The Minutes
of the 2014 ALIA National Advisory Congress/Member Forum, held at the State
Library of Western Australia on 6th October, have been released.
Chaired by ALIA Director, Aileen Weir, the Member Forum represented all library
sectors in WA and included representatives from the three WA ALIA groups -
ALIAWest, the WA Library Technicians Group and WA Academic and Research
Libraries - as well as WA members of national groups, ALIA New Grads, ALIA
Retirees and Health Libraries Australia.
Among the
recommendations of WA Member Forum were:
- · that ALIA maintain its member focus and demonstrate value to all sectors by providing training and professional development in advocacy and lobbying, management and leadership, and new areas such as data management and curation;
- · that ALIA’s proposal for a compulsory Professional Development Scheme was sound in principle but would require a greater range of low or no cost professional development activities as well as an easier PD Scheme management system;
- · that ALIA give greater support to future leaders within the profession.
Summary
WA Members at
the Forum were supportive of ALIA and its member focus. With the rapidly
changing nature of the profession, it was felt that actions by ALIA should be more
strategic and focussed on future leadership within the profession.
How to value
ALIA, its members, and the profession were also recurrent themes, with these
words of one member concluding the WA Member Forum: ‘We [the members] are
ALIA!’
For the full
version of the Minutes of the 2014 ALIA National Advisory Congress/ Member
Forum see https://www.alia.org.au/nac
Noreen Kirkman, WA State Manager, is happy to answer questions regarding the Minutes and the
recommendations of the WA Member Forum. She would especially like to hear about
ideas for professional development events and courses.