ALIA West

August 2004

ECU Early Career Awards

You may have seen the notice in the March issue of Biblia asking if anyone had been making a splash at work lately. It was a call for nominations for the first Information Services Early Career Award being hosted by Edith Cowan University. The three information professional associations - ALIA, RMAA and ASA - were closely involved in the selection procedure.

Nominations closed at the end of April and a shortlist of Finalists was drawn up: by coincidence the three Finalists came from each of the three associations. They were Pauline Hodson, a member of ALIA, who works at Challenger TAFE, Gwen Buch, a member of RMAA, who works at CALM and Maria Carvalho, a member of ASA, who works at the State Records Office.

The finalists were presented with a framed certificate by their associations and filmed at their workplace by an ECU film crew. The short documentary on each Finalist was used at the Awards ceremony at the Parmelia Hilton in July.

The Awards Gala night was a very uplifting affair, with the documentary of each finalist being shown as the Award was announced, along the lines of the entertainment industry's Oscar night. There were eight Awards covering a range of professions - teaching, nursing, public relations, policing, etc. The very interesting documentaries showed graduates enjoying and succeeding in a wide range of careers within their chosen professions.

The winner of the Information Services Award 2004 was Gwen Buch. Gwen joined CALM in 2002 as a project manager and has worked on several major projects based on establishing compliance with the State Records Act 200, the most innovative of which has been an online recordkeeping awareness training package. Known as RAT, this project won CALM the Records and Information Management Liaison Group Excellence in Records Management Award in 2003. It is also being implemented at five other government agencies. Congratulations Gwen!

The 2004 Early Career Awards were sponsored by 96fm and Hollywood Private Hospital.

To read more about the awards, and to get ready for next year the website for the Early Career Awards is http://www.ecu.edu.au/pr/EarlyCareerAwards/

By Jeanette Hill

Here is a photo taken at the Awards Night

back row, from left: Gwen Buch, representatives from Hollywood Hospital and 96fm, ECU vice-chancellor Professor Millicent Poole, Pauline Hodson, Maria Carvalho. Front row, from left: Martin Fordham (ASA), Lesley Ferguson (RMAA), Jeanette Hill (ALIA). The photographer is Chris Kershaw of Joondalup Photo-Design.