To start off with our coverage of the ALIA 2013 elections, we here at ALIA Sydney sent the candidates some burning questions and will be posting their responses in the coming days. The four questions we put to each candidate were:
- How can ALIA appeal to students and people entering the industry/profession?
- What are some of the advocacy issues you would like to see ALIA address?
- How can ALIA reach out and engage with people working in special libraries or other areas where they feel better served by other associations? (eg law librarians with ALLA, teacher librarians with ASLA).
- Is anything you would like to let our readers know about you and what you would like to accomplish as a board member?
How can ALIA appeal to students and people entering the industry/profession?
ALIA has two key things to do in this area – membership growth and
professional development – and both are intertwined with who we are and
what we want to be in the future. We can ‘grow’ our students and new
graduates by continuing to support them in providing strong state
networks and excellence in professional events and professional
development opportunities. Of course we can also engage through social
media channels, and even explore the emerging potential of running
customized ALIA MOOCs (for free), engaging in Google Hangouts and
sharing professional insights, establishing more partnership programs
(at cost), and more. As part of the new PD initiatives, we need to build
enticements to keep people involved. We want our profession to
grown, and we want our potential members to have a good reason for
‘banding together’ within their national professional association. A
concerted effort to grow our profession can only strengthen the
possibilities. Let’s reach out to potential members and offer them a
reason to believe passionately in the profession they have just entered,
whether they are students or recent graduates.
What are some of the advocacy issues you would like to see ALIA address?
There are many advocacy issues at the local and national level.
Some of these result in campaigns, some in lobbying of state and federal
governments, and some in picking up a community agenda an working at
raising the profile of an essential or worthy cause. How to choose?
Copyright; DRM; Open Access; funding support in education sectors;
school libraries; special libraries; the digital divide; accessibility
and information access; and more. We need solid national statistics and
profiles to build library futures. Regional and rural issues are also
close to my heart. I’m from Albury, originally, and long before
computers and online access arrived, the library was my home and my
holiday space. Now I work with students in rural and outback Australia,
both in our library programs, but also in school education. I KNOW the
challenges (do you have to climb up a ladder to get 3G?, or still share a
phone/modem line?), and at the same time I believe that library and
information services are at the heart of equity in providing solutions
in those communities.
But how about promotional advocacy? I love how some libraries are becoming makerspaces,
and other libraries are connecting to their communities in new and
creative ways. What about advocating for funding for innovative
ventures? Let’s take the idea of hacker spaces
and create coding workshops in our libraries. ALIA advocacy can take us
into new issues and new spaces as well as those we are traditionally
known for. At the end of the day, when it comes to advocacy and issues
to lobby about, it’s the ‘voice’ and the volume of the voice that counts. Alyson wrote about this recently in Why should you join ALIA?
– and it really does prove the point of being collaborative and
collective in action as part of our planned advocacy. (You should vote
for Alison!)
How can ALIA reach out and engage with people working in
special libraries or other areas where they feel better served by other
associations? (eg law librarians with ALLA, teacher librarians with ASLA).
Special libraries are places with a dedicated heart! They have a
very special story to share with the broader community, and it is this
that we need to tap into and share within our profession and in our
communities. We can serve our special libraries by understanding their
needs better, and getting our hands dirty with some good old-fashioned
marketing and promotion. If we can serve our special libraries better,
then we can strengthen the profession as a whole. This will take some
clear initiatives by ALIA to step out of the ‘them’ and ‘us’ zone.
Possibly that problem lies in the label ‘special’ with connotations of
‘different’ and ‘less equal’. For me, what special libraries do is help
add value through specialist knowledge to inform broader practice. While
specialist associations have value, they can never replace the role of
ALIA in the holistic marketing and promotion of our profession.
Alternatively, by not embracing partnerships with specialisations (and
their related associations) we actually narrow the true potential of the
library and information profession to become more than the sum of it’s
many parts. We MUST form strong partnerships and alliances with our
specialist partners, to share information, to negotiate favorable
partnership rates to key events and activities, and support these
associations on the national front.
Is anything you would like to let our readers know about you and what you would like to accomplish as a board member?
I had no idea that I would be answering a question like this when I
signed the nomination form. But the fact that the question is being
asked is a true indicator that being a Board member is a serious
personal professional commitment. There is no money that will exchange
hands. I wouldn’t be able to strike a bargain with the global
timekeeper to even make this fit into my already busy schedule.
But you know what they say – “if you want a job done, ask a busy person”.
What I always want more than anything else is the opportunity to make
a difference – however little – to achieve progress, innovation, and
change. I don’t need to share much about myself that isn’t revealed by
the story of what has been happening since I started blogging at Heyjude.
I’ve nominated because I would love the chance to help make a
difference, and to put something back into the profession that I
qualified in back in 1992. I’m not an academic that works in a silo –
rather I’m a people person grounded in the daily reality of the demands
and dimensions of our information environments. I belong to the era of
collaboration, social networking, and sharing the information
discovery. I build knowledge with my peers. I work with kids and adults
in schools. I work with teacher librarians building the best library
experiences for their students. I work with public librarians building
their social media skills. I share the joy of my students who secure the
job of their dreams! And most importantly, in my day job I build the
profession by working with undergraduate and masters students coming
into or refreshing their professional futures.
What do I want to accomplish? Anything really – just throw me the challenge!
For more information about the ALIA 2013 elections head over to the ALIA web site
-Amy
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