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Chair's Report |
AUKML 2005/2006
Chair's Report
The last 12 months have been mixed for the media librarianship profession. On the one hand, there have been more library and information units threatened with closure, particularly in the regions. On the other, there is increasing evidence that surviving libraries are working hard to market their skills and holdings, are exploiting them in new areas, for example, working on digital asset management systems, and even, in some cases, are becoming profit-generating business units rather than merely overheads. It is a tribute to the work of practitioners in information departments across media organisations that so many units are valued and flourishing despite the doom-laden warnings of the past five years.
AUKML has had a busy year, both organising our own regular programme of events and joining with other organisations for large scale activities such as the Information Associations' Christmas Party, the Library and Information Show and Informa's Corporate Information Management Conference - this managed despite not having a meetings secretary for part of the year. We sadly decided this year that there is insufficient interest among regional members to organise future regional events on our own, however we intend to join up with other groups when they organise events outside London. We continue to attract generous amounts of sponsorship, allowing us to make our events free for members even while we remain a small and friendly professional group and one with a strongly active membership - more than a third of our members have participated in our events in the last year, when the normal figure for active participation in professional groups is reckoned to be 10 %.
Those present at last year's AGM will remember that we hoped to have a new website up and running by this year. Our initial collaboration with a sponsor didn't work out but we are now doing it on our own and have selected a candidate to carry out the work. No promises, but we should have a new one for next year. As well as a more user-friendly navigation and better look and feel, we are also hoping to develop a members' area behind which we would be able to make benefits like a members directory available, as well as committee meeting minutes.
Deadline changed editors this year and is continuing its high standard of original writing. I think it certainly compares well with the newsletters of other groups from this point of view. We promise a new look for Deadline and a choice of PDF or plain text delivery formats in the near future.
Our biggest event for this year is AUKML's sesquiennial conference which will be in Edinburgh between 22nd and 24th September. A great range of speakers will be complimented by some lovely social events and I hope to see most of you there. I would particularly like to thank Angela Laurins who has brought in an immense amount of sponsorship allowing us to subsidise members' rates by a considerable amount.
This membership year marks AUKML's 20th anniversary, as its two parent organisations were formed in 1986 and 1987 respectively. We hope that the improvements to Deadline and the website will help to celebrate this, but we are also holding a grand Christmas anniversary party on Thursday 7th December at the Guardian Newsroom. Many distinguished figures from AUKML's past will be invited and of course, we'd like all current AUKML members to attend.
We thought that a twentieth anniversary would be a good moment to take stock of where the media library profession is and we have decided to commission some research to produce a snapshot of what information workers in media organisations are doing. We are currently in discussion with a research agency and hope to have some announcements for the Christmas Party.
Also to mark this anniversary year, AUKML has decided to honour the achievements of media librarians by instituting an annual award, to be presented at the AGM with the first given at the 2007 AGM and summer party. The award will be open to any information professional working for a media organisation and you will be able to nominate yourself or your colleagues for any outstanding achievement in the previous year and this could be anything from a significant contribution to a programme or article, to a successful promotion of the library, to an innovative project. The judges will be the AUKML Chair and two external people yet to be appointed and as this idea is very new, detailed criteria and the prize have yet to be decided.
Finally, I'd like to give thanks, first to you, our members, who make AUKML what it is, a vibrant and friendly network. Please keep up the good work - tell friends and colleagues about us and make sure that we remain a strong, dynamic professional group whose members are all individuals, not institutions. Secondly, I have to thank my committee. I don't have to remind you that AUKML has no staff. We produce all our activities in our own time which has been notably scarce among media librarians of late. Somehow, my tireless committee has produced meetings, a newsletter, a regularly-updated website, accounts, membership records, sponsorship and valuable contributions to committee meetings all in the space of evenings and weekends. So, thank you very much and may the good work continue in 2006-7.
Katharine Schöpflin
July 2006