Quill 106[6], July 2006

Editorial

Editorial

Welcome everyone to Issue 6 of Quill Newsletter for 2006. The year is half over and there are lots of great things happening in the library and information world. We hope you enjoy reading the contributions this month.

The ALIA Library and Information Week Trivia Night which was held on Monday 22 May features in this month's edition of Quill. Many thanks to Robyn Lather for taking so many great photos of the event. The awards for Qld Library Achiever of the Year for 2006, Warren Cheetham and the Library Technicician of the Year 2006 Kathleen Boyd, were presented at the Trivia Night. Warren Cheetham has written an article about his career for this issue. Other features in this issue are an interview with Hero McDonald who talks to Kirsten Harte about her recent library studies and an interesting article by Janet Baker about her experiences organising a small special library in Brisbane. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this issue.

Please send in YOUR articles, pictures and anecdotes about the activities in your library or orgaisation to quill@alianet.alia.org.au.nospam You could be the lucky winner of the $25 gift voucher. Send in a contribution and your name goes into a hat for the prize. Congratulations to Janet Baker who is the winner for Issue 6 2006.

Feature articles

Lifelong Learning Conference

Associate Professor Andre Grace presenting his opening keynote paper 'Reflecting critically on lifelong learning in an era of neoliberal pragmatism: Instrumental, social, and cultural perspectives'

Professor Michael Dureau presenting his keynote paper 'Lifelong learning: Is industry up to the job'

Professor Diana Laurillard presenting her keynote paper 'Effective learning technology design: Engaging the professionals'

Associate Professor Peter Kell presenting his keynote paper 'Equality of opportunity in new times: The politics of learning and the learner in the new world disorder'

Associate Professor Diana Laurillard, Dr Sylvia Edwards and Associate Professor Christine Bruce following the launch of 'Panning for gold: Information literacy and the Net Lenses model'

Delegates awaiting the next presentation

Delegates enjoying the conference dinner and bush dance

Copies of the proceedings can be purchased from Central Queensland University

From the 13 to the 16 of June, Central Queensland University hosted the 4th biennial Lifelong Learning Conference. Held in the lush surrounds of Rydges Capricorn Resort, the conference united delegates under the theme 'Partners, Pathways and Pedagogies'.

Australian and overseas delegates enjoyed an array of presentations, including keynotes from Associate Professor Andre Grace, Professor Michael Dureau, Professor Diana Laurillard and Associate Professor Peter Kell.

Also featured was the launch of Dr Sylvia Edwards's book entitled 'Panning for gold: Information literacy and the Net Lenses model'.

Information literacy was a topic of interest, with the holding of an Information Literacy symposium and an ANZIIL (Australian and New Zealand Institute for information Literacy) conversation including perspectives of information literacy from the UK, Canada, New Zealand, the Middle East and Australia. A health symposium entitled 'Bridging professional practice and knowledge management in health' was also held.

More information about the conference, including the conference program, is available from the website.

Copies of the conference proceedings can be purchased for $90. To purchase your copy, please contact Delma McDonald on (07) 49309749.

Interview with Hero Mc Donald

QUT's Faculty of Information Technology, recently awarded library studies student, Hero Mc Donald, the Semester One, Female Merit Scholarship. Kirsten Harte picks her brain!

Congratulations on your scholarship. Tells us a bit about your past life, before you were a library student at QUT?

I was a high school teacher, teaching ancient history and English. It was a lot of fun and a lot of work!

Why did you decide to become a librarian?
I actually considered it as an option when I was in school. Basically I am a bit of a nerd and I love information, I enjoy research and learning and education. So I sort of felt that getting into libraries would allow me to pursue a variety of avenues. I think that linking people to information is one of the most important things in society because people are empowered by knowledge, their worldview is expanded and I think that being a part of that process is a really exciting thing.

