ALIA South Australian Library Technicians

January-June 2003 report

The first six months of 2003 has seen an unfortunate demise of the South Australian Library Technician group. This is not due to the lack of events arranged or the enthusiasm of the committee. This demise is especially saddening as in 2005 the South Australian Library Technician group will have been in existence for twenty five years. This committee feels it is letting down past committee members from these years.

I think there are a number factors influencing this apathetic trend.

In the past we have relied heavily on the locally produced newsletter - InterAlia to promote our functions and keep us in touch with fellow library technicians. However, this has declined in regularity until this year where it has become almost non existent. There have been problems with printing, funding, publishing, finding an editor and finally the enormous problems encountered with trying to put it online through ALIA. This has meant that any planned functions have missed being advertised. We have endeavoured to promote functions on the library technician e-mail list where possible but the attendance numbers have not been great.

Another factor influencing our low attendance numbers is the establishment of a new library group operating in South Australia called SALIN (South Australian Library Information Network) This group is not ALIA based but has a majority of ALIA members on their committee and at their functions. They hold extremely interesting and well attended functions and there is no charge other than a coin donation to cover snacks and a speaker gift. Unlike ALIA there is no cost to join SALIN.

However, SALT did manage to hold some events between January and June 2003. We had a social event on 15th March which comprised of a Secret Haunts Tour through the historic Port Adelaide followed by supper.

Another event held was a tour through ArtLab Australia Laboratories where we viewed the restoration of precious items. This was followed by dinner. Both these events are classed as 'social' with networking and communication opportunities but no real training and development component.

We are holding our SALT AGM in July and hope to have some new people on the committee as out of the existing ten committee members only three have indicated that they are willing to put time and effort towards another stint on the committee.

However interest is high for attending the Library Technician Conference in Brisbane in September 2003. We have heard of lots of fellow technicians from SA who will be attending the conference.

The new committee will have to decide whether to go ahead and organise the remaining events that were planned for 2003. It is disheartening to organise these events only to find very few people willing to attend them. My personal feeling on this situation is that if one group in SA is organising events and getting a good response then they must be doing something right.

Unfortunately we had to cancel two of our monthly meetings during Jan-June due to the majority of the committee being busy elsewhere. The National Library Technician Day breakfast was cancelled due to only four people being available. This is especially ironic as the original idea for this special day came from SA and has been well attended in the past.

Some of the present committee members are very active on other ALIA group committees. For me these include ALIASA, Specials, Health and Law Conference planning committee, SADDIG document delivery group, proxy member of SA Special Library group, 2003@your Library committee. It is a case of too few spreading ourselves too thinly.

This year the committee decided to award a Student Award to a Library Technician to be presented at the Graduation Ceremony in May. Unfortunately, due again to the lack of advertising and communication that previously came from InterAlia, there were no entrants for the award. The committee felt that if InterAlia was available more students would have been aware of the award.

In the previous six months a very successful Weekend Workshop was held and the committee was wondering whether this is all the members want - eg. a weekend workshop held in alternate conference years.

If this committee folds the members have decided to still meet regularly for networking. It would be a shame to let 23 years of friendships, history and memories die.