Thursday, December 22, 2005

KZN LIASA/UKZN Mini-conference in April 2006

News of a mini-conference "Institutional mergers and their impact on the LIS sector: challenges, experiences and lessons" arranged by the KZN LIASA branch with the University of Kwa-Zulu- Natal with the announcement and call for papers on the topic

The conference is to be held over 10-12 April 2006 at Howard College Campus, UKZN .

Check out the conference webpage for more information.

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Highed.Librarian blog

One of our colleagues, Fatima Darries, current chair of the Western Cape Higher Education Libraries Interest Group, has a blog at http://highed.librarian.blogspot.com. She has reported on her experience at the HERS Mid-America Summer Institute for Women in Higher Education Administration at Bryn Mawr College, just outside of Philadelphia, in the States.

Check out the postings on the end of the year breakfast (which is where the photo is from) and on Kay Raseroka's visit to Cape Town. Kay made two presentations, the first to the HERS SA Academcy and the second to the LIASA Western Cape members. What Kay said at both sessions, resonates with many of us as well. The last, and most recent, is about the end of the year breakfast/showcase where Fatima did a short presentation about her experience at the HERS Institute. (Photo shows Fatima speaking at the breakfast.)

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Winner of the LIASA Western Cape Branch Award



The winner of the LIASA Western Cape Branch Award is Milnerton Library Adult Learner Centre. Congratulations to Christelle Lubbe!!

Joint runners-up in second place were the EDULIS Library Team (represented by Susan Hanekom) and the Satellite Libraries Extension Interest Group (lead by Fadeela Davids)

Certificates of recognition were given to the teams from South Peninsula Libraries that were involved in the making of the Library Marketing Video and the organising of the Science Fiction, Fantasy and Comics Seminar.

Showcase Breakfast Meeting lucky draws for members


It has become a tradition that several draws take place at the Western Cape Showcase and End-of-Year Breakfast. Prizes included gift vouchers from Van Schaik, a cash prize from MRC, and assorted corporate products from SABINET.

Here are the lucky winners:

Loyalty Draws for members who have loyally renewed their membership for the last five years:-
Paul Meyer
Mary Lister
Sandy Zinn
Amina Adam
Nazeem Hardy
Tommy Matthee
Debby Myers
Audrey Patrick
Alvina Matthee

New Member Draws:-
Zelda Lamb
Cheryl Heymann
Janine Saunders
Susan Hanekom
Warren Hansen

Renewal Draws for members who have renewed their membership this year:-
Carmen Holtzman
Caroline Dean
Jerome Cupido
Amina Adam
Berenice Williams
Anna Louw
Sue Hardy
Lormarcia Zwaan

For a Librarian present at the Breakfast who participated in the Community Chest Twilight Run on 29 November 2005:
Desiree Reid

with a special thank you gift to Anita Shaw of Grassy Park Library for organising librarians' participation. We heard afterwards that about 90 librarians took part. Well done! And there's a challenge for next year -- we should include it on the branch diary.

Lucky Draws
Father Christmas came early this year and left so many gifts that no one went away empty-handed.

Thanks to our generous sponsors:
* Swets Subscription Services
* Van Schaik Books
* MRC for the cash prize and SAAVI products
* SABINET
* Mr Haffy Haffajee for the LIASA corporate products,
* Jane Sharka
* Kathleen Laishley
* Ingrid Thomson
* LIASA Western Cape Branch.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Shortlist for the Branch Award

It gives us great pleasure to announce the three shortlisted nomineesfor the brand new LIASA Western Cape Branch Award.

* EDULIS Library Team. The team nominated is Amor du Toit, ColleenMeinert, Erika Nel, Helene Johnston, Marianne Serfontein, Rose Jackson, Susan Hanekom, Zonke Silwanyana and Lynette Prent.

* Satellite Libraries - SPA Extension Services Interest Group. Theteam nominated is Fadeelah Davids (Hangberg), Elna van der Merwe (Hout Bay), SusanAlexander (Fish Hoek), Vincent Williams(Lotus River) and all staff operating satellite service points.

