ALIAACtive MidWinter dinner 2010

The ALIAActive midwinter dinner on 4 August 2010 at the Canberra Southern Cross Yacht Club was the usual pleasant occasion . Thirty librarians gathered to witness Trish Milne, the former professor of librarianship at the University of Canberra be awarded her ALIA fellowship by Kate Sinclair. Trish has a long history of being actively involved in the profession both as a librarian and teacher. She taught library information studies to students at UC for nearly 20 years and then moved onto teaching knowledge management to graduate students. Trish was well known for her kindness to and pastoral care of all her students as well as her rigour in teaching. Many of us remember her role in our professional development with affection.

The Midwinter dinner was its usually pleasant occasion with librarians across all sectors gathering to catch up and exchange gossip. Trish addressed us for a short time on her memories of developments and challenges of teaching librarianship. ALIA head office was well represented as well as other groups who represent particular sectors of librarianship. Overall it was a good night and one that will be remembered by those who attended.

Order of Australia for Victor Crittenden

ALIA ACTive congratulates Mr. Victor Crittenden on being awarded the medal (OAM) of the Order of Australia in the General Division. Victor has been a wonderful contributor to Australia through his work as a librarian (including as the Foundation Librarian, Canberra College of Advanced Education, 1968-19860, researcher (particularly in Australian history) and publishing, publisher (Publisher and Editor, Mulini Press, since the 1980s) and writer (editor, from 1995, of the periodical Margin as well as author of Bibliography of the First Fleet, 1982; Colonial Poets; Early Australian Children's Stories; and Small Tales of Early Australia).

Many of us are very fortunate to know Victor for not just his professional contribution but also for his charm and passion for all things library, literary and historical.

Victor has been a fabulous contributor to libraries by encouraging research and development of librarians in Canberra for many years. It is wonderful to see his work recognised!

Congratulations to Victor from all in ALIA in the ACT.

Regards

Roxanne Missingham

Baby Josephine a little potential librarian born to Kyle and Tom

Congratulations to Kylie Moloney and Tom Foley on the birth of their beautiful daughter Josephine. Many will know Kylie and Tom from their wonderful work at the National Library, Josephine was 3.7 kg (8lb 4oz) and 55cm long at birth.

ALIA AGLIN End of year Christmas Party

A successful end of the year Christmas party was held at University House, Fellows Gardens on 25 November 2009. Many of the ALIA groups joined in with the URLs, Library Techs, ALIAACtive and many fro AGLIN. It was enjoyable to catch up with colleagues across all library sectors to find out what they had been up in their libraries and what was happening in their own lives. Thanks go to Annette McGuiness for arranging this.

St Marks Library Visit

The ALIAACTive and AGLIN organised an end of year tour of St Marks’ Theological Library. We only got a few participants which as a real pity as the library is an unexpected delight and worth a look. Susan Phillips gave the those of us who attended an in-depth tour of this treasure of a library down on the shore of Lake Burley Griffin in Barton.

Susan and her staff have done a lot to organize and update the library and its collections for the students and staff that heavily rely on it. Most librarians would empathise with the struggle Susan has had in organizing a growing collection and a tight space in an old building. As St Marks’ is affiliated with the Charles Stuart University (CSU), they have help and technological assistance with all upgrading of their IT infrastructure and the array of electronic full test services that CSU provides access to for the theological students.

However as Susan was showing her library to fellow librarians it was interesting to view the unique collections that are now housed in the St Marks’ library. The missionary society papers are a treasure for anthropologists and other researchers interested in island cultures and the indigenous cultures of Australia. Indigenous Australians have also begun to plum the depths of such resources in an effort to discover their heritage and genealogical roots as well as to uncover the grammars and linguist structures of their languages recorded by the missionaries. For many aboriginal languages, the only formal written version is provided in the missionary papers. Another gem of a collection that interested me in particular was the Bible Society collection of rare and unique bibles that have come to St Mark Library. These include Hebrew, Greek and Latin Vulgate bibles to one of the first translated into English. By viewing these rare resources made me very aware of how important the Bible is to Western culture and informing our literary heritage for a long period of time.

Anyway for the dedicated few who came on the library tour, it was a delight to have St Marks’ Library and its treasures revealed.

ALIAActive Midwinter dinner 2009

Nicola Cross at the Proactive Dinner

Roxanne Missingham and Trish Milne with her award for Outstanding Contribution

Roxanne Missingham and Trish Milne

Roxanne Missingham awarding Annette McGuiness the Initiative Award

The 2009 Midwinter Dinner was held on 11 August at the Southern Cross Yacht Club. Over forty librarians turn up to the event. This year the dinner was held to commemorate the long fruitful career of Trish Milne, who served as Associate Professor at University of Canberra for 20 years teaching librarianship and knowledge management. Trish has taught many librarians who now staff and manage the many libraries around Canberra.

