24 August 1999

ALIA Managers of the Year

The creative provision of sophisticated library services to diverse client groups, who study and work at different institutions, or live in different countries and time zones, has won two Australian university librarians the award of ALIA Manager of the Year for 1999.

The award is presented by the peak professional organisation, the Australian Library and Information Association, for excellence in library management.

The joint winners are Susan McKnight, university librarian of Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, and Janine Schmidt, university librarian at the University of Queensland.

Because of Deakin's commitment to distance education, Sue McKnight, with 200 staff, manages library services for academic staff and for 62 500 students, including 45 000 living off-campus throughout Australia and in four other continents. In 1998 the library served one million clients in person, answered 82 000 information requests from off-campus clients, provided formal information literacy training to 7000 students and lent over 1 000 000 items. Hyperlinked access to electronic journals, online tutorials and an enhanced academic liaison program were other features of library service.

To modernise the library, Ms McKnight merged three library systems of former institutions into an integrated, service-oriented organisation, and introduced new management procedures and advanced electronic information systems which, according to Professor Geoff Parsons, vice-chancellor and president, give Deakin University the largest and most-complex library information system of any of Australia's universities. Library staff also commented on Ms McKnight's consultative management style and the resulting high morale of staff in a time of change and budget constraints.

As a result, academic staff and students awarded the library the highest score in overall service satisfaction in the 1998 Deakin University internal customer survey.

Under the leadership of Janine Schmidt, the University of Queensland library achieved the highest score possible in all categories of the 1998 commonwealth higher education management service survey of commonwealth universities. The library was also joint winner in 1998, in the institutional category, of the Australian Awards for University Teaching for its 'Cybrary' concept.

The Cybrary is the Library's website which provides a single interface to all collections and services including the largest Silverplatter ERL network of databases in the southern hemisphere, the IDEAL service which indexes and provides full-text access to Academic Press journals, access to over 3000 electronic journals and the complete Web of science collection.

This, with the integrated library management system, Innopac, and flexible staffing gives library clients 24-hour access to library services.

Over 24 000 people attended the library's information skills program last year.

Mrs Schmidt has developed teaching partnerships between the library and the graduate medical course, engineering and social work departments. She has extended the library's programs beyond the University, in the Cyberschool program and the development of electronic information products and services, such as the QUIK interactive internet training package and Pathways, an internet training service.

She has, in the words of her nomination support statement, demonstrated exceptional project management skills, including the refurbishment of the University of Queensland/Mater Hospital Library (a project which had been discussed for 20 years), increased space for the joint University of Queensland/Princess Alexandra Hospital Library and the Gatton Centenary Learning Centre.

The ALIA Manager of the Year is not awarded automatically. Librarians are nominated by their superiors and subordinates, with supporting evidence. The judging panel, chaired by Sydney University librarian John Shipp, reported that this year the standard was exceptionally high and that the two winners were outstanding. While operating in different institutional environments and cultures, both librarians had set clear visions, planned and consulted extensively and had transformed and positioned their libraries for the future.