Australian School Library Association > About > Annual report 12 August 2005

Annual report

Australian School Library Association Incorporated

Annual General Meeting, 12th August 2005
Annual report

Presented by the ASLA President, Mary-Ann Salisbury

Strategic direction

The ASLA strategic plan has been further developed and each of the planning groups had at least one teleconference meeting during the year to continue the work stemming from the face-to-face meetings of the Projects, Publications and Strategic groups in July 2004. Policies have been developed for conferences and external relations, and procedures have been developed for the refereeing process for Access.

Advocacy

The ALIA-ASLA Standards of Professional Excellence for Teacher Librarians was published and launched at the ASLA XIX conference in Canberra. Print copies were distributed to peak national and state/territory bodies and personnel.

The ALIA-ASLA joint alliances/advocacy working party started in May 2005 to update the alliances/advocacy directory and its implementation on behalf of both associations.

ASLA was represented on various national bodies and forums including the Peak Library Bodies Forum, the National Site Licensing Forum and the ongoing national site licensing working party.

ASLA responded to several initiatives of the National Institute for Quality Teaching and School Leadership (NIQTSL) and was accepted to present at the NIQTSL conference and was also involved in focus groups into Leading and learning with ICT.

Publications

Access became a refereed journal this year; with the view to include at least one refereed article each issue.

Constructing communities of learning and literacy, the collation of proceedings from ASLA’s first online conference, was published in July 2004.

The Learning for the Future: Professional development kit was completed in October 2004 by June Wall (past president) and has been very well received.

Research

ASLA signed a research agreement with Charles Sturt University to undertake research into Smart Information Use in Schools, and to develop a proposal to seek Australian Research Council funding for more research in this area. This agreement commits ASLA to supporting research over the next three years.

ALIA–ASLA liaisons

ASLA endorsed the continued liaison with ALIA about the amalgamation of the two previous committees to the ALIA-ASLA Joint Policy Advisory Group. This group finalised the Standards of Professional Excellence for Teacher Librarians for endorsement by both associations.

Conferences

ASLA XIX: Meeting the Challenge was successfully hosted by ASLA ACT from 10–13 April 2005 in Canberra.

ASLA Online II will be hosted by ASLA in May 2006.

The next biennial conference, ASLA XX: Hearts on fire, will be hosted by ASLA NSW in July 2007.

Awards

The ASLA Citation 2005 was awarded to Bev Blackwell, from Western Australia, for her contribution to the profession of teacher librarianship.

The Australian Teacher Librarian of the Year Award was presented to Margaret Holman, from South Australia, in recognition of her work as an exceptional teacher librarian in a school setting.