The Australian Library Journal

A phoenix rising

[Editorial] John Levett
ALIA has shown an extraordinary capacity for re-inventing itself over the sixty years or so of its history; the recent resolutions carried at the General Council meeting in Adelaide as a consequence of the Gardini Review are merely part of that process. The detail of those resolutions is reflected in the 'Announcement from the Steering Committee' [Helen Tait, Helen Hayes and Warren Horton] carried on p6 of the July 1997 issue of inCite:

ALIA and ACLIS are finally to merge into one organisation as a precursor to the establishment of a new peak body based on the organisational strengths of ALIA. On 12 June both Councils agreed to combine services from 1 January 1998...Eventually we can expect to see the emergence of an organisation which will be appropriate to the needs of the sector well into the next century...

We carry the full text of the Gardini Report as the leading article in this issue; Mr Gardini, the Steering Committee and the Executives and Councils of the two bodies have moved with extraordinary expedition to frame and carry the Review and its re-commendations forward. The last review of ALIA took place in 1986, and in keeping with the more considered rate of change in that era, it moved with a pace that by comparison appears sedate. It had a much broader warrant than did Gardini, and it was important that it consulted widely, extensively and in sometimes tedious detail with the many elements that even then comprised ALIA, surely the most complex of professional bodies. The indefatigable Warren Horton was instrumental in the process, with Anne Hazell and the then executive director, Jenny Adams as his lieutenants. The outcome of their deliberations, the Report of the Corporate Review Committee, influenced ALIA policy for the subsequent decade; not all of its recommendations were adopted, and as far as we recall [we no longer have a copy by us, though for many years we used to measure the progress of General Council towards its implementation] it was fairly firm in its views [among other things] that ALIA should do what it has just now consented to: provide an appropriate level of service to its institutional members, whose interests for far too long have been neglected in favour of service to individual members. A corollary of this argument was that to divide the available resources between ALIA and another body [AACOBS and ALIC in their turn, and eventually ACLIS], would, in the long run weaken the impact of both, as well as confusing governments and policy makers. This view was almost universally reflected in the 50 submissions to Mr Gardini, and although the arguments were in the nature of strongly-held belief and anecdotal testimony, rather than objective evidence, they were compelling in their unanimity. Which may leave the historian puzzling over the reasons for the brief, but it seems to us remarkably effective, emergence of ACLIS, a body whose achievements we hope to review at a later date. What has been so far achieved in the present process of review and change is remarkable in its scope and rapidity; but much more remains to be accomplished. The writer is not a party to the deliberations of the Steering Committee, but its throwaway line 'Eventually we can expect to see the emergence of an organisation which will be appropriate to the needs of the sector well into the next century' suggests that it believes that much more remains to be done. Whether this foreshadows further evolution of ALIA or the eventual emergence of a totally new body is a matter for speculation, and will no doubt engage the policy makers, and not least the members, of ALIA for some time to come, but the 'leadership committee' specified in the Announcement comprising three representatives from ALIA and three from ACLIS has been given a deadline of 1 January 2000 'to manage the detailed change process' and '...the creation of a new organisation...' which suggests that progress will be rapid. It will also require the 'generosity of spirit' which the Steering Committee sees as an essential element in the process. It will be a demanding task, and one in which all members of both bodies will wish to have input. It will take a little longer than it took Mr Gardini to formulate his welcome conclusions, and to be done effectively, will no doubt require a considerable resource base, as well as being very demanding of the time and energies of the leadership committee. It will also require quite extraordinary diplomacy, skill and foresight on the part of all, but especially of the executives of ALIA and for as long as it exists, of ACLIS, and of the leadership committee, the inputs of whose members will be absolutely critical. It will be a demanding task, and not one to be undertaken lightly; its members will need to have wide and general credibility, and to be adequately supported in both logistical and morale terms. Their task and their vision and commitment will be as important as at any other occasion in ALIA's history when it set about remaking itself to meet the challenges of an uncertain future. 'Well into the next century...' will take the new organisation through a period of great stresses and opportunities. Its engineering and design will be critical factors in its success, and perhaps even its survival. We wish all involved well, and congratulate those responsible for the sweeping changes that have so far been negotiated with that requisite generosity of spirit. The pages of this Journal will no doubt reflect the ongoing nature of the debate.

In this issue, we publish the text of the Gardini Report. Whilst it has been available via the National Library's web site for some time, we thought it appropriate that the text should also appear in the journal of record; we hope also to report on the submissions to the review process and the expectations of those who were respondents to the call for input. Tony Onwuegbuzie from the University of Central Kansas and his colleague Qun G Jiao from the City University of New York give us their insights as to the library-using attributes of overseas students in the United States; Jane Simon has been taking a long look at the status and circumstances of women in Queensland public libraries, and Paul Genoni and Neil Greeve offer some sobering conclusions about the ways in which school-leavers in Western Australia perceive our profession. Peter Moloney offers a student's point of view on Open System Interconnections and wonders if it will ever become affective. Robyn Smith reports on the establishment [a model for change management] of the electronic reserve at Queensland University of Technology and its spin-offs in terms of staff development; Sheena Cuthbert carries the debate on competencies a stage further with her account of their introduction at the State Library of Victoria and the implications for staff training and development. Dr Gary Gorman, our reviews editor, and his stable of expert reviewers present a splendid selection of reviews of the best of the current professional literature.

Dietrich Borchardt has died; obituaries have appeared in inCite, The Age and elsewhere. In a future issue we hope to review his career and his contribution as a scholar-librarian and as a colleague.