* Milnerton Library Adult Learners Centre. Christelle Lubbe is the nominee.

The winner will be announced at the End of Year Showcase meeting on 30 November at the Villa Via Hotel.

Congratulations and well done to all three teams!!!

LIASA Showcase on 30 November 2005

The Western Cape End of Year Showcase and Recruitment meeting for 2005 promises to be a festive affair in the lovely environment of Gordons Bay.

The Villa Via Hotel is in a beautiful setting, part of the Harbour Island Marina Development, with magnificent views of the sea from the deck.

Enjoy a scrumptious breakfast buffet spread and hear all about the latest LIASA news, while fellow members will share their insights and experiences of recent travelsand conferences with you.

We will be celebrating the Western Cape Branch's win of the Nielsen BookData LIASA Presidential Award for 2005.

And a major highlight will be the announcement of the winner of the first-ever Western Cape LIASA Branch Award.

Just by attending and being a paid-up LIASA member will qualify you for the lucky draws!! So dont forget to have your membership number ready when you book.

Use this opportunity to renew for 2006 and bring along a colleague to join as a new member - all new members will also be entered into a draw on the day!!

And if you took up the challenge issued by the South Peninsula Librarians to run/walk/amble in the Community Chest Fun Run/Walk on Tuesday 29th November, then bring proof ... and you'll be entered in a special lucky draw!

Date: Wednesday 30 November
Time: 8 am for 8.30 am
Costs: R100 for LIASA member
R130 for non-LIASA members

Book your place with Lormarcia Zwaan at lormarciaz@drakenstein.gov.za or fax (021) 872 4116 by 24 November 2005. Queries: Lormarcia on 021 807 4871.


How to get to Villa Via:

Monday, November 07, 2005

Speed Networking Afternoon for LisLIG

LiSLIG Western Cape invitation:

We come to LiSLIG events and listen to speakers, but how much do we
really know about each other? Join us for a
fun-filled, high-energy afternoon of

**SPEED NETWORKING**

-----------------------------------

Date: Tuesday 15 November 2005
Time: 14:00 for 14:30 (includes tea/coffee and cake)
Cost: R25.00 for LIASA/LiSLIG members / R35.00 for non-members

Please deposit your payment into the LiSLIG bank account.
Please *include your name * in the reference section of the deposit
slip.
Account Name : LiSLIG Western Cape
Account Number : 62080746856
Bank : First National Bank
Branch : Rondebosch
Branch Code : 201509

Venue: Tafelberg Gardens Tavern,
6 Rhoodehek Terrace, Hope Street, Gardens
(Map available upon request)

RSVP: by Fri. 11 Nov 2005
to Sharon Jongens: Sharon.Jongens@za.nampak.com
or tel. (021) 590-5800
------------------------------------------------

SPEED NETWORKING
Definition from MacMillan English Dictionary:

"speed networking"; also "speed-networking"; noun [U] /spid netwk/ a
method of making a potential business contact by
briefly talking to a series of people at an organised event and
exchanging contact details

'... Speed networking, as it's more often known, is a relatively new
urban trend, increasingly popular in a world where
social "capital" - who we know and how they can help us - is prized.'
(The Guardian, 7th February 2005)

'Newcastle-based agency Contact25 goes a step further and gets speed
networkers to rate each of the contacts they meet,
on a scale of one to five on the basis of how useful they might be ...'
(BBC News, 8th December 2004)

You've heard of speed-dating, an organised event attended by dozens of
single people who talk briefly to potential
partners and decide whether they might want to see any of them again.
Combine this with the idea of making professional,
rather than romantic, contacts, and what do you get? - speed networking.
Speed networking is based on the idea that the
usual way businesses, especially small businesses, gain new contacts or
clients is by so-called networking - meeting to
talk to people and exchange ideas. Traditional networking events, like
conferences, are often not very productive because
people tend to gravitate towards those they already know, and wouldn't
normally walk up to absolute strangers, even
though there are likely to be people in the room who would make
promising contacts. In a dedicated speed networking
event, people are given a structured environment in which they can talk
to people they wouldn't otherwise have come into
contact with, and can quickly decide whether there is a mutual interest
without the need for polite or unnecessarily long
conversations.

