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Libraries Australia Forum 2006

Library cake cutting
John Arfield, Chair of the Libraries Australia Advisory Committee, and Tony Boston, NLA Assistant Director-General Resource Sharing, cut the birthday cake

This year’s Libraries Australia Forum started with a celebration of the 25 th birthday of the Australian National Bibliographic Database (ANBD). Held in Melbourne on 2 and 3 November, the forum went on to discuss the future development of resource sharing services.

The birthday celebrations marked 25 years of collaboration and resource sharing by the National Library of Australia and other Australian libraries as part of the ANBD. More than 100 guests attended the reception at University House in the University of Melbourne. Jan Fullerton, Director-General of the National Library of Australia, welcomed guests to the event. Hans Groenewegen and Eric Wainwright entertained the crowd with their reminiscences of early ABN Network Committee meetings. Warwick Cathro spoke about the evolution of resource sharing services and the AND over the past 25 years. John Arfield, Chair of the Libraries Australia Advisory Committee, and Tony Boston, NLA Assistant Director-General Resource Sharing, cut the birthday cake. Guests included past and present users and staff of the ABN, Kinetica and Libraries Australia services. Guests came from all over Australia for the occasion. Elaine Hall, a former member of the ABN Standards Committee, flew in from New Zealand especially for the celebration.

The Libraries Australia Forum was held at the Law Faculty, University of Melbourne. It was attended by almost 300 delegates, the largest number ever at such a meeting. The meeting was opened by Peter McPhee, Deputy Vice Chancellor, University of Melbourne, and was chaired by Anne-Marie Schwirtlich, CEO and State Librarian, State Library of Victoria.

Following a welcome and introduction by Jan Fullerton, Tony Boston provided a report on the operation and development of Libraries Australia during the past year and a discussion of strategic directions for the service. Warwick Cathro, the Library’s Assistant Director-General, Innovation, spoke on the future of library catalogues and possible future roles for Libraries Australia. Kent Fitch from the National Library’s IT Division provided a thought provoking presentation on a new paradigm for better aggregating supply and demand for library resources and lending directly from any library to any reader.

Parallel sessions provided an opportunity for cataloguers to discuss the role and future development of Libraries Australia cataloguing services. Reference staff participated in a workshop on features of the free and subscription search services including personalisation, alerts and end user access. Interlibrary loans staff discussed the future of Libraries Australia services and considered new models for delivery of library resources to patrons. The afternoon included presentations on a number of other National Library projects including People Australia and Newspaper Digitisation.

Libraries Australia wishes to extend special thanks to the Victorian Libraries Australia Forum organising committee for their assistance in planning and running such a successful meeting.

Powerpoint, audio and video files of the presentations are available on the Libraries Australia website.

Rob Walls
Libraries Australia
National Library of Australia