Conference: Thursday - Day Two

(The Ballarat clan - six on the one day - had to get a picture!)

Again, just some of my thoughts. There are fewer mentioned today because I found a few of them uninteresting so I have just included the ones I got something out of (I won't rubbish the boring ones in public!)

Dunn and Wilson Scholarship Oration: Multi-skill us - Library Technician National Secondment Opportunities, Sharon Uthmann

Sharon was awarded the scholarship at the Sydney LT Conference and presented her findings at this one. She discussed that many Universities and Government units have job exchange or secondment policies but that there are not many in the library world. She discussed QULOC and VITLS but really there are so few out there. I enjoyed most about hearing of the problems she faced (apart from having a baby in the middle of it). Things like maybe not using the right words in the first place (for instance taking on higher duties), and also about not approaching the right people. I think it was great that she discussed these as foraying into the world of research is huge - and not easy!

Presentations/Awards:

Rebecca Evans from Tassie was presented with the next Dunn & Wilson Scholarship. She plans to create an image database of the activities and contributions Library Technicians have made to the Library sector since they were established in 1979. This would form the beginnings of an historical record which could be built upon and expanded over time and would be ready in time for the 30th anniversary of Library Technicians. It sounds really interesting. She has started a wiki devoted to it.

Jennifer Dwyer a school library technician was awarded the LT of the year.

Concurrent: Spoilt for choice - a comparison of two aggregations and the use of ScholarlyStats and Ulrich's Serials Analysis, Jennifer McMeekin

I missed the start of this one but wrote a few notes down for me to check up on later. COUNTER which is publisher/vendor generated stats. Ulrich's can be very customised (place of publication, peer reviewed, publisher, language, print versus electronic etc).

Keynote: Crossed wires - management, communication and culture in public libraries, Bob Pymm and Damian Lodge (CSU)

We tend to overestimate our abilities (otherwise known as the "above average" effect). We need 360 degree feedback from staff, colleagues, managers, supervisors etc. A good manager needs: leadership; administrative abilities; cognitive skills; interpersonal skills; personal traits; technical skills. I liked how the managers always rated themselves higher than the staff did! It was interesting as I am doing a research subject as Uni and it helped to put certain things into context.