ALLA (WA) News Blog

Ever wondered what goes on within the walls of Parliament Library?  Come and learn about Bills, Hansard, retrieving EMs, investigating committee papers and much more in the 1 st ALLA (WA) event of 2018! This event will include a tour of the Parliamentary Library, followed by morning tea and a tour of Parliament House and the Chambers. When: Wednesday 7 th February, 2018,  9am – 11.30am Where: Parliament House main entrance RSVP to Alice Hewitt – alice.hewitt@cdpp.gov.au by Friday 2 nd February, 2018. Please confirm if you are intending to attend the tour of Parliament House (start 11am). ALLA (WA) thanks the WA Parliamentary Library for hosting this event.  More information on Parliament, including what you can and cannot bring on the tour.

Worried about your library and your job? Despite frequent gloomy predictions, the demise of the library sector hasn’t happened – and as one article reveals, sloppy research can be the cause of the faulty prediction. Libraries and Librarians Aren't About to Disappear A widely shared article declaring libraries and archives to be among the fastest-declining industries in America has been debunked. Takeaway message – make sure you have all the information before extrapolating …. The Extinction of Libraries: Why the Predictions aren’t Coming True While this article is about public libraries, and how, despite predictions that they will wither and die, they are still around and generally growing, there is a message that is relevant to all libraries: The key to continued support of libraries is engagement equals ownership. As humans we have an innate need to feel wanted and valued, to know that what we say matters. When libraries engage communities by asking for their...

The Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR-ITTIG) is calling-for-paper (abstract only) for participation in the LAW VIA THE INTERNET CONFERENCE 2018 , to be held 11-12 October 2018, in Florence, Italy.   All details of the call for papers are available here .

Wishing everyone a safe and happy holiday break. We will see you all in 2018!

It's almost Christmas, and with only a few days to go before the holiday break I've realised that the last day of work for the year is actually the longest day of the year as it's the summer solstice. So with that in mind, here's some light reading for those of us lucky enough to have a slow day. Check out our previous blog post from 19 December 2013: Christmas Decorations . 

Adieu or au revoir? Goodbye or see you later? We certainly hope to see Alison, Margaret and Noelle again but whether the Department of Premier and Cabinet Library will resurface is anyone’s guess. On 15 December 2017, the Library formally ceased to exist. The collection and two of the library staff have moved to the State Library with a view to implementing a service to the Department. The fate of the Government Libraries Directory is yet to be decided. It would be a shame if it didn’t continue, if only as a reminder of what once was.

So it’s that time of year again – lists and more lists – apart from Santa’s Naughty and Nice lists, there are lists of people and presents, food to prepare, what to pack for the trip [if you are lucky enough] and then there are the Lists of the Top whatevers for the Year. From the 3 Geeks and a Law Blog comes such a list: Top ten 3 Geeks blog posts for 2017 . Of particular interest are numbers 3, 4, 6, 7 & 8 by Greg Lambert, current President of the American Association of Law Libraries, with my favourite being "DoYou Miss Me Yet?" – Re-establishing the Corporate Librarians In this era of readily accessible information, we do not suffer from a lack of information resources, we suffer from an abundance of irrelevant information that looks on its surface to be relevant. Information professionals are your line of defense against the abundance of information, and are your due diligence agents for identifying the resources which best fit your needs and your budge...