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National 2016 Conference, 29 August-2 September 2016 Adelaide: Engage Create Lead.
 
This conference presentation (PowerPoint slides) explores how the Community Learning Team at the State Library of South Australia examined how cultural organisations can remain relevant to learners in the 21st century. The team is rising to this challenge, reimagining our role, welcoming new technologies and co-creating dynamic learning opportunities with students that foster creativity, research and collaboration.
 
This session tells the story of how we led a project with students from grades 6 to 10 over a period of two months to authentically co-create a learning program to accompany the exhibition, A Theatre inside the Book, Paper Engineering from the Collections of the State Library of South Australia. All learning experiences are closely designed in line with the Australian Curriculum (ACARA) and Teaching for Effective Learning Framework.  This program was focused on the learning areas of Humanities and Social Sciences: History, The Arts: Visual Arts, Design and Technologies and the General Capabilities of literacy, numeracy, critical and creative thinking.
 
Capturing student voice over time and in a variety of ways has been critical in challenging our thinking, ensuring learning experiences reflect student voice and offer opportunity deeper engagement with the collections and stories of the State Library. In this session we will share a short documentary that offers insights into what students value, think and feel about the process of co-creation.  It highlights how this process has fostered for students, a sense of ownership and personal connection with the State Library and shifted the focus of adults from being the sage on the stage to the guide on the side.
 
So, who is this place for anyway?  It is a place for all.

Promotional material advertises the benefit of ALIA conference to professional development for information Professionals.

ALIA New Librarians' Symposium 9 (NLS9), 5-7 July 2019 Adelaide: collaborate deviate innovate
 
This presentation (PowerPoint slides) supported the talk on ‘Echoes’ a GPS triggered audio tour app for smartphones. This session included discussion on the potentials and limitations of using Echoes, and what is needed to get started making your own geolocated local history audio walking tours.

Asia-Pacific Library and Information Conference 2018, 30 July - 2 August 2018 Gold Coast: Roar Leap Dare
 
This conference presentation (PowerPoint slides) supports the session “You can’t do that in a library!” Why breaking library stereotypes and taking risks is good for libraries and good for the communities they serve. The Tea Tree Gully Library experiments in cementing relevance through the Event-Driven Library. 
 
At a recent library conference in Adelaide, Kieran Flanagan of the strategic think tank, The Impossible Institute stated that libraries had more to fear from becoming invisible than from controversy. This wake up call to libraries was music to our ears. We had already been designing programs that challenged the accepted norms of library programming. Events we hoped would inspire at least one person to utter the phrase “you can’t do that in a library!”. In 2016 the City of Tea Tree Gully Library undertook a series of experiments in innovative event design that utilised collaborations with community groups, took bold steps out of library comfort zones, and offered our community a chance to experience things that they had never experienced in library, if anywhere at all.
 
Three main projects, Tanks! In the Library, the Library Up Late series and Operation Space Echidna (where we literally sent a toy echidna into space), served as the backbone to these experiments. They were designed to not only challenge the notion of what can and cannot be achieved with Library space and staff, but in so doing demonstrate the extraordinary value of our public library to the community, and in this we succeeded. The results surpassed our expectations. Between the three they attracted well over 2300 engagements, amazing social media reach, multiple radio interviews, and more inches of press and online news content than anyone has been able to count, including seeing our little suburban library written about in the National Geographic Kids magazine and in French news sites. More and more public libraries around Australia are combating the erroneous but pervasive belief that Google has rendered the public library and the public librarian obsolete through innovative events. This paper introduces, unpacks and advocates for the idea of the event-driven library. While much work has been done in the Museum and Gallery sector on event-driven models, less has been written on the adoption of this model in public libraries.
 
 

ALIA National 2014 Conference, 15-19 September 2014 Melbourne : together we are stronger
This conference paper looks at how funding cuts to TAFE colleges have impacted on all areas of teaching and learning. College libraries have not escaped the axe, but nevertheless still provide important spaces and resources for teachers and students.
Like any library, TAFE college libraries need to continually assess the community they serve to remain relevant. They need to be innovative and resourceful in providing services and materials for their community.  This is where liaison and collaboration between teachers and library staff is of utmost importance, and these rolls are changing as well.
This paper highlights some of the positives of working collaboratively together.

ALIA National 2014 Conference, 15-19 September 2014 Melbourne : together we are stronger

This presentation looks at the extraordinary collections of National, State and Territory libraries across Australia and New Zealand which are being made available in unprecedented ways to commemorate the First World War. The broad appeal, accessibility and sheer volume of this material has resulted in a level of community engagement unimaginable ten years ago. The commemorations have presented an ideal opportunity for libraries to invest or experiment in new platforms to display collection content, gather community contributions, and extend their reach. Rather than presenting a showcase of WWI initiatives, this paper uses WWI programs as a lens through which to examine the shifting focus and priorities of NSLA libraries.

