ALIA West

October 2003

September Board of Directors meeting

Some of the major issues and highlights from the meeting.

Financial report - changes in accounting standards. Australia is to adopt the International Accounting Standards for the financial years commencing on or after 1 January 2005. These new standards are a major change for Australian financial reporting, and ALIA is working with our accountants to implement the changes.

The 2nd ALIA New Librarians' Symposium 2004: Beyond the stereotype

The Symposium will be held in Adelaide on 3-4 December 2004.

ACOC workshop. The Board has endorsed an ACOC seminar to be held in Melbourne on 2 February 2004, in conjunction with the VALA conference, focussing on Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records.

Strategic partnerships. The president Christine Mackenzie and Vicki McDonald, director and convenor of ALIA's public libraries reference group, met with representatives from Public Libraries Australia to finalise the memorandum of understanding which will be signed on 13 November.

The memorandum of understanding between ALIA and the Congress of Southeast Asian Librarians (CONSAL) will be signed at the CONSAL conference in Brunei from 18-23 October 2003. Kerry Smith and Janine Schmidt will represent ALIA.

Accreditation for library and information services. Brigitte Glockner presented a paper at the Special, Health and Law Conference in Adelaide in August 2003 that proposed a mechanism for accreditation of special libraries. Brigitte then forwarded it to the Board for its consideration as a possible service to institutional members. The Board has decided not to proceed with the proposed accreditation scheme for institutional members as it is not convinced that the value given to the accreditation by the parent organisation would justify the allocation of resources to such a scheme.

Progress report on 2003-04 plan. ALIA 2003-2004 plan: making the difference. Achievements and highlights to September 2003 are at http://www.alia.org.au/governance/nac/2003/highlights.html. Major milestones were discussed at the Board meeting and significant achievements were highlighted at the NPC.

Copyright. Current focus is on preparation for the review by the Attorney-General's department of the Digital Agenda amendments to the Copyright act. Copies of the discussion papers are available from the Phillips Fox website.

National Policy Congress (NPC)

The NPC was held 19-20 September in Canberra with Carol Newton-Smith being the WA representative. I found the 2003 NPC to be informative, positive and constructive. I will let Carol report directly on the outcomes. A report will be available soon on ALIAnet.

The next Board meeting is 14 November but I will not be able to attend this meeting due to work commitments.

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