What has been the best part of the library course at QUT so far? I've had a lot of fun so far. I've really, really enjoyed it and it would be hard to narrow it down to which particular aspect I've enjoyed the most. Getting back into education again has been fantastic, from a student perspective. I really enjoy that and I kind of feel like I could be a student forever! Which is sort of one of the cool things about doing library stuff, is that you are always learning about new things. You know, when people come up and ask you about stuff, it's an opportunity to extend your own knowledge. I think the diversity in the content this semester has been really good. Developing a lot more IT knowledge is great. I've enjoyed the different aspects of librarianship that I've been exposed to, like doing management subjects, information literacy education and web content reliability.

What is your dream job? Or what do you want to be doing when you graduate?

I want to experience a range of libraries, and I want to travel. I saw a great thing on the BBC News site today about the travelling library in Kenya and it is a camel library! They have 200 books and they just travel around visiting nomadic communities, with books. I don't really see myself doing that, but I thought that was interesting. But I am particularly interested in getting involved in some UN projects with women in developing countries that look at not only linking people in developing countries to 'western' information, but actually focus on bringing more knowledge into the west so that there is a greater flow of information between people both ways. I think that through projects like that communities, all around the world have the potential to become enriched with a wider worldview. I feel right now that there are so many opportunities and that's really exciting.

Quill congratulates all of the QUT Library and Information Management Student Prize Winners for 2006.

The Dean's List: IT25 (GPA of 7 across the whole course) Sofie Falkenbach

The State Library of Queensland Merit Award: for the highest achieving full-time student Deborah Houlahan

The Australian Library & Information Association (ALIA) Prize: for the highest achieving part-time student Sofie Falkenbach

The Libero Prize: for the student with the highest result in ITN316 Digital Library Systems Naomi Doessel

The Maxus Prize: for the student with the highest result in ITN275 Information Organisation Jackie Wolstenholme

Postgraduate Merit Scholarship: awarded to a female postgraduate student who demonstrates a commitment to Information Technology


Hero McDonald

ALIA Library and Information Week - 4th Annual Trivia Night

I think everyone who attended the fourth annual Library Week Trivia Night would agree it was a really fun night full of food, drink, prizes and surprises. The Trivia night was held at the Irish Club on Monday 22nd May.

Michelle Alcock was emcee for the night which pitted library team against library team in the battle for trivia supremacy. This year's theme was - Trivial treasures @ your library, with prizes awarded for the best (or worst) dressed team.

Thanks go to Bolinda Publishing, Resource Options, Raeco, 3M and James Bennett who provided a range of prizes for successful teams and lucky raffle winners.

In keeping with past years, winners of the 2006 Library Achievers award and Library Technician Achievers award were presented with their trophies at the event.

Congratulations to Warren Cheetham who was awarded Queensland Library Achiever of the Year for 2006 and to Kathleen Boyd who is the Library Technician of the Year for 2006. Kathleen works at the Library & Information Centre, Qld Dept of Public Works and Housing

Read all about Warren's experience in his article in this issue - Nice landing for the Queensland Library Achiever of the Year.

We hope you enjoy spotting friends and colleagues in the Trivia Night photo gallery

NICE landing for queensland library achiever of the year

For someone who 'just fell in to' the library profession Warren Cheetham, awarded the Queensland Library Achiever of the Year Award 2006, certainly seems to have landed right where he should have. An email chat revealed the following insight into ALIA's latest Queensland award winner.

How did you become interested in library work?

'I fell into it! I finished high school without knowing what I really wanted to do. I had applied to go to uni, and the Burdekin Library advertised for a library assistant. I applied and was lucky enough to be given a job. I thought that I'd do that for a year or two until I figured out what I wanted to do, but soon discovered that maybe being a librarian wouldn't be such a bad career. I started study two years later. The staff of the Burdekin Library, then under the management of Jean Nuttall, were an amazing group of people and I feel very privileged to have worked with them, and to count them as friends.'