The exact arrangements vary, but in a typical speed networking event,
people are given five minutes or less to talk to a
potential contact, and are then moved on - often to the sound of a
buzzer. At the end of the meeting, business cards can
be exchanged, thereby sowing the seeds for a new commercial
relationship. Like speed-dating before it, speed networking
has in recent months proven very popular on both sides of the Atlantic,
leading to the establishment of dedicated
websites such as speed-networking.net. A related countable noun speed
networker describes participants, although there is
as yet only limited evidence for an intransitive verb speed network.

Background Speed networking is of course modelled on speed-dating, a
term that emerged in 1999, originating from a Los
Angeles Jewish community. The more recent idea of combining business
networking and speed-dating to form speed networking
is also thought to have started in the US, though it seemed to emerge
almost simultaneously in the UK as an innovative
way to forge new business contacts.

Another recent expression in a related context is pink slip party, used
mainly in the US to refer to an organised event
where unemployed people have the opportunity to meet potential
employers. Pink slip in the expression refers to an
official notice given to an employee detailing the termination of an
employment. It also occurs informally as a
transitive verb, pink-slip, meaning 'to give a termination of employment
notice'.

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/new-words/050919-speed-networking.htm

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Joint LIASA/UWC Public Seminar with Finnish Librarians

You are cordially invited to a joint LIASA/UWC Public Seminar on Information-Seeking Behaviour from a Finnish perspective and Round Table Discussion on Knowledge Managementin the Curriculum

Date: Wednesday 9 November2005
Venue : Centre for Humanity Research, UWC
RSVP: Sonia Stroud (021) 9592137 or Sstroud@uwc.ac.za by 2 November2005
Cost: Free

Programme:
08.30 for 09.00 till 10.30 : Public seminar
Speaker - Prof Mariam Ginman
Topic - Theories of information behaviour : the Finnish perspective based on research done on info behaviour & seeking

10.30 - 11.00 : Tea & refreshments

11.00 - 12.30 : Round Table Discussion
Guest speakers - Prof Aulikki Holma & Maija-Leena Huotari Topic - Knowledge management in the curriculum

There will be a LIASA membership table for those who wouldlike to join or renew their membership.

Friday, October 21, 2005

Copyright and Intellectual Property Panel Discussion

COPYRIGHT AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PANEL DISCUSSION : 17 NOVEMBER 2005

WCHELIG, PACLIG and RETIG, with the endorsement of the LIASA Western
Cape Branch, are proud to bring you a panel discussion on copyright and
IP issues.

We will be looking into questions such as: Copyright and fair use; Open
access; WIPO treaties; Practical aspects in HE in SA; Publishers'
perspectives.

Programme :

08:30 - 09:00 Registration
09:00 - 09:05 Welcome
09:05 - 09:20 Chair: Nomfundo Luke - Scene set
09:20 - 09:40 Denise Nicholson
09:45 - 10:05 Amanda Barratt - WIPO Treaties

10:05 - 10:30 Tea

10:30 - 10:50 Jeanetta vd Merwe - South Africa and practice (including
reserves & shortloans)
10:55 - 11:15 Nicol Faasen, PASA - Publisher's point of view
11:20 - 11:40 Charles Masango - Author's point of view
11:40 - 12:10 Questions and discussion
12:10 - 12:20 Wrap and close panel discussion, vote of thanks

12:20 - 13:00 Lunch

13:00 - 13:10 Introduction
13:10 - 13:30 Naomi Haasbroek - Discussion paper
13:30 - 15:00 Workgroup discussion

15:00 - 15:15 Tea

15:15 - 15:45 Report back from groups
15:45 - 16:00 Way forward, timelines

Date: Thursday 17th November 2005
Time: 8:30 for 9:00
Venue: LT 3, Wilfred & Jules Kramer Law School building, Middle
Campus, UCT
Costs: R60 for members and R100 for non-members.

