Dr Gillian Hallam

A profile of ALIA's new president-elect

Robyn Edmanson

Upon entering the tiny office of ALIA's new president-elect, the sense of organised chaos is palpable. Files, reports and student assignments are piled in neatly arranged spires, while urgent phone calls and the arrival of ever more assignments punctuate the hour-long interview. It is clear that Dr Gillian Hallam needs a secretary. But these fringe benefits usually do not extend to academic appointees.

The new role comes on top of her myriad professional, academic and private roles: QUT teaching fellow and LIS course co-ordinator; ALIA's Queensland liaison officer and member of its program committee for this year's conference; Quorum convenor; wife and mother-of-two daughters.

For success in the new role, Gill is relying on three changes: professional development leave to relieve her of the many contact hours required of the teaching role; more body balancing exercises; and a re-arrangement of family responsibilities enabling her husband to 'contribute more on the domestic scene'.

At ALIA's May AGM, Gill was declared Vice-President (president-elect) of ALIA with a two-thirds voting majority. She will formally take up the president's role after next year's AGM. The coming year brings regular Canberra board meetings; chairing both the Education Reference Group (ERG) and Finance Committees; and overseeing ALIA's property leases as its new company Secretary.

This new role is a convergence of past educational and academic positions and a series of 'coincidences' sparked by her idea in 2001 to implement a joint QUT/ALIA mentoring program. While she has taken on a dozen roles for ALIA since her initial appointment as treasurer for the Special Libraries' Promotion Taskforce in 1987, the notion to include ALIA in the mentoring program was a first for an academic institution. 'That lead to other projects, such as the student portfolio project, which got QUT and the library course really noted as an innovative place to study for an exciting career.'

Steering the development of the right core student skill-set for a dynamic profession is a passionate goal, not only for her, but for ALIA's board. 'Certainly the feeling amongst the board is that it's really good to have an academic as president, because some of the key issues at the moment are focussing on education for the profession.' That steerage is crucial for the next five to 10 years because of the current trends affecting the profession, including increasing levels of technology. 'Also, in the context of the inevitable ageing of the profession, there will hopefully be a need for considerable intake of new professionals, who are going to bring new core skills.'

She says it will be interesting to watch the interaction of professional bodies and library education, particularly since the ALA has appointed well-known library researcher and Dean of Library Services at California State University, Michael Gorman, to its presidency. 'He's got very strong views about library education particularly where a lot of the courses have gone off to information science.'

Part of Gill's immediate priorities will be the ERG's review of both ALIA's current course recognition processes and educational policy statements, including the re-visiting of core knowledge, skills and content issues. Her goals are also to achieve increased political advocacy for ALIA and greater engagement with other stakeholder bodies, such as The Regional Cultural Alliance - a co-ordinated organisation of galleries, museums and libraries which is looking at regional development for those cultural domains.

Gillian Clare Hallam was born in the picturesque English town of Henley-on-Thames, an hour's drive west of London. Early influences include encouragement to read 'beautiful picture books' ordered by her mother from the local library. Later, when the family moved to Cardiff, she would spend entire week-ends studying in that city's 'traditional reference' libraries. The positive mentorship of immediate past President, Christine McKenzie and former board members Deanne Barrett and Angela Bridgeland are cited as recent influences.

In the intervening years before 1983 when she began several special librarian roles with large Brisbane law and accounting firms, Gill undertook her first non-academic job in the library at the Council for Science and Industrial Research and later moved to Zambia where she married her husband. It was in South Africa that she developed her passion for teaching. 'I spent a bit of time teaching Zambian children in Kitwe. It was very different from QUT, but maybe I was destined to become an educator.'

In South Africa she lived mainly in Natal where she completed her undergraduate education at the University of South Africa with postgraduate studies at the University of Natal. Her first career was as an academic in the latter's Department of German. In Australia, she left academia behind as her appointment as library lecturer at QUT gave her the opportunity to combine her passion for teaching with LIS.

Although in an ideal world her office would be as roomy as her many past and, hopefully, future roles should accommodate, Gill excitedly plucks an invitation to 21st anniversary of the publication of Possum Magic off her overloaded desk to show that challenges have their rewards.

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