ALIA National Library Technicians conference

I was very fortunate to attend the ALIA National Library Technicians Conference in Melbourne earlier this month. It was very well attended – with around 400 delegates and trade registered for the conferences.

The program and information about the conference is available online at http://www.alia07.com/.

Ann Beaumont from the State Library of Victoria opened the conference, focusing on the massive changes since she qualified as a technician in the 1960s and the need to focus on users needs. An active library 2.0 participant, Ann described well the need to play with blogs, wikis and other technologies to be able to learn how we can use them to connect with users and to enable users to connect with other users in the 2000s. The conference continued the theme of choice for users and moving services which can reveal our great collections through other papers. Kevin Hennah was fabulous, with many ideas about “making over” our physical spaces to attract new users and engage better with existing users. I came back to my library convinced that we needed to buy his book

Congratulations to Dunn and Wilson study grant recipient Rebecca Evans for her project “Preserving our past to educate our future” which aims to identify, collate and catalogue photographs and other information about library technicians into an image database.

Congratulations to the ALIA Library Technician of the Year for 2007, Jennifer Dyer from NSW who has made an outstanding contribution to library technicians in schools, NSW and nationally. An amazingly dynamic and energetic person, Jennifer has inspired many others and truly deserves this recognition.

Congratulations to the conference team and the very active participants.

You can also keep up with ALIA and ALIA Library Technician developments through Facebook – its addictive and a fun way to share – give it a go http://www.facebook.com