Please diarise and make an effort to attend what should be a lively
discussion!

Please r.s.v.p. by 10 November 2005 to Jean Uys at
jean-m@uctlib.uct.ac.za or tel no 021-650-3119 or fax number
021-689-7569

Only on receipt of proof of payment will attendance be confirmed. Please
deposit or ETF to the LIASA Western Cape Account at FNB.
Account number: 50251139760
Branch name: Paarl
Branch Code: 200110
Reference: Copyright and your surname
Please fax deposit slip to 021-689-7569 for attention Jean Uys.

Friday, October 07, 2005


A photo of Fadeelah and Lillian blogging at conference.

Photo of Western Cape Display


It has become traditional for the branches to do a display at the annual conference. Our display was done in poster form (using MS Publisher) and then printed in colour. I have tried to upload the posters but Blogger doesn't recognise the format ... hence the photo (thanks Fatima!).

There were seven posters in all - four posters showing scenes from our photo album, one highlighting the branch activities (those organised by the BEC ) and two highlighting the activities of the interest groups. And when you look at these, you can see why we won the Presidential Award!!!!

Thanks to Janine at the Western Cape Provincial Library Services for the S A Library Week material which we used on the display.

PS Had the most amazing service from the staff at Wizards at the Waterfront when I took these in for printing!

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Reflection on the Conference

Reflecting on the past week, one is reminded of the fact that we strive towards certain goals and even though we were faced with numerous (all right, a lot of!) challenges, ultimately the vision is what counts.

The papers presented were of excellent quality and seem to be getting better each year! This is the learning and sharing event of the year and should be celebrated as such.

LIASA is a great association and I am proud to be a member. LIASA is not about accommodation, food and social functions. LIASA is about building the profession and I know what I am “getting” from LIASA, because I know what I contribute.

Thanks LIASA!!!!!

Friday, September 30, 2005

second day of conference, Wednesday 28th

Hi all

Second day of conference which I am blogging now, the morning of the last day of conference, should give you an idea of how hectic things are.

The second day of conference was really bumper packed. Several parallell sessions, including the Interest Group sessions all scheduled for that day. Of course as an office bearer in HELIG I had to attended those sessions. The morning was the HELIG AGM, which I will blog on the WCHELIG blog at a later stage at www.wchelig.blogspot.com.

The joint session between HELIG and RETIG was really useful. Karin de Jager did a paper on Quality measurement, and did a bit on the history of the quality measurement and why it is important now again - HEQC of course. Also promised a results of her investigation in a document before the end of the year.

Gee, got to go, session starting.

Will blog later.

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Western Cape did it!

By now you have heard the great news of the Presidential Award that the WC Branch won. I was very proud to go up and receive it on behalf of the Branch.

I was hoping to post the photographs, but there seems to be a problem from this machine.... Will try again later.

The President of the Malaysian Library Association, Putri Saniah presented this morning and gave an outline of the library systems in Malyasia. She has also expressed an interest in further collaboration with LIASA. We are hoping to work with her on presenting a pre- IFLA WLIC2007 Conference in the Western Cape. More on that later...

The keynote address by the Cuban National Librarian, Mr E Matos, was very powerful. He gave a little background on the history of the country. What was very impressive, was the fact that in a relatively short period of time, they completely eradicated illiteracy. I will try to get hold of his presentation for the statistical info.

Mr Matos, as well as Dr James Daniel (President of the Nigerian Library Association) expressed a keen interest in working with LIASA. This is good news indeed and will be beneficial to LIASA and also in our preparations for IFLA 2007.

The AGM is due to start shortly, more later....

At least it is cooler today - on Sunday and Monday it was 32+ ...It was scorching.

