ALIA Far North Coast Regional Group

July-December 2002

Six-monthly report to the ALIA Board of Directors

The group held two meetings in the time period from July - December 2002. The first, held on 8 August at Grafton entailed hiring a van to transport 8 group members from Lismore to Grafton. A light-hearted debate on the topic of 'You can discipline library members and still remain friends' (an idea borrowed from the WA LibTechs group) took place.

The second meeting took place on 7 November in Lismore. This was an end-of-year dinner where discussions for activities for 2003 took place.

Our group aims particularly to empower our profession through mutual support, which is particularly important in a regional area. We act as a focus and forum to interact and forward ALIA's objectives. The new office-bearers for 2003 live in a geographically diverse area, i.e. Lismore, Grafton and Coffs Harbour. This is the first time that this has been the case, as previously the group has always centred around Lismore. This is a very healthy development and should mean that more people can participate in meeting and in networking, as we plan to hold two meeting in each location during the year.

We have not established a quarterly newsletter as planned, through lack of a volunteer to do this job. We currently communicate via mailouts, as well as our e-list [aliaFNCNSW]. For communicating in 2003, we will only mail out to people who are not on the e-list, to cut down on postage costs.

Robyn Murray
Secretary
ALIA Far North Coast Regional Group