The Australian Library Journal

The role of the executive director

With great regret, we have accepted the resignation of Virginia Walsh as executive director of the Australian Library and Information Association, effective from 21 January 1999. Although Virginia advised us of her decision on Wednesday 9 December, a public announcement was delayed until John could meet with staff at the ALIA National Office.

Since she joined ALIA in 1993, Virginia has made a contribution to the Association that will have an enduring benefit and has set the benchmark for future achievement. Virginia's professional leadership has been manifested in many ways, including the range of our lobbying activities, the quality of ALIA publications, our sound financial position, and an enhancement of our public presence.

It has been an absolute pleasure to work with Virginia, and her dynamic approach to the affairs of the Association will be greatly missed. She has promoted libraries and librarianship at every opportunity and to great effect. Her championing of the best interests of ALIA was just one demonstration of Virginia's loyalty and commitment to the Association and its members. Her good management and leadership has enabled ALIA not just to survive, but prosper.

ALIA has been fortunate to have had Virginia as its executive director and we wish her every success in the future.

The search for a new executive director will commence once ALIA General Council has had an opportunity to discuss the future needs of the Association. From 21 January, Jennefer Nicholson will be acting executive director. Jennefer has been deputy executive director since 1991, and is well-known to many members especially for her work with the ALIA Board of Education. We look forward to working with Jennefer and the ALIA National Office staff in the continuing development of a new peak body to represent the interests of the Australian library and information community.

John Shipp, ALIA president
Craig Anderson, ALIA vice-president (ALIA president 1999)

Like perhaps ninety per cent of ALIA's membership, I once considered applying for the job of Executive Director, but a private, pre-application interview with a dear friend found that I was not sufficiently endowed with certain qualities considered essential. I also chaired the [unsuccessful] Search Committee which preceded that recommending Virginia's appointment; we got a nibble from her, but nothing more, and it was left to our successors to convert that first expression of interest to a firm recommendation for appointment, a recommendation which no-one then or since can have regretted.

The job [or rather jobs] of executive director is perhaps one of the most challenging in the profession, but paradoxically, Virginia although in it, was not of it, since she 'lacked a professional qualification'. Fortunately, the committee set aside that consideration in her case, and may it stay set aside in the search for her successor, for a qualification in librarianship is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition to guarantee success in so difficult a task. 'All things being equal' [as they of course never are], a professional qualification might be seen as that characteristic which might enable a choice to be made between two outstanding and otherwise indistinguishable candidates, but lack of it need not impede the successful execution of the task. In recommending Virginia's appointment, the selection committee took, of course they did, a risk, and there were many who muttered and predicted the worst from the appointment of a 'non-librarian'. Of course a librarian could do the job. The problem is that few with the requisite ability or experience or rationale are moved to apply.

Perhaps this is because we all know just how demanding, indeed how sometimes impossible the task is. I said earlier that the selection committee took a risk; perhaps I should qualify and expand that comment. I did not mean of course, a risk in relation to the individual [although every such recommendation involves an element of the unknown], but rather in relation to that lack of a professional qualification. In the event, it mattered not a jot, and although on rare occasions, Virginia may have spoken for the profession when members of it thought she should not, the lay person to whom she was speaking [and she spoke to a multitude of them, including senior politicians and bureaucrats] would have been much more focussed on her overall command of the issues rather than her precise technical knowledge, for she had that rare and highly prized ability to read, think and talk herself to the inside of complex matters. Not all of her presidents agreed with her all the time, of course: perhaps very few did. But none could suggest that she lacked energy or ability.

I have worked with every executive director, full or part-time, since John Vaughan, either as an officer of the Association or as editor of its journal, and LAA and ALIA have been extremely fortunate in the holders of the office. Some have been conservative; others were risk-takers. Some managed the General Council, that large cumbersome, and sometimes intractable body, with more [or less] tact than others, but all served the members well. One or two the job nearly killed, they gave so much of themselves to it; some flirted with their presidents, some fought tooth and nail with them; some suborned them; at least one is said to have resigned because s/he found the prospect of working with the incoming president intolerable. Which is perhaps a good reason [without disrespect to any individual] why any Search Committee, should be largely independent of General Council, and given a mandate sufficiently broad to ensure the widest possible range of candidates. As I have earlier noted, any recommendation carries with it a quantum of risk and uncertainty; but under no circumstances should the appointment of a merely safe candidate be contemplated. The Association's best executive directors have been strong, autonomous and themselves risk-takers; risk-takers not so as to bankrupt the Association [although one is rumoured to have once taken us close to insolvency] but so as to see opportunities and to seize them. To act without waiting for the interminable and cripplingly qualified mandate from General Council, which, having appointed the best person to the job, should leave them to get on with it within broad policy guidelines. And not least, well-endowed with financial nous.

I look forward to learning of the appointment of a Search Committee, expect that they will be given a free hand, and wish them well in their task: much depends on it. In the meantime I wish Virginia the best of everything, and thank her for her very considerable contribution to advancing the goals and policies of the Association. A hard act, as they say, to follow.

In this issue I am privileged to publish a selection of thought-provoking papers from the 5th ALIA General Conference, held in Adelaide in late October last year. It was a good conference, although the Extraordinary General Meeting might have provided more opportunity to discuss fairly those important issues on which members were asked to vote, a matter which we will pursue elsewhere. The Adelaide weather seemed to us superb, although the locals felt constrained to apologise for it at every opportunity; the program and the quality of the papers and discussion excellent, and the hospitality benevolent. The organisers-principal, Di Booker and Anne Hazell, and their equally hard-working colleagues, are to be congratulated; the papers as a whole are to appear soon [indeed may have already appeared], and we look forward to an early opportunity to review the Proceedings at leisure.

Our previous editorial, lamenting the evaporation [or rather boiling-off] of the goodwill which had attended embarkation on the implementation of the Gardini Report clearly ruffled some feathers; one critic told us that we had 'given rather more of the ACLIS account of events than ALIA's'. Possibly true: perhaps because although deeply interested in the affairs of both bodies, we had been better informed by one than by the other. Not all who remarked on the editorial were critical; some took the completely proper view that the Journal should not merely be the vehicle for any single or 'official' view, although it is of course, entirely willing to give space to any such which it is asked to contemplate. What is worth remarking, however, is that none of the views we were given were 'for publication'. This reticence is perplexing: lack of vehemence in the expression of views critical of the editorial was not a factor, and presumably not lack of conviction either - but the unwillingness to engage in the debate publicly is not a little unfortunate.

Whatever, the events of last year are now well downstream of the bridge and we look forward to future challenging and positive developments.