Quick update

Good news for Western Cape branch ... we won the Bookdata Nielsen President Award for the Best Branch. The judging was based on membership (retention and new), and activities and services to our members, amongst others. (The fact that the President is from the Western Cape had nothing to do with us getting the award) . So congratulations Western Cape!

The other big news from last night's gala event was the announcement of a new award - the LIASA SABINET Online Librarian of the Year Award -- which replaces the other LIASA Sabinet awards. The prize is nothing less than R30 000 to be used for a study tour. You need to be paid-up LIASA member to be eligible. Each branch will have to nominate one librarian. Watch this space, the email, and the Western Cape newsletter for more information about how the Western Cape will call for nominations.

Other items that have come up:
* talk about HELIG (Higher Education) changing its name to something like Academic and Research Libraries Interest Group to accommodate libraries in FET Colleges and our big research libraries (like HSRC, CSIR, MRC, NLSA ). There will be further discussion about this over the next few months. Concern was expressed from the floor about the position of RETIG (which had research in its title) and Special Libraries -- there would be discussions with them.

My own feeling is that the RESEARCH in RETIG is the act of Researching, but Research in the proposed name for HELIG refers to RESEARCH LIBRARIES.

* talks about LIASA becoming a statutory body... this rises out of a motion proposed at last year's AGM which resulted in a study by Reggie Ragu on the statutory status of LIASA (and reported back on in a paper at this year's conference) . The concern was that people were appointed as librarians either do not have LIS qualifications. HELIG discussed this topic at their session yesterday & concern was expressed that the study only looked at LIASA , but should look at LIS professional association as a whole. The example that was cited and thought to be a basis for us, was the Nursing Council.

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

More from Nelspruit

There should be a burst of blogging from conference, now that we have sorted out where we will be blogging from (the library, naturally!). And great was the excitement, when we looked at the blogs and saw that there were *comments* even from a far afield as Fredericksburg in the States. You're reading us!!!!!

And Dr James O Daniel has linked our blog to the Nigerian Library Association Blog. Also check out Fadeelah's blog at http://fadeela.blogspot.com and Lillian's blog at http://lillianann.blogspot.com


The other keynote paper was presented by Dr James O Daniel, the immediate past president of the Nigerian Library Association, who brought us greetings and felicitations from our colleagues in the North. In an inspiring address, he reminded us that the library is the nerve centre of the education system, and that we should not be neutral.

Archie Dick spoke about lessons from the Tshwane Council plan to "redistribute" public libraries,
where the community themselves stopped the redistribution from happening.

I am not going to have time to finish this posting as we need to get to the joint HELIG/RETIG session where SAQA and SGB issues are going to be discussed. This morning's session was very interesting .... but more about that later (tomorrow probably, as the library closes at 4 pm -- it is vac)

1st day of papers

Hi all in WC and elsewhere in the world

I am sure other bloggers to this blog will have commented on the 1st day already. My two cents follows.

The international speakers we had really adds value to this conference and allow us to travel beyond our borders for a while.

So far we have heard from the National Librarian of Cuba and the President of the Nigerian Library Assocation.

I am now writing from memory and what I most remember is the fact that Cuba is free of illiteracy. We need to take lessons from this country. Secondly, the public library system is part of the national library. I recall something similar with re Malaysia's public library system being part of the national library. This is perhaps part of the solution to our public library system that is plagued by closures, staff shortages and being managed and staffed by non-librarians.

The President of the Nigerian Library Association had some interesting statistics and argued that library are part of the solution to poverty. To represent his paper adequately will take a little more time than I have at the moment.

The person, whose name escapes me now, who attended and spoke on behalf of the local governement, made a very important point. Many people believe that we should come to conferences only if they can get something out of it that would translate directly into tangible and immediate benefits to the main institution. I have many problems with that line of thinking. Suffice it to say, that we in HE have much to contribute to the building of the profession and professionals in SA, and we should come to conference to contriubute. This is how we give more than we receive.

Got to rush off to the next session.

