Canberra, 15 July 2026: Renate Beilharz AALIA has been part of the library and information profession in Australia since she graduated as a teacher librarian from Melbourne College of Advance Education in 1984. With a highly dedicated and down-to-earth approach to her work, Renate went on to become a highly respected educator at Box Hill Institute where she encouraged and supported her students every step of the way.
From 2018, Renate headed up the education team at the Schools Cataloguing Information Service (SCIS), where her wealth of professional knowledge benefited school libraries around the country.
As a professional member of the Australian Library and Information Association, Renate is remembered as a person of initiative and goodness who steered the sector in positive directions with warmth, humility, vision, and intelligence. She was incredibly generous with her knowledge and as a practitioner, a teacher, and a sector leader.
The ways in which Renate shared her passion for bibliographic metadata has made a big difference in this country.
Her work really mattered. The conversations Renate started about resource description meant that students and teachers are better able to discover and access resources. School library collections are more visible, useful, respectful, and meaningful because of Renate. Her commitment to reparative description, which replaces outdated terms with respectful language and prioritises the voices of marginalised group, was especially impactful.
In 2025, Renate had the vision to found the Schools Cataloguing Community of Practice. This initiative serves as a point of contact for school library staff to ask questions and share cataloguing expertise in a safe and welcoming forum. This seed of connection and learning that Renate planted and tended has left an enduring legacy that continues to grow and thrive.
People in cataloguing communities in all kinds of libraries across Australia, not just school libraries, but academic, public, health and special libraries, have been inspired and lifted by Renate’s work. She will be greatly missed by her ALIA family.
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