ALIA West

August 2004

ALIAWest AGM - 9 July 2004

Convenor's report

2003/2004 has been an exciting time for ALIAWest and the Library community in Western Australia with the 2004@Your Library marketing campaign going very well and being used by libraries in all sectors to market their services to their own users and stakeholders and also to the wider community. The major sponsors, Channel 9 and The Sunday Times continue to give advertising space and time to provide that all important editorial comment. A major coup is having the 'Treasures' campaign being shown on 'Postcards'. As the ALIAWest/Specials representative on the Steering Committee, I would like to thank all of you who have contributed to the marketing campaign and urge you to continue to use the @Your Library campaigns to promote your own libraries. We do need to 'blow our own trumpets' if we want to be heard at the top.

ALIA Liaison

We are very pleased to welcome the appointment of Kay Poustie as the ALIA liaison officer for WA. Kay's job is to assist all ALIA groups and to be the ALIA representative on the ground. Kay is well known to all of us and is the Chair of the WA State Library Board.

Awards

ALIAWest presents two awards each year. The Sharr Medal for the best graduate and The Special Librarian of the Year Award. Again many thanks to Belinda and Deanne for their continued organisation of the Sharr Medal Award.

This year we were asked to be part of the ECU New Graduate Award and Jeanette Hill has been our representative on this committee.

We are very pleased to have Pauline Hodson, learning resource services co-ordinator at Challenger TAFE as the library sector nominee.

Congratulations are also given to Pam Hyde for becoming an Associate Fellow of ALIA. This is a new CPD initiative and Pam is one of the first in Australia to gain this accreditation. We trust others will see the advantages in becoming an Associate Fellow.

Biblia

Our newsletter Biblia continues to provide the latest news and updates to all members. I enjoy reading about the functions that I have not been able to attend and enjoy the varied content as it comes from all the different ALIA groups. I would like to give a special vote of thanks to Camille Peters for her long-term as editor and to welcome Bonnie-Rae Bruce and Sharon Coppin as our new editors. Please continue to send in those contributions.

CPD

Professional development in an important function of all organisations and we continue to work with the other ALIA groups in giving members the chance to explore different aspects of the profession. This is an area where I believe there can be a greater input from outside the profession itself, as we develop those aspects of our careers that are not specifically 'library', areas such as change management, inter-personal skills for staff management, dealing with executives, presenting business cases, project implementation and other sometimes daunting tasks that we find we have to be able to do. (It does help to be on a committee to get experience in event planning)...

Future challenges

As with all volunteer organisations, committee membership is a big hurdle, there are often only a few to do the work, not because others are unwilling but because we are all trying to juggle a number of roles. Therefore, a challenge I see for the new committee is to prepare an ongoing plan for the continuation of our group and the succession planning for committee membership. That may sound a bit grand, we are not a big business, but we are part of a big organisation and it is from the group committee structure that future Board Members and presidents of ALIA come. We are the grass roots and I believe that putting together a committee structure that invites people to join for a short time, have a break and come back again, is not only a way for the group to survive but for the group to have a flow of new ideas and for people to take a rest, get recharged and come back again.

I'm looking forward to the coming year and supporting the new committee in all their endeavours.

Maureen Cooper,
Outgoing convener ALIAWest.