ALIA National 2014 Conference, 15-19 September 2014 Melbourne : together we are stronger
This conference presentation discusses a training needs analysis conducted by the State Library of Queensland (State Library)  for Public Libraries of Queensland in 2013-2014.  This presentation explores the findings of the training needs analysis and the development of the Vision 2017 Learning Strategy for public libraries’ staff in Queensland.  The Next Horizon Vision 2017 for Queensland public libraries is a collaborative vision with State Library, Queensland Public Library Association (QPLA) and Local Government Association of Queensland (LGAQ).
Four key themes are outlined in Vision 2017: Creative Community spaces, Connectors – physical and virtual, Technology trendsetters, incubators of ideas, learning and innovation.
For Queensland public libraries to deliver on this vision we explored the skills sets, management and leadership competencies required with key stakeholders across local government, library industry education sector, public library staff, ALIA, and QPLA. Key barriers to library staff becoming confident learners were found to be a culture of permission required to learn, a risk averse culture within local government, and that library staff in Queensland are disengaged from the debate about the profession.

ALIA National 2014 Conference, 15-19 September 2014 Melbourne : together we are stronger

This conference presentation discusses how the State Library of New South Wales piloted collecting social media content for the heritage collection of life in NSW, as part of a scientific trial with the CSIRO.  The lessons learned provide valuable insights into collecting this type of digital material.

Promotional sticker template for use in libraries as part of the 2019 FAIR "Vote Library" campaign.

Following The Age newspaper article "Schools that excel: No detentions, no libraries, no problems for this girls' school", which claims that Siena College Camberwell in Victoria has abolished its library, Gaynor Robson-Garth, the Principal of Siena College, has written to ALIA stating that the article misrepresents the reality of the situation and that the school continues to have a library and employ qualified library staff. She clarified that the library was merely rebranded as the Albertus Magnus Learning Centre, and it continues to fulfil the essential work that school libraries provide to students.

This advocacy document for the #VoteLibrary campaign discusses the services and impacts of libraries in Australia. When people think about libraries, they think about public libraries, but across Australia there are some 13,000 public, school, university, TAFE, health, law and other special libraries, serving more than 10 million people. There are government department and parliamentary libraries, assisting researchers and policy makers. And there are our National, State and Territory Libraries providing access to heritage materials which document the living history of the nation. The goal of all libraries is for a smarter, more literate population, with universal access to information, leading to increased civic engagement. Libraries comprise collections, physical and virtual spaces, technology, programs and services, expert staff and are shaped around the needs of their 10 million-plus users. 

ALIA National 2016 Conference, 29 August-2 September 2016, Melbourne: Engage, create, lead
 
This conference paper details the development of Victorian Public Libraries 2030: Strategic Framework (VPL 2030) a strategic approach to the planning of public library projects in Victoria.  It shows how the framework operates to maintain a consistent approach across the Victoria public library sector and provide updates on statewide public library development projects undertaken collaboratively by Public Library Victoria Network (PLVN) and the State Library of Victoria (SLV).  
 
The strategic objectives of the VPL 2030 framework address the following social trends: creativity, collaboration, brain health, dynamic learning and community connection. The objectives themselves consist of: storytelling that fosters buy-in to the shared vision; accessing additional revenue and funding schemes; products, services, and programs aligned to community needs and aspirations; facilities and resources that underpin community creativity and learning; and staff with the skills and attributes to enable services into the future. 

In recent times, the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) has relied on the NSW Crown Employees Award as the starting point for our salary scales, but we were concerned that these pay levels may not be reflective of the reality of the workplace. To test this, we embarked on a survey of people working in the sector. As a result, we have been able to produce the "ALIA LIS pay and employment snapshot 2020", which provides an understanding of real world pay and terms of employment across Australia at the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020.
 
This document provides an overview of the pay, terms of employment, age, job satisfaction and career intentions of university library employees.
 

Asia-Pacific Library and Information Conference 2018, 30 July - 2 August 2018 Gold Coast: Roar Leap Dare
 
This conference poster presentation outlines the history of the National Library of Australia (NLA) in collecting and providing access to Asian language library material so that Australians can study counties in our region in their languages.
 
The primary function of the National Library of Australia is to ‘maintain and develop a national collection of library material, including a comprehensive collection of library material relating to Australia and the Australian people’.  Since the 1950s the Library has actively built a large, significant and growing collection of Asian language library material to fulfil this mandate.
 
The Library’s overseas collecting priority is to acquire contemporary publications from East and South-East Asia across the humanities and social sciences to support high-level research. Since Asian collecting began in the 1950s the Library has built Australia’s largest collection of Asian material that now numbers over 600,000 volumes. Collecting is strongest from Indonesia, China, Japan, Korea, Thailand and Myanmar. However, the Indonesian collecting program provides for the Library’s strongest ties with the local community and a direct opportunity for regional engagement.
 
The Library employs four locally based staff in Indonesia specifically to ensure acquisition of material only available on the spot and for short periods, including semi-published and occasionally controversial primary source materials that are not able to be acquired through established vendors.  It is this kind of collecting that is attracting the interest by scholars from around the world and is the strength of our activities. The Library’s Indonesian collection is considered to be among the strongest collection of contemporary Indonesian material in the world and it is a valuable national resource. It is used by the academic and research sector both within Australia and overseas and supplies unique primary and secondary source research materials supporting in-depth study of Indonesia.
 
The total collection now numbers about 200,000 books, 5,000 periodical titles, 250 newspapers and thousands of reels of microfilm and sheet maps. The Library is actively increasing collecting of ephemeral material such as election posters and websites to meet demand from researchers. Many Indonesian government publications held by the Library are not held by any library or government agency in Indonesia. It is the largest such collection in Australia and compares favourably with other major contemporary collections on Indonesia such as the US Library of Congress and the British Library.