ALIA Special Libraries Section (SA)

Meeting minutes

6:00pm Tuesday 4 July 2006, Café Amore, Hindmarsh Square

Present

Hayley Gamble, Sylvia Muscardin, Benjamin Wheal, Catherine Daniel, Andrew Meier, Caryl Armstrong, Philip Keane.

Apologies

Pam Aagaard, Rachel Teesdale-Smith, Marie Francis, Cindy Martin, Tanya Hook.

Chair of Business Information Management

Update on correspondence:
HG sent letter outlining our interests/concerns to Paula Swatman (18 May 06). Though there will be a series of formal consultations regarding curriculum development later in the year we have heard nothing more at this stage.
HG will contact Paula to solicit feedback on the letter.

Actions from last meeting

Library Tour - CASR
Will be held 25 July, 5:30 for 5:45, gold coin donation. We will aim for a limit of about 20. AM to do the promotion. CM to help with RSVPs(?). AM, CM and HG to correspond about arrangements.

Name change & mission statement
We will adopt ALIA Speicals SA as our new name: Specialist Information Professionals. Though this drops 'librarian' from the acronym this should not matter because the word 'librarian' is inferred by the fact that we're an ALIA group. We may think about a logo.

The following mission statement was accepted:
'ALIA Specialist Information Professionals is committed to the discussion and dissemination of information on issues associated with Information Management, especially as it relates to Special Libraries, Records Management, Information Services, Knowledge Management and similar occupations.'

HG will inform ALIA of the changes and update the website.
AM will publicise new name in next edition of e-news.

Reports

ALIA SA representative (Hayley)
Library Acheiver of the Year will be held on 17 July.
There was some discussion that the concept of 'leadership' should be more explicit in the selection criteria. Feedback will be provided to ALIA SA committee for next year's award.

Law Libraries representative (report/minutes provided by Cindy Martin)
The ALLG met last Monday(followed by a lunch with a good turnout of about 18 people). The President Di Thompson has just returned from one month in Fiji assisting the Courts with training in electronic resources and research. We are currently collecting renewal memberships and have a few new members joining. As well we are putting out a ALLG bulletin this week which I can forward on as soon as it is released to the group.

We have been discussing Legal Resource Training this year as we have previously released a training manual that is made available for new people entering law libraries, however, we can see opportunities to provide workshops in response to the interstate services that are presented in Adelaide by Caval to serve our members better. Finding the Law has given us a free trial of an online training program that is quite comprehensive, however, there would be costs involved. We have also been approached by a smaller Law firm that has no library service to offer research training similar to the service that was, up until recently offered at the law society - we are asking for volunteers who may be interested to do this and see if we can build on this and offer it as a workshop once a year and on demand if possible.

We are also looking at doing a professional development session on Interesting Case Law presented by one of the Judges (I think) from the Federal Court (Adelaide) and doing a knowledge sharing session amongst librarians on ComLaw - commowealth legal resource site. We would like to do this (ComLaw session) as there are no expert trainers and most of us are using this through our own navigational experience and we thought we may be able to workshop some tips and tricks amongst the group. We are also in the process of organising Christmas in July to be held at the Criterion Hotel in the next couple of weeks.

Health Libraries representative (Caryl)
CA and AM recently attended a Health Technology Assessment Information Resources Workshop as part of a conference in Adelaide. Delegates came from the world over. They checked out some software called LinkSource (which allows e-journal organization and item level linking etc.).

September / October event planning - Seminar

CA, RT-S, SM to communicate on this.

Any other business

BW talked at UNISA, promoting ALIA to students. Told them to come along in small groups and enjoy!
HG suggested setting up Yahoo list for our committee to make management of members & email addresses easier, plus has added benefit of being able to store agendas, minutes, working documents etc. Could be an issue for some members if corporate firewalls do not allow access to Yahoo. HG to further investigate whether similar closed list could be set up via ALIA.

Next meeting Tuesday 5 September 2006, 8:00am?