The journey and accommodation

Hi all back in the Western Cape

It is the second day of the conference, Monday having been for meetings for preconference workshops, and for some of us who came only for the papers, for travelling to the conference.

I tell stories in a linear fashion, so my contribution to the blog will tend to be chronological.

I will start therefore with the travelling to conference. There are several of us from my institution attending. So we all flew to Johannesburg, 4 of us on the same flight and the 5th would arrive 4 hours later. This gave us an opportunity to explore the airport terminals. When our colleague arrived we got the vehicle. We would drive from Jo'burg to Nelspruit.

We got a real "ossewa", a Volkswagen, the new 5 door groot van. I took the time to take a nap on the 3 and half hour drive to Nelspruit.

Our accommodation is reallly in the "bos" bush, complete with km of sand/clay roads. I feel like a librarian in high heals in Out of Africa. We really do drive "dat die stoff so staan" (driving with the dust billowing behind us). This is about 30 minutes drive on the R4 out of Nelspriut. Nelspruit CBD is quite big.

We are in a pine log cabin, raised from the ground. It makes for a pretty interesting experience. I am sharing with a colleague and last night we found an interesting bug on the shower curtain. The bug was about 5 cm long and its antennae was twice as long. It was cream in colour for the bug lovers out there. I took a picture before my brave and bold colleague helped it out the window.

There is a dam on the estate has 5 Hippos, and the make for interesting noises in the night. There are also grey monkeys in the area. So our drives down the dusty road is scenic, if you can see through the dust.

First blog from Conference

Here we are in Nelspruit on Wednesday morning, and no one has got as far as blogging the conference yet .... mainly because we were battling to find internet facilities ... some of the hotels do have connectivity in the rooms (which you pay an arm and a leg for), some have hot spots (hooray) (Mugg & Bean have a hot spot too) ... so thank heavens for the computer labs in the library on campus which was made available! So if the postings haven't been happening, it is because the group are on a learning curve!

It has been unbearably hot in Nelspruit and the Cape Town librarians have been looking at the weather in CT and wishing they could bring up some of the cooler weather to here. There has been a promise of thunderstorms, but nothing has transpired.

So a quick report back:
What do you call an aeroplane full of librarians? A Biblioplane

Despite the Nationwide strike, there were no delays, but the flight (at least the take-off and landing) was very bumpy -- could have sworn that the wings of the aircraft flapped. But we arrived in Nelspruit on time and waited, and waited and waited for the shuttle.
Conference organisation has been a bit chaotic to say the least, but no LIASA conference has ever run too smoothly -- there always is something that goes wrong & this time for us it was the shuttle transport. And we eventually got a lift through to the hotel from one of the Local Arrangements Committee who happened to be dropping someone off! Our accommodation at the Holiday Inn Express is fine, except despite requests/emails to the conference organisers to make sure that Jean Uys and I had twin beds in the room, we were given one double bed!!!! (We have twin beds now)

So, first day of the proceedings:-
The keynote address was a short, pithy presentation "When Libraries reach the People" given by the Cuban National Librarian, Mr E A Matos, who said that the development of a country was not possible without libraries. He gave a brief outline of Cuban history up until the Revolution in 1959. At that time, there was a 30% illiteracy rate and 32 public libraries. Fidel Castro promoted a cultural policy of "We don't tell people to believe, but to read"

Monday, September 19, 2005

Good morning

I am looking forward to sharing my experiences of LIASA 2005 with the rest of the Western Cape members back home. I am a "new" blogger, so very eager to learn a new skill.

Next time I post something, it will be from Nelspruit!!

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

First Blogger?

Hi everyone.

Just want to let you know that this is the very first time I blog.
I'm looking forward to interesting tips and comments!

Happy blogging.
Anli
Stellenbosch University

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Welcome

This is a first for the Western Cape branch of LIASA (Library and Information Association of South Africa) where a group of members going to the Association's annual conference in Nelspruit, have got together to blog the conference, so that the proceedings can be shared with
colleagues who are not able to attend.