Meetings Secretary Report 2002/2003

Katharine Schopflin

Our first event of the year was a tour of the LSE Library, a Victorian building with an interior remodelled by Sir Norman Foster. The design, based around a spiral, includes a large central area occupied entirely by desks and computers - with no books. One month later, our first speaker of the year, Francis Muzzu of Sue Hill Recruitment gave a talk at Time Magazine. He talked about career development and information recruitment, particularly in the workplace sector.

In October we held our annual Open Day for Graduate Trainees. This year we held it jointly with the Industrial and Commercial Libraries Group, the CILIP group representing the workplace sector. It was held at the British Library and was highly oversubscribed. The 61 attendees included somebody who arrived on the day not realising he had to book. In the morning Dave Nicholas of City University spoke about studying information and Francis Muzzu (again) gave a general talk about library careers. 30 of the delegates then went on a tour of the British Library. In the afternoon, we had talks from seven speakers from sectors including charities, law, industry and telecommunications. Eona Bell, David Little, Jonny Fineberg and Martin Farley, Neil Edward, Carole Woods and Caroline Hugh all spoke about their working environment, typical day and how they broke into the sector. This proved to be a good date, but hidden costs made this venue a very expensive option.

In October we held the very first formal evening meeting in the regions in Glasgow. Anne Longmuir of BBC Scotland spoke about 'working upstream', that is within the programme department rather than information unit. As 'media manager' for the BBC's Scottish Parliamentary Unit, Anne did cataloguing, archive and information research and training as part of the production team, something not done in any of the BBC's London-based Information & Archives departments. The meeting was held at Scottish Media Group's offices in Renfield St and was well attended, including a number of students from Strathclyde University's information course.

Our Christmas meeting, co-inciding with the Online conference, combined a party with a talk from Gary Price. His 'Chat with AUKML' included search tips, useful websites and insights into the way search engines work. This was his second talk to AUKML and given that few of us have time to keep up with web developments, was a useful update. The talk, held at LWT, was followed by drinks sponsored by Lexis-Nexis.

British Pathe, the historical newsreel archive, hosted the next meeting in January at their offices in Camden Town. They demonstrated their new website, the first allowing users to browse an entire film collection online. Unfortunately, snow and a complete transport breakdown meant not everyone who had planned to come actually got there. Those who did reported that it was interesting, informative and very friendly.

In April we held another event at LWT, a panel discussion on news databases. Sponsored by Dialog, the speakers included Viji Krishnan, Vice-President of Content Development at Dialog, who had been recruited to speak literally days before. The other speakers were Peter Chapman, speaking from the point of view as a user and former content provider on a regional newspaper and information law expert Paul Pedley. AUKML chair Ian Watson chaired the discussion, himself able to offer insights from the points of view of providing newspaper content to databases and buying it in for a news library. A very interesting discussion followed.

Our last event before the AGM was our annual talk aimed at media librarians with picture-related responsibilities. Freelance picture researcher Diana Korchien spoke on the 'Changing World of Picture Research' covering her own experiences and how technological and industry changes had affected the work. Attendees included representatives of large online stills providers as well as freelance picture researchers who had a friendly debate on the dominance of the former in the picture market. Although the meeting was well attended, no picture researchers from media organisations managed to make it.

Our plans for this year include a talk from Managing Information editor Graham Coult on how to stop your library being downsized or closed, a visit to Associated Newspapers and a talk from BBCi search taxonomist Martin Belam.

Events 2002/3

16/07/02: LSE Tour (8 attendees)
21/08/02: Time Magazine, Francis Muzzu (14)
10/10/02: British Library, Graduate Trainee Day (61)
31/10/02: SMG, Anne Longmuir (20)
05/12/02: LWT, Gary Price (21)
30/01/03: British Pathe (10)
03/04/03: LWT, News Databases (30)
11/06/03: BBC Bush House, Diana Korchien (16)