ALIA 2002 wash-up - a personal view

If understanding our present is a pre-requisite for powering our future, then for the 500 people present, plus several hundred e-delegates, ALIA 2002 in Sydney last week was a resounding success. There were many distinguished contributions to the information agenda.

It might not have been. Devising a conference addressed for the most part in a single stream and by people from 'outside' libraries was a dangerous distance from our comfortable format of parallel streams addressed by largely local library luminaries.

Available papers are now accessible

For me, three papers stood out.

The first was Alan Bundy's quite brief outgoing presidential address entitled Only connect.... Alan discussed the need for greater connection within the profession, with those who might be our allies, and with our values. He used a wonderful analogy of geese in flight: '...as each goose flaps its wings it creates an uplift for the birds that follow. By flying in a 'V' formation, the whole flock adds 71 per cent greater flying range than if the birds flew alone.'

Hugh Mackay, psychologist and social commentator, described the fundamental shifts in the way we live our lives:

The divorce rate is the highest in our history (each weekend, half a million kids move between custodial and non-custodial parents)
The birth rate is the lowest in our history
The marriage rate is the lowest for 100 years
Households are shrinking. 30 per cent of people now live alone
We are living through the period of greatest inequality in income, and the highest level of personal debt, and under the 'dark shadow' of a doubled youth suicide rate.

Hugh used these words and phrases to capture the current mood: 'Disengagement. Reform fatigue. Issues fatigue. People re-focus on themselves. We get interested in the things we can control. Obsession with tending our own patch. Means politicians can get away with murder. People are less compassionate. Prejudices re-emerge.'

He also saw the signs of 'libraries on the threshold of a new golden age' as people yearn to be connected, to be part of 'communities that feel like communities.'

Fragmentation, rather than connection was the theme of Ann Harding's (National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling) graphic presentation on our increasingly divided society. She used trend data to underline the growing divisions between work rich and work poor, employed and unemployed, rich and poor, wealthy suburbs and poor places. Ann saw an increasingly divided society, with an ageing population (and generational tensions) and serious inequalities in access to information and a role for libraries in identifying and addressing the needs of fragmented user populations.

In their closing remarks, first Neil McLean and then Joyce Kirk pointed out that incremental change is no longer enough, that transformational change will be needed to secure sustainability for the library sector. Building bridges with natural partners outside our profession, is now imperative and well and truly on