Warren worked as a Library Assistant at the Burdekin Library in Ayr for eight years. While working full-time, he completed a Bachelor of Arts (Library and Information Science) by external study through Charles Sturt University in NSW. His first professional appointment was a one-year contract as Assistant Librarian at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority corporate library service and was then appointed as the inaugural Information Services Librarian at Thuringowa Library Services in 2001.

What is the most enjoyable aspect of being a librarian?

'Helping people find the information they are looking for. I really enjoy the reference work of my job, especially the range of requests that a public library receives. I also enjoy the information literacy part of the job, helping people to find the answers themselves.'

What do you envisage for the future of the profession?

• 'Continual change (of course...),
• more moving away from/outsourcing of/customer self service of process driven tasks/jobs (acquisitions, circulation) to service based tasks (value adding to the services we already provide),
• more user-centered policies, services, programs, websites/OPACs etc.'

Do you have any recommendations or suggestions for library studies students/new graduates?

'This may be biased, because it reflects my career so far, but working in smaller public libraries in rural and regional areas really does expose you to a broad range of experiences and aspects of librarianship - circulation and customer service, reference work, training, marketing and promotion, community development, budgeting, project management, team supervision etc. If you start your career in a large library, there may be a danger of getting 'stuck' in a department or specialising too early in your career.

It seems to me that more and more library staff are being called upon to have a broad range of 'corporate' skills, something not always covered in-depth in library education. Things like supervision and management, project management, budgeting, community consultation, grant writing, event management etc. Most of these can be learned on the job, and I realise that there is not room for a library course to cover such things in detail, but if a new graduate applying for a job can demonstrate these types of skills, then I would consider them valuable candidates. Easy for me to say, hard to put into practice I know (and it has been 6 years since I studied, so maybe this is being addressed now). Maybe look for opportunities (or create your own opportunities) while studying, to develop a team, apply for funding, develop and deliver a project, report and present on the outcomes etc.'

Warren states that his professional interests are reference work, information literacy, the application of existing and emerging information technology to libraries and the marketing and promotion of libraries.

Any other interesting information/inspirations?

'My wife Sarah constantly amazes and inspires me with her ideas and understanding of what a good public library can and should do. We have a dog, a miniature dachshund named Basil, who also inspires me and seldom fails to make me smile!'

Warren received his award at the annual ALIA Queensland Trivia Night held at the Brisbane Irish Club. Congratulations on your award Warren!

Starting out in a small specialised library

Janet Baker

How does the student librarian make the first leap into the diverse world of the library profession. Recently I made that leap when I became involved in the reorganisation and cataloguing of the Ethnic Community Council of Queensland Library.

It all started as June 2005 rolled around and I found myself searching for a suitable subject for the Library Project Management unit of my Library and Information Sciences post grad course at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. Gillian Hallam, our lecturer and mentor, introduced myself and my colleague Cristina Ghiculescu to the exciting opportunity that could be afforded if we were willing to take on a small community library and transform and computerise a collection from the ground up. We could see that not only would this allow us the chance of exercising the variety of skills we had learned but also that we would be working for an organisation that had such a worthy cause.

The Ethnic Community Council of Queensland is this states peak body that represents the interests of the many people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds who have settled in Queensland. It is a voluntary, not-for-profit, community-based organization that strives to provide advocacy for ethnic communities and education and advice on a whole gamut of human situations . The team there are often called upon to advise government committees and planning groups.

The library is mainly used by the staff in the building. It had been tidied and sorted by a succession of volunteers over the years. However massive weeding was needed to cataloguing of the books, journals, government publications and assorted documents was the only way forward in order to find anything on the shelves. Eight months later ECCQ has a well organised collection with a computer catalogue and a new group of student librarians have started a project which will create a resources portal available online to all members of the organisation.

It is very satisfying to know we have made the search for relevant research materials so much quicker and easier for the ECCQ staff.