ALIA blog
Hello Everyone, and welcome to the ALIA blog. Most of the content of this blog will be related to the library and information profession - the latest happenings, good ideas, future thinking, interesting events, and wonderful people and places. While most of the posts will come from me, the ALIA Board of Directors will also be 'feeding' material into the blog as well.Sue Hutley, ALIA Executive Director
Friday 05 May
Dear Members, ALIA's IT staff are currently designing a more user-friendly ALIABlog. Stay tuned for a bigger and brighter blog soon.
Sue Hutley
Tuesday 10 October
LIANZA Conference Report 2
Wellington is still in the grips of Winter with a dusting of snow falling on the hills around the city yesterday, but the conference is vibrating and vital. Speakers have canvassed a wide range of topics and have stimulated discussion and debate among the 800 plus delegates. The ceremony to recognise individual contibutions to the profession was a great event and the gala party 'Wellywood' was amazing and great fun.
However one of the hottest items on the program was the LIANZA AGM. It was a very significant one as LIANZA set a new direction for the future. The proposal to introduce individual registration for professionals was supported and the task force and LIANZA will now be working on an implementation plan. I believe this will provide a much needed revitalisation for professional education which I hope ALIA and LIANZA will work on together.
Dagmar Schmidmaier
Monday 9 October
President at LIANZA
President reporting from LIANZA in Wellington this week...
LIANZA's Next Generation Libraries conference is being held in Wellington NZ. Wellington is living up to its windy reputation and in addition, winter still has a firm grip on the city, it is freezing! The conference got off to a good start with a keynote address by Stephen Abram, Vice President Innovation at SirsiDynix and 2006 President elect SLA. He provided a comphrensive overview of the convergence of new technologies and how they are being used to access information. He then challenged librarians to step up to this challenge and 'manage the informing process'. This was followed by a Millennials panel session where 12 high school students spoke about how they communicate and use information, giving us all a live example of their use of technology.
Cheers Dagmar
Friday 6 OctoberClick06 Summary
ED's Brief Click06 Conference Summary...
[Hi Everyone, I wrote this at the conclusion to the conference but unfortunately it got waylaid with other things ... Belatedly, here it is ...]
What a busy week! So many people new people to meet, colleagues to catch up with and old friends to reminisce with..
Some of the things I will take away or remember from Click06 include :
How to make a Laughter milkshake ... and to remember to :
'Delight in the everyday - is what it is to be a happy librarian !
thanks to Grant Stone, Murdoch University (Wednesday's Wake Up Session)
Dr Click reminded everyone about joining ALIA - Are you an ALIA Member? - those who aren't should all stand up! Look out - Dr Click is after you if you are not a member!
Dawn Casey said that Leadership includes identifying the outstanding qualities in others !
Dawn mentioned three leaders that she has gained inspiration from :
Prof Graham Clarke
L O'Donnoghue
Nelson Mandella
A significant Australian library survey began this week - launched at Click06 - the neXus Census of the Australian Library Industry will provide important information about where we are, and what the future might look like.
ALL Australian Library staff are encouraged to complete the survey - it is for EVERYONE - not just managers, or human resources managers - we need you all to complete it, so that the data is as complete as possible. You only have a short time to fill in the survey and tell us about you - and help us learn about our industry!!
I also learnt a new term from Alex Byrne - that an Association President is also called a 'Chief Volunteer'.
Penny Carmody (Chief Executive of the National Library of New Zealand) again provided a visual feast for her presentation of unlocking digital content.
Some of the comments I received from participants of the conference were :
'This is a *great* conference' - accompanied by a big hug while on the dancefloor at the conference dinner
'Very nice food'
'Everything has gone very smoothly'
'We are looking forward to 2008 already!'
Neil McClelland, the Director, UK Literacy Trust, had some great statistics on how books and literacy assists in contributing to advancing our society.
The last keynote, Jason Clarke from Minds at Work talked about how organisations *really* work.
At the Thursday New Graduates Wake Up Session I was not only very pleased to present the nominated Coaches with their Gold Medals, but I also received a surprise Coaches Medal ! All of the coaches and the details are on the web at and you can continue to nominate other Gold Medal Library Coaches..