was performed by just 4 ALIA National Office staff. A recent site conversion in America by a similar organisation has these figures: more than 100 staff took 2 years to convert 40 000 pages, at a cost of US$6 million.

I encourage you all to view the new site, and to provide your feedback to Ivan and the staff at the National Office. http://alia.org.au

REAP

The ALIA Research Exchange and Partnership (REAP) initiative was launched on 15 May 2003. REAP is a network of peers working together to exchange ideas and information. Check out the website for more details

National Policy Congress 2003

Planning for the 2003 NPC is underway and we will have the same process as 2002 with a regional meeting that will elect a delegate to attend the National Policy Congress in Canberra 19-20th September.

Silver pins

The new ALIA silver pin is an award to recognise and thank members who have volunteered their time to various ALIA activities over a 5 year period. This time period does not need to be consecutive. To receive the award you must nominate yourself or be nominated by someone else. To raise awareness of the silver pins and to encourage members to nominate I presented silver pins to the following people at the Library and Information Week function at the Constitution Centre. Congratulations to Eilishia Bardoe, Bobbie Bruce, Cheryl Hamill, Jeanette Hill, Lisa Kidd, Trudy Parker, and Kerry Smith. There are many WA ALIA members who are eligible for the silver pin and I encourage you to contact membership services at ALIA or pass on your details to me.

Please contact me if you have any questions or require more information. My contact details are phone 08 9268 7138 or e-mail Deanne.Barrett@fedcourt.wa.gov.au (please remove '.nospam' from address).

Cheers
Deanne

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