2023 PD Bursary Report – Jamie Treble

I recently had the pleasure to be successful in my application for a travel bursary to attend the QPLA PD event in Noosa. Now I could wax verbose on the great range of speakers we had the privilege to listen to. Hearing about reverse inclusion from Dr Bridie Kean, the trying times of Author Yumi Stynes with her latest book, Angela Meyer’s report of the sustainability goals for the publishing industry and the heartwarming life story shared by Dr Dinesh Palipana. However, I was reminded by an old work colleague of some advice I gave her many moons ago. After the usual greetings she said to me “I always remember the advice you gave me… Conferences are a great way to steal other people’s ideas”, and then we got down to the real business of swapping news, gossip, ideas, and dog photos.

So, I ask you all, what do you call a group of Librarians?

A Quarrel, a Stack, a Shush? Well for me it is a sounding board. Chatting with staff from other libraries has always been a great way to discover new ideas and this is no different with the Lightning talks at the QPLA conference. There was a huge range of topics shared over the two days of the conference and I can’t go through them all but a few that did pique my interest were:

• Kerry from Mackay chatting about the collection maintenance and the challenges of balancing equitable access across the whole region with the physical capabilities of staff, and simple ideas like moving stock around more often (for the popular items) so they can order less copies.
• Nic from Lockyer Valley chatting about using AI to help catalogue their hundreds of event photos that they have. It’s always great to hear what isn’t working, as well as what is, when it comes to projects so you can start to get a feel for what could go wrong if you took the idea on board.
• Listening to Lisa from Gundy chat about the different considerations one needs to keep in mind for those patrons suffering from Dementia, you could see her passion for the topic, I would’ve been happy for a 30-minute talk and not just a quick 10-minute teaser. It reaffirmed what Dr Bridie was saying about identifying barriers, and that by planning for the higher needs of the small number that require it, you aren’t disadvantaging the patrons that don’t need it.
• Showcasing their new Picture Ipswich project, was Erin and Jake. I’ll admit I still have a soft spot for Local History and it’s great to see the different projects out there for digitizing and disseminating collections to ensure they remain relevant with new technology.

And speaking of Local History, I know it wasn’t a part of the program, but I saw a poster and just had to chat with Jane about the Local History Lightning Talk program that was recently held at “The J”. To combat the perception that there is no heritage in the local area they organized a panel to talk about a broad range of topics from artifacts to architecture and the stories they can tell.

It’s not just the bite sized information that can be used as a conversation starter on a topic or program that makes this style of presentations the best part of the conference, as Dr Dinesh mentioned, it’s the human touch. Libraries are what bring us all together, and together we are not just a hub of knowledge we are the collective hubs of our communities, and by sharing our triumphs as well as our difficulties we build a brighter and more resilient profession.

So, if you are ever out Boyne Island way you’re welcome to drop in for a coffee and a chat, who knows what ideas or solutions we can come up with together.