Meetings Secretary Report 2000
Susan Pryce
This past year has seen an exciting new initiative with the European Chapter of the (American) Special Libraries Association where we have aimed to share meetings of mutual interest. David Mort, Chair of the European Chapter, was invited to a committee meeting early this year and since then, we have held two joint meetings. The EC also very generously invited AUKML members to their Summer Soiree earlier this week. We look forward to further joint events in the coming year and will bring in sponsors where possible to keep events free to members.
Another initiative this year has been the popular bimonthly socials for all members at Le Piaf in central London organised by Fiona Tennyson.
This year, as promised, I set out to arrange a programme of visits well in advance so that everyone could plan ahead. I also tried a Saturday visit as well as a weekday visit to the Family Records Centre as weekend visits had been requested. However in practice, this was not very well supported: the most convenient time for everyone, judging by your responses, is the early evening in midweek and this is what I will concentrate on although unfortunately some organisations cannot offer evening visits. Due to workloads in regional members' organisations, there have been no regional events this year apart from the conference and Leicester planning meetings. I would like to encourage regional members to get some visits going again as I'm well aware that they find it very difficult and expensive to get to London, and I'm hoping there will be some volunteers to host regional events in the coming year.
A summary of visits this year:
- Two visits to the Family Records Centre in Islington as a follow-up to our visit last year to the Public Records Office at Kew. The amount of uncomputerised work still involved in keeping these key records was an eye opener. Several AUKML visitors were inspired to research their family trees.
- A visit to the Home Office in April which gave an insight into information provision and resources at the heart of government.
- A joint event with the SLA at the BBC in Marylebone sponsored by Brightstation: a presentation on Research Central, BBC Information & Archive's impressive Intranet site.
- An afternoon visit to the House of Commons library in May which included a walk through the chamber of the Commons (someone sat in Tony Blair's place and obviously has aspirations!) and a visit to the public information office.
- A second joint event with the SLA - a visit to the Guardian to see a demo. of Research Net - the Research & Information department's redesigned Intranet site. The SLA members were fascinated by the information available - links to the Priory clinic website and a list of its celebrity patients is not the kind of information found on their Intranets!
Write ups of these last two visits will appear in Deadline later this year. This year, I would like to arrange some talks and demonstrations as well as visits so please let me have your suggestions and recommendations. And if anyone would be willing to host a visit to their library/information centre - please just let me know!
I'm looking to arrange a visit and/or talk around picture libraries and digital imaging this autumn as we have tended to neglect this area although I know a lot of members handle pictures as well as text based information.
So thanks to all our hosts for this year; David Mort and the SLA European Chapter, everyone who came along and those brave volunteers who agreed to write up visits - more are always welcome!