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Digital Archives
Network lead: Jennifer Jerome (Libraries Tasmania)
Digital Archives network members met in Hobart in April to talk about digital collection items from an acquisition point of view. They'll continue to swap notes on descriptive standards and training/skills for staff working with donors and digital items at the pre-ingest stage.
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Digital Preservation
Network leads: Joanna Fleming & Matt Burgess (SLNSW)
The Digital Preservation network has ramped up its activity since meeting at State Library Victoria in June, deciding to meet bi-monthly to get through all of their discussion topics. So far the focus has been on workflow tools and digital storage, with a progress report on obsolete physical carriers slated for November, together with Digital Archives network members.
On 7 November NSLA libraries marked World Digital Preservation Day with blog posts, preservation tips and a multitude of tweets, but it was SLQ's take on a Nirvana classic that took the gong for most creative (and catchy) effort among tough international competition.
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Learning
Network leads: Rebecca Ong (SLWA) & Anja Tait (NT)
Pictured at right, in their hats, hats, hats at SLNSW
Learning network members were happily reunited at the State Library of New South Wales in October. There we heard about the library’s lifelong learning program, and took part in a Hats, hats, hats tour and learning activity in the gallery, led by educator Susan Owen. In between touring the Living Language exhibition (a must-see if you’re visiting Sydney between now and next May) and admiring SLNSW’s fabulous Learning Centre, the group agreed to focus on shared priorities around early literacy, child-safe environments, improving discoverability of children’s books in Indigenous languages and data for research and evaluation of learning programs in the coming year.
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Visitor Experience
Network lead: Heather Clark (NLA)
Libraries Tasmania hosted the Visitor Experience network meeting in October, with Hobart graciously turning on some stunning weather as the backdrop to discussions about perennial priorities (e.g. scheduling professional development activities around rosters; staffing reference service points effectively; strategies to decrease squabbling among PC-users) and emerging issues for frontline staff, such as working with homeless people and people with mental health issues, and providing user support for myriad personal digital devices. Libraries Tasmania staff presented their own programs and strategies for increasing client digital literacy, and took us through some useful library usability techniques.
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Storage
Network lead: Mark Stevenson (SLNSW)
Storage network members had their two-yearly get-together in Canberra earlier this year, checking out facilities at the ACT Heritage Library, National Library and National Archives, and gathering ideas to take home. The group are continuing to work on the repatriation of microfilm currently stored at the National Library.
Pictured: ISAAC the bookbot, at work in NLA's stacks
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NSLA Blakforce
Convenor: Damien Webb (SLNSW)
NSLA Blakforce was established in June this year as the first support and professional learning network exclusively for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff in NSLA libraries. The group held their first meeting at SLQ's kuril dhagan (photo at left) and will continue to meet annually.
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Collections
Convenor: Anna Raunik (SLQ)
Heads of Collections came together in Brisbane in August – the first meeting for this group, addressing a collections gap in the overall NSLA program. It was a chance for members to get reacquainted and discuss issues in common, ranging from collection storage, backlogs, description standards, system interoperability and business processes for collections, through to user engagement, designing physical spaces, leadership and professional training for staff, and legislative recognition.
The group agreed to address the somewhat-neglected TALCC agreement (The Australian Libraries Collaborative Collection) and to share details of ARC projects or collection-related research projects as they arise – looking to improve our collaboration and be proactive in driving or seeking out projects that better reflect the needs of our libraries. As a result of this meeting, a small working group met in October to consider the feasibility of standardised delivery of oral histories in NSLA libraries based on our current practice in digitisation, transcription and discovery.
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Copyright
Convenor: Janice van de Velde (SLV)
Copyright network members continued their tradition of meeting in March at the Australian Digital Alliance (ADA) forum. Highlights included celebrating ADA's 20th anniversary and the launch of the Australian version of Copyright the Card Game (pictured left).
Copyright members will run a copyright questions booth at the ALIA 2020 conference, so look out for them! With 2019 marked as the Year of the Public Domain, a number of case studies from NSLA libraries were showcased in a booklet for politicians and sector colleagues coming to our joint Parliament House event with ALIA and APLA in November.
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Corporate Services
Convenor: NSLA (to be advised)
Heads of Corporate Services met in Adelaide in September over a jam-packed 24 hours. The group talked budgets, workforce, restructures, organisational culture, business planning, valuation, cultural competency, data storage and stats. We had a stirring call to arms from SLQ’s Talia Love-Linay to do justice to the Culturally Safe Libraries Program, with inspiring and pragmatic ideas for roll-out of cultural competency training.
Other meeting outcomes included a refined set of workforce statistics for NSLA and the decision to establish a small working group to draft principles and guidelines on collection valuation in our libraries. This comes off the back of twelve months of NSLA-wide conversations about the inconsistent price tags we place on our collections due to wildly varying valuation methodologies in the industry. As always, members have agreed to share a raft of documents, including business plan templates, role definitions and org charts.
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eResources Consortium
Convenor: Liz MacKenzie (NLA)
Consortium members traveled to Melbourne in September for their annual meeting, led by Liz MacKenzie. Despite a building incident at State Library Victoria putting the bathrooms and water supply temporarily out of action, the consortia forged on – such is their commitment to the provision of quality electronic resources for NSLA libraries! This meeting was a chance to review the Consortium deed and consider the finer details of license principles, terms and conditions, and product reviews. Reporting for this group will shift to an annual report to CEOs at the end of each financial year, including analysis of product prices and savings across our libraries.
Pictured left: Consortium members on a behind-the-scenes tour of SLV
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In case you missed it...
Latest NSLA submissions to government:
New and revised resources:
NSLA office
Barbara Lemon, NSLA Executive Officer, blemon@slv.vic.gov.au or 03 8664 7512
Aimee Said, NSLA Program Coordinator, asaid@slv.vic.gov.au or 03 8664 7535
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