In September a program of regional meetings for ALIA members was conducted to gather members’ input to guide the professional organisation.

The consultation focussed on lobbying and advocacy, local issues and reviewing outcomes of the 2008 topic – professional development.

The reports from the regional meetings are now available on the ALIA website.

Just a few interesting ideas that emerged ….

from Canberra & Brisbane meetings – an advocacy kit for all members, including statistics, quotes, fact sheets to promote the profession
from Gawler – a column or issue in Incite showcasing members who are doing a great job in advocacy or lobbying
from Hobart – the creation of an ALIA lobbying group
from Perth – change all membership fees to a low flat rate
from Darwin – more focus on the “I” in ALIA

This coming Movember we issue a call to Australia’s library workers: become a Mo-brarian and join the fight to change the face of men’s health.

Movember, the formerly useless and boring month of November, has been remade with the addition of a little facial hair. Now a global charity phenomenon, Movember creates much-needed awareness while raising tens of millions of dollars to help with men’s health issues—particularly prostate cancer and depression. To be a part of something grand all you have to do is discard that triple-bladed razor with aloe-vera infused moisturising strips and let your upper-lip hair grow wild and free for 30 days in November.

Males make up less than a third of the library workers in Australia but we have a unique chance to spread a very important message about men’s health. Every year 2,900 Australian men die from prostate cancer and more than 18,000 will be diagnosed. One in six men is experiencing depression, right now, and practically none of them will seek help. Men hang tough, and it’s killing them. Movember works to turn that around. What can be done to help? Set up a display in your library, promote men’s health materials within your collection, sponsor a Mo-brarian or have a Mo-Staff morning tea to raise some funds. Why not get your patrons or local community involved and find fun and informative ways to spread the word.

But we’re not in this alone. We need our Mo-Sistas – the female colleagues who embrace the life-saving message of Movember. Encourage the men you know to become mo-growing Mo-brarians, cheer them on, support them when they itch to shave and try not to laugh at them too much!

So come join us at the Movember website and register as a Mo-Bro or Mo-Sista. By pooling our resources and presenting a united (and slightly hairy) face to the world, we have a wonderful opportunity to use Movember to promote our profession and raise the profile of male workers in the library and information industry.

Library workers of Australia unite and put your money (just slightly above) where your mouth is – join us, and help change the face of men’s health.

Our blog: http://mobrarians.wordpress.com/

Friend us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mobrarians/136011844137?v=info

Twitter: http://twitter.com/Mobrarians

Last year we reported that the National Library of Australia’s newspaper digitisation project had kicked off and that one of its features was that users could correct mistakes in the optical character recognition process. A review of this crowdsourcing has been available for some time, but only just came to my attention via eGov.au

Rose Holley writes  “Users have demonstrated a willingness to work towards the ‘common good’, to volunteer their time, energy, skill, knowledge and ideas and to be involved long term in a program of national historic significance. The collaborative activity from this new community is enhancing the quality of the data and therefore the accuracy of full‐text searching in a way that the National Library of Australia could never have achieved using its own resources alone.”

Many Hands Make Light Work: Public Collaborative OCR Text Correction in Australian Historic Newspapers by Rose Holley. (March 2009) ISBN 978‐0‐642‐27694‐0

Yet another post about VALA

Kate Davis and her partner in crime, Carolyn McDonald, are working to complete their VALA paper (they have an extension…honest guv! but they need lots of folk to complete their survey.

Full details can be found on Kate’s blog but briefly they are exploring the relationship between IT and libraries. Libraries are moving more and more online in ways that tend to go round their local IT outfits. Is this sort of behaviour a result of problems with IT depts understanding libraries or vice versa? Is there a disconnect between libraries and IT? It’s an interesting question and I know from my own background that the relationship between IT depts and libraries can be a tricky one, with each group having differing expectations of the other. Definitely an area rich for study.

This just in from VALA:

“****Information technology award****

VALA is inviting nominations for its most prestigious award, the
Robert D. Williamson Award 2010, and we’d like them by Monday 15
November 2009 (but keep them secret!).

This biennial award, always a surprise to its recipient, is presented
to an individual or organisation who or which is, in the opinion of
the judging panel, currently making an outstanding contribution to the
development of information technology usage in Australian libraries
and is positively and significantly influencing development in
information technology usage within libraries. Find out more details
of this Award,  by visiting the Robert D. Williamson Award 2010 page
at http://www.vala.org.au/awardrw10.htm.

Guidelines and nomination forms are available from the Website.

Anyone can nominate a person deserving recognition, so nominate
someone today.  If you wish to nominate someone, but cannot fully
complete the form, then go ahead, and we will work with you and others
to find out more.”

We all know of libraries doing cool things with technology.  It would be good to see one of them receiving such recognition.  Check out the website for more details.

Library unconference fever has hit Perth again with libcampperth09 kicking off this morning.

Live coverage should be available from the unconference wiki using Coveritlive – although at time of writing it still says “Upcoming Event”.

In addition a Twitter fountain can be seen on Kathryn Greenhill’s blog “Librarians Matter”.

This year, Michael Stephens is attending and I believe, is facilitating a session on what are the next 23 things. Have a great day libcampers.

Wired reports that more than 2 million public domain books will soon be available for on-demand printing from Google Book Search in partnership with On Demand Books.

According to the On Demand Books site, the only locations in Australia are:

• Angus and Robertson in Bourke St, Melbourne.
• Baillieu Library University of Melbourne (Fall 2009 – so not sure if this is in action yet)

In September last year the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Angus & Robertson had installed an Espresso Book Machine (EBM) and that A& R would have up to 50 machines installed throughout Australian and New Zealand within a year.

Dymocks also had plans to launch on-demand printing within a year, according to the article.

This imminent rush of titles newly available for on-demand printing might see some more action in this area.

A&R, Dymocks and any other booksellers, if you are reading we’d love to hear how things are going in this area in Australia.

Any librarian from University of Melbourne reading – what’s the status of on-demand printing in the Baillieu Library?

Google Lets You Custom-Print Millions of Public Domain Books | Epicenter | Wired.com.

VALA 2010 – Connections. Content. Conversations has now opened for registrations.  You can register individually or shared online, or download the registration form and either fax or mail it in.

The conference, to be held 9-11 February at the new Melbourne Convention Centre has more than a new venue to boast this time around.

The popular L-Plate series will be run again – a “a series of introductory sessions focusing on technologies that will be discussed in more detail during the VALA conference”.  This will be held on Monday 8th February.

New to VALA, will be the Tech Boot Camp – a “series of high-end technical and practical sessions”. These sessions will be interactive and require a core level of technical knowledge.  This will run from Monday 8th to Thursday 11th February, mostly in conjunction with the main conference. Places will be limited.  More details will be available at the VALA 2010 website later in the year.

Check out the conference program and further details at the VALA2010 website and make plans to catch up with some of the Libraries Interact team – a few of us will be there.  We would love to meet you in person.

ALIA is offering the chance for ALIA members to win a free course placement, in several courses run by ARK, PICs and Richard Sayers.  Courses cover a wide range of topics and locations, including online.

Check out the ALIA Courses, Workshops and PD Competitions webpage, for details on the courses supported, the competition criteria and entry form.

Well worth taking a few minutes to check it out.

ALIA has announced grants of $500 for public libraries to train Adult Community Education providers in Information Literacy Skills.

The funding comes from Adult Learning Australia and aims to improve ACE providers’  information literacy, internet searching and web 2.0 skills.

Applications close on the 15th September, so you will have to move quickly on this one.

More information and the application form are available from ALIA.