General meeting minutes

Meeting held on 15 October 2003 at the Metway Theatrette, State Library of Queensland.

The meeting opened at 6pm

Program

1. Gillian Hallam, senior lecturer in library and information studies at QUT, gave a presentation outlining the responsibilities of her new role as Queensland's ALIA Local Liaison Officer.

2. Yvonne Brock, Jo Anne Dusha, Bev Wedge and Karren Pickering spoke about the mammoth task they undertook in organising the 12th ALIA National Library Technician's Conference which was held at the Sheraton Hotel, Brisbane on 9-12 September 2003.

The committee revealed that this conference broke the attendance, trade and dinner records of all previous Library Technician conferences, and, biggest bonus of all - they made a profit.

Yvonne outlined how they managed to keep the whole conference package compact and costs to a minimum:

the committee interviewed a number of conference organisers before deciding on Organisers Australia
the venue, at the Sheraton Hotel, was chosen because it offered significant savings eg. discounted package for holding the Conference dinner at the hotel.
sponsorship, trade exhibitors, and invited speakers were costed to the smallest detail.
the financial planning of the whole conference had to include many factors eg free registration for workshop presenters; free registration, dinner tickets and airfares for keynote speakers; bank fees for merchant banking (a special dispensation had to be obtained from ALIA to open an electronic bank a/c); auditors fees; Printing costs for programs and half-page ads in Incite, and stationery and letterheads; phone, fax and photocopying costs; other miscellaneous costs: name tags, satchels, insurance, theming (uniforms, etc.); awards, prizes for competitions, thank you letters; bus hire/taxis for library tours.

Three sub-committees were formed: education, to concentrate on developing a comprehensive education program which involved arranging workshops, library visits and peer paper presentations, and choosing papers by keynote and invited speakers according to pre-arranged criteria which ensured that all papers adhered to the relevance of the daily theme; marketing; and social program.

Yvonne attributed the success of the whole conference to the dedicated teamwork of the committee - she praised all the conference committee members and thanked them for their outstanding dedication and personal contributions to the planning process.

Printed handouts containing a list of congratulatory post-conference e-mails sent to the conference committee were distributed following questions and answers.

3. Jennifer presented Gillian and the members of the Conference committee in attendance with gifts and thanked them for their presentations.

Announcements

Tech's Christmas Breakfast: 8:30am on Sunday 23 November at Watt Café, Powerhouse, New Farm. Details and confirmation of date and times has been distributed to members via e-mail and posted to aliaLIBTEC.

New Committee members: Jennifer announced that Robyn Carlile and Trish Darcy had become members of the group's committee - Trish has agreed to act as Deputy Convenor and Robyn will start a photographic record of the group's activities.

Meeting venue and times: Margaret Mowberry has distributed a survey via e-mail to members asking them for their preferences regarding times and days of the week for future meetings. The result will determine when the next meeting is held.

Next Meeting: February 2004 - venue TBA

The meeting closed at 7.30pm.

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