Brown bag session with Margaret Allen

CEO of the State Library of Western Australia and state librarian.

On Wednesday 20 April, Margaret Allen kindly agreed to share her thoughts on the future direction of the Library and Information Service of WA and the state reference library with a group of students from the information studies course at Curtin University. The visit was arranged by Nicole Davey, president of the Information Studies Students Association.

Margaret Allen's library career began in 1980 when she graduated with a BA from the University of South Australia. During her career she has worked in public and special libraries. Margaret also worked for several years in the IT field for a major library management software vendor, a job which gave Margaret the opportunity to travel the world and see and experience many different libraries. Prior to her move to Western Australia Margaret was working as an assistant director with the State Library of South Australia which has just undergone a major building redesign as well as an organisational restructure.

Margaret prefaced her talk to the students by stating that in the next few months LISWA would be entering into a strategic planning process and that she hoped to have a formal document out in about six months that people could read and comment upon, but for now she was pleased to share her first impressions of the state library service and her hopes for its future.

Margaret began by explaining a little about the various roles that the State Library and LISWA plays in the provision of library services to WA. These included fulfilling a statutory obligation under State Legislation. The state library service is run by a board of directors, (the Library Board of WA) which consists of 13 members. Five directors are nominated by the Minister , six are from special interest groups such as ALIA and two are representatives from local government including the rural sector. The board reports to the minister (in WA's case this is the Minister for Culture and the Arts) and one of the challenges faced by the board is the fact that culture and the arts is a diverse portfolio with a reasonably low priority for funding support.

The state library has a role in supporting library services across the state, and must also manage and administers the contributions by the state government to the public library service. The state library service has the responsibility of registering new library services across the state. These are usually public library services supported by local councils but also include libraries within prisons and local authorities such as the Rottnest Island Authority.

Margaret said that in addition to formal obligations and roles, the state library service has a social role to play. This role ranges from organising exhibitions and public programs to alert people to the 'treasures' hidden within the state library collection to creating and maintaining a safe and welcoming environment for the less advantaged. Margaret mentioned that libraries are one of the few remaining community places which are safe, non threatening and do not cost anything to use.

A recent survey showed that at least 42 per cent of the population visit public libraries, second only to the cinema, and the botanical gardens. Given the profile the library has within the community it is important to create and maintain a strong role in the 'life long learning' and information literacy needs of the community. Margaret spoke of a number of ways of addressing this challenge including strengthening links to the education sector and trying to enthuse year 11 and year 12 humanities students in a career as a librarian. Margaret also spoke of the need to provide free internet and telephone access as society has fundamentally shifted towards online provision of information particularly in the government sector and that this shift had repercussions for the homeless and unemployed.

Margaret stated that one of the major challenges facing LISWA was the provision of fair and equitable access to internet facilities and resources across the state regardless of the location of the user. Meeting this challenge will mean solving issues of technological infrastructure, reliability of connection and up skilling of library staff to take advantage of various electronic resources.

Speaking specifically of the state reference library Margaret stated that whilst walk in access to the library was decreasing, web access was increasing exponentially. Margaret spoke of the challenge to make the state reference library more relevant and accessible to the community and spoke of her desire to rationalise the enquiries service of the state reference library. At the moment it is not uncommon for a client to be moved through several service points within the library depending on the complexity of the client's enquiry and the collections which will be accessed. This can become frustrating for the client. Similarly there is a need to make the state reference library more accessible to rural users by developing web delivered products.

Margaret spoke for roughly 45 minutes and then took questions from the floor. The talk was wide ranging and tangential and the audience was left with a strong sense of where Ms Allen would like to see the state library service go in the next few years. I look forward to the production of the strategic plan, and hope that Nicole is able to persuade Ms Allen to return in six months so we can learn how far she has managed to progress her ideas. Many thanks must go to Nicole for organising the brown bag and to Ms Allen for consenting to come and talk.

Bonnie Bruce Curtin University of Technology

A a