Karna O’Dea as convenor opened the dinner by welcoming the guests. Helen Roberts who was awarded the Active ALIA Award for Outstanding Contribution award for 2008 came forward to collect her prize for her sustained contribution to ALIA and librarianship and legal librarianship in particular. Helen is now serving as the copyright officer at ALIA so her voluntary work has come full circle.

At mid meal Roxanne Missingham stepped forward to recongise and present the prizes to the recipients for 2009. Annette McGuiness Lewins Library, Australian Catholic University, was given theALIAActive Award for Initiative “Annette is well known to her colleagues in the library world for her energy and professional commitment and contribution. She has been a major contributor to professional activities including the very successful Metadata seminar run in the early days of the web. Annette has been the President and member of the ALIA University and Research Libraries ACT committee for several years. As well as planning and contributing to a comprehensive program of lunchtime events during this time, Annette has been principally responsible for two workshop initiatives – an E-books seminar in June 2008 and the ‘Growing your Career’ workshop in May this year. In spite of her work responsibilities and family commitments to two small girls, Annette makes time for association involvement in a leadership role.”

Trish Milne was award the ACTive ALIA Award for Outstanding Contribution. She is recognized widely throughout he ACT, Australian and international Library and Information Sectors and Knowledge Management community as a key contributor and thinker who has supported the development of the profession. Perhaps most powerfully she is also know for the enormous contribution that she has made in both developing new professionals and her great commitment to sharing and supporting those involved in the sectors and communities for many decades.

Associate Professor Milne has worked at the University of Canberra for more than 20 years, she was appointed as Program Director, Library and Information Studies in 1995 and her career progressed to being appointed as Deputy Pro Vice-Chancellor Education in June 2008. In addition to her significant academic contribution she took study leave in 2001 to work at BT Knowledge Management Human Factor Research Group and Knowledge Management Institute UK.

Her greatest contribution to ALIA has been in the field of LIS education. She has exhibited great energy and enthusiasm for the professional aspects of LIS education in the ACT, the Nation and the global community. She also made an outstanding contribution as a key member of a small team that developed a mentoring program for ALIA ACT.

Trish has been a member of the program committee for ALIA conferences and was responsible for the development of a knowledge management stream at the 2000 conference in Canberra. She was the academic representative for assessment for admittance as a professional member of the association from 1995 till 2000.

Trish’s research in the knowledge and information sector led her to supervise a number of research students at the Honours, Masters and PhD level thereby extending and developing the theoretical base for the future of the information sector. Her own research capacity attracted significant industry funded joint research project that include from Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO), the National Library of Australia, the Australian Library and Information Association and the One Umbrella Group.

Trish pushed past the academic boundaries of LIS into the emerging knowledge management discipline and established a Master of Knowledge Management in 2002. This highly successful curriculum, with ongoing updates, is still being offered at UC and demonstrates her foresight and innovative thinking.

Trish has fostered an engaged profession and many current librarians and knowledge workers across the nation are grateful for her commitment, energy, insight and dedication. She is also well known to her former students as a very kind person who developed excellent pastoral care for undergraduate and post graduate students who undertook her course and did much to make UC library and knowledge management studies a happy and rewarding experience for her many students.

For those of us who attended the night, it will be remembered as a pleasant night of convivial fellowship.

Who Knows What You’re Reading? Surveillance Technologies, Libraries and Privacy

As part of the Information Awareness Month, Dr Stuart Ferguson presented a very informative and thought provoking paper entitled “Who Knows What You’re Reading: surveillance technologies, libraries and privacy”.

The presentation centred on an examination of the privacy concerns of using RFID. While RFID is expected to provide many benefits, particularly in supply chain management, there are many legal, ethical and privacy issues that need to be acknowledged and addressed. In particular this can involve intruding on the privacy of citizens without their knowledge, monitoring customer behaviour and the reading of tags from a distance. In relation to libraries in the US, law enforcement agencies are increasingly able to access data held in libraries.

There are three key privacy principles to be noted

a) notice and consent

b) choice – de-activation, i.e. opt in, opt out

c) control – the right to have personal information kept separate from other data

Dr Fergsuon then went on to discuss the benefits of RFID to libraries as well as factors that needed to be considered if considering the implementation of RFID. An important point for libraries is the moral question – “what moral duties do libraries have in the protection of the privacy of patrons?”. Also the questions “What is the obligation of libraries to the user and to the state?” and “Do libraries need a code of ethics?”.

This paper raised a lot of issues which public libraries in particular need to be aware of when considering these surveillance technologies. At a time when RFID is being considered by many libraries, the full implications of its use, in terms of function as well as privacy, moral and legal rights, needs to be understood and addressed before any move towards implementation of this monitoring tool.

This paper will be a contributing paper as part of a series being presented at an International Ethics Conference next month.

Jan Bordoni

Library Manager
Treasury