QPLA President and APLA Chair, Nicole Hunt attended a number of key events during May to support QPLA, APLA and ALIA initiatives.
First up a pre-conference workshop lead by Jane Cowell and Trish Hepworth around Book Challenges. This session was well supported by Nicholas Stewart, Dowson Turco Lawyers and Felicity Marlow and Claire Flynn, Rainbow Community Angels. Some great conversations across the table, and if only we’d know what was to come with the Cumberland book challenge later than week. Some great tools and resources for how libraries can continue to deliver the amazing services across our diverse communities.
APLA held the face-to-face meeting in the lead up to the conference, hosted at the amazing State Library of South Australia. Always great to bring this group together and discuss ways we can be supporting our colleagues nationally. Key messages are outlined below.
ALIA National Conference 2024 was huge week of all things libraries with some amazing speakers from across the Library and Information sector. It was great to see so much collaboration and engagement from across all libraries demonstrating we are sector that is innovative, adaptive and not to be messed with.
It was so hard to choose which sessions to attend with many amazing public library sessions held at the same time. And great to see Queensland public libraries so well represented with colleagues from Redland, Ipswich, City of Moreton Bay, Noosa, Sunshine Coast, Gladstone, Townsville and State Library of Queensland all making the trip to Adelaide.
Congratulations to Rachel Smith and Amy Meredith, Noosa Library Service for their presentation Traineeships: Enriching Lives and Libraries, along with Teresa Kohne and Georgia Laxton, Sunshine Coast Libraries for their presentation Inclusion in Libraries – Supporting Vulnerable Members. Both presentations were lighting talks delivered at the QPLA LEaD Professional Development session held in Noosa, October 2023. It’s great to see presentations from QPLA making the national stage.
Library tours are always a crowd favourite, and the Adelaide locations provided some really great overviews of different facilities including Mortlock Library – State Library of South Australia, National Wine Centre of Australia and Artlab Australia,
APLA Meeting, 6 May 2024 – Key messages
The in-person meeting in Adelaide included representatives from all jurisdictions except for ACT.
Guest
Key Messages
NT
- LANT is working in collaboration with Youth Justice and Department of Education to develop a model of service delivery for young people in the system, both inside and outside of youth detention centres.
- Policies and protocols around ICIP (Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property) are nearing completion with information to be disseminated to public and community libraries.
- LANT staff will travel to East Arnhem Regional Council in May, for meetings to discuss a new model of service delivery in their remote communities. A trip to Alice Springs is also planned for May to deliver training for the LMS public/government libraries and school libraries user groups, as well as visit remote libraries in the region.
WA - WA’s 233rd public library in Piara Waters (City of Armadale) should be opening in August this year with more libraries planned for the City of Armadale in the coming years.
QLD - State Library of Qld has invited QPLA and library staff across the state to review the draft 10-year Roadmap for public libraries and IKCs which will replace the current Vision for public libraries. Feedback can be provided via the survey, which closes on 31 May.
- QPLA will be undertaking visits to library services to meet members and highlight the quality services being delivered to communities throughout the state. During April the QPLA Board visited libraries located in Cairns and surrounding areas.
SA - Words Grow Minds’ early years literacy campaign is rolling out in libraries and other community services across the State.
- A new iteration of the One Card system for public libraries is under development.
ALIA - ALIA has been approached by the ABC podcast short and curly who are interested in creating a few episodes based on books – and maybe establishing a virtual bookclub.
- ALIA has received requests to support three research projects of interest to APLA – Libraries supporting disadvantaged youth; Joint-use library design: three cases; and Remote Libraries.
- Geoff Strempel contributed to discussion around the review of ALIA APLA Standards and Guidelines and National Statistics.
