Thursday, May 30, 2013

Catherine Jordan, the Librarian at the Australian National Botanic Garden, ACT winner of the ALIA Australia’s Favourite Librarian campaign.


Congratulations to Catherine Jordan, the Librarian at the Australian National Botanic Garden, who is the ACT winner of the ALIA Australia’s Favourite Librarian campaign.

Catherine is a fabulous librarian –enthusiastic, knowledgeable, dedicated with a great sense of humour.

I would particularly like to congratulate Catherine as I’ve had the great pleasure of working with her.  She truly is a font of knowledge who is an integral member of the Australian National Botanic Garden working closely with all her colleagues. She is passionate about service and support – going out of her way to understand the needs of her users and provide information. I recall her heading down to a Library conference and detouring on the way to see rare trees – a true botanic librarian!  You can see a lovely photo of Catherine with a fabulous Celia Rosser volume she is displaying to the Friends of the ANBG at http://www.friendsanbg.org.au/infolinks.

Botanic gardens staff and volunteers strongly supported her nomination and are just delighted to see her so well recognised.

More at


To see the Library’s website go to http://www.anbg.gov.au/library/ - Catherine on behalf of all ACT library staff and ALIA members congratulations – and expect a request for a visit as part of the ALIA program soon!

Roxanne Missingham
ANU Librarian

Thursday, May 23, 2013

ACTive ALIA Awards


ACTive ALIA Awards

ACTive ALIA is calling for nominations for its achievement awards, which recognise contribution to the local ACT ALIA groups and the library profession.
The ACTive ALIA Awards recognise and promote the work of members of the association. The awards are open to personal financial members of ALIA.

Two awards are available:
  • Outstanding Contribution Award
  • Initiative Award
Outstanding Contribution Award

Criteria:
  1. The member has made a sustained contribution to activities of ALIA in the ACT
  2. The member has provided inspiration and leadership to library staff in the ACT
  3. The member may have been contributed to a single committee, group or activity or a range of ALIA committees and groups
  4. The member has made a sustained personal commitment and contribution to ALIA.
Initiative Award

Criteria:

  1. The member has contributed to activities of ALIA in the ACT.
  2. The member has provided energy and enthusiasm in contributing to the development of library staff in the ACT
  3. The member may have contributed to a single committee, group or activity or a number of ALIA committees and groups
  4. The member has a personal commitment to ALIA and has demonstrated support of ALIA.

ALIA members who wish to be considered for the award or to nominate someone else should follow the procedures below:
  • Each nomination should name the candidate, indicate which award the nomination is for, and present a brief supporting statement which addresses the relevant criteria (above).
  • Each submission should give the names and ALIA membership numbers of a nominator and a seconder who are each personal financial members of ALIA.
  • Nominations are to be submitted by email to the Awards Sub-committee of ACTive ALIA group, to  saquinn1@gmail.com
  • Closing date for nominations is 14 June 2013.
The ACTive ALIA Awards selection committee for 2013 is Roxanne Missingham and Sherrey Quinn. 

The awards will be presented at the ACTive ALIA midwinter dinner (4 July 2013, at The Scholar Restaurant, Dickson).

The successful recipient(s) of the awards will be required to:

  1. attend the presentation, if possible;
  2. write a brief article for ProACTive on their experiences as an ALIA member.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

A talk and tour of the ANU’s National Computational Infrastructure 31 May 2013, 4.30-5.30pm, ANU Campus,


We have an exciting event for you all as our contribution to  Information Awareness month

A talk and tour of the  ANU’s National Computational Infrastructure with Professor Lindsay Botten


Date 31 May 2013
Time: 4.30-5.30pm
Place: National Computational Infrastructure Building (143), Cnr Garran and Ward Roads, ANU Campus

The National Computational Infrastructure, Australia’s national high-end computing service, is an initiative of the Australian Government, hosted by The Australian National University. NCI’s mission, to foster ambitious and aspirational research objectives, and to enable their realisation through world-class high-end computing services, is advanced through both cutting-edge infrastructure and internationally renowned expert support.

NCI’s advanced computing infrastructure, comprising a petascale HPC system, a large-scale compute cloud (primarily for data-intensive services), and multi-petabyte high-performance storage, is funded through programs of the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education, while its operations are sustained through the substantial co-investment by a number of partner organisations including ANU, CSIRO, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Geoscience Australia, a number of Australia’s research-intensive universities, and the Australian Research Council.
The work of NCI is structured into two main activities: Facilities and Services, and Planning, Access, Policy and Outreach.
The former provides the user-facing services and is divided into three programs:
http://nci.org.au/
To me it sounds like the Tardis expanded and expounded so well worth your while coming along

Please register
http://nationalcomputationalinfrastructuretour-es2.eventbrite.com.au/?rank=73

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

‘Can copyright law ever catch the digital economy?’


Report on the Australian Digital Alliance forum 'Embracing the Digital Economy: creative copyright for a creative nation', 1 March 2013, Australian Portrait Gallery.

This year’s ADA forum coincided with the current Australian Law Reform Commission inquiry, Copyright and the Digital Economy.  It provided an opportunity to hear Keynote speakers and panelists viewpoints on the impact of economics and technology on copyright law in today’s world of the ‘digital native’―where the idea of resource access and sharing is an expectation and human right.

The main keynote speaker, internet law specialist and New Zealand District Court Judge, David Harvey, picked up on the human rights issue by promoting a total paradigm shift, the discarding of current copyright law in favour of regulation based on Article 19 of ICCPR (freedom of expression). The set of rules we have developed around copyright, he argued, belongs to a print paradigm with little contemporary relevance; its oppressiveness is putting the credibility of law at riskUnder his model, copyright would become the exception while interference with Article 19 would require justification.  

The other keynote speaker, Associate Professor Matthew Sag (Loyola University Chicago and visiting scholar, Melbourne University) outlined his research on predictability of ‘fair use’ and the US decision to codify ‘fair use’ into law and rely on judicial decision.

In response to the keynote speakers, a wide range of speakers and panelists from diverse backgrounds spoke of their experiences and challenges as stakeholders in copyright law. The underlying concern, common to all the interested parties was that uncertainty regarding the law was stifling creativity and hindering business plans. It became apparent that clear guidelines would be beneficial to anyone who is affected by intellectual property and copyright law. From a Librarian’s perspective this is certainly concern, archiving and allowing access to electronic material while seeking permissions on a case by case basis.

The current Australian Law Reform Commission inquiry focus includes ‘fair use’ and replacement of ‘exceptions’ covering issues such as cloud computing, transformative use and license barriers to digitization.  The Australian Libraries Copyright Council and ADA joint submission to the inquiry supports open ended flexible exceptions based on the US fair use model suggesting that exceptions have to date been unable to effectively adapt to new technologies and fair dealing and technology neutrality need not result in unpredictability. It notes that caching and cloud services are possibly outside protection of the Act.

The ALRC is due to report in November 2013. 



Anne Pyle
Jonathon Guppy

Commonwealth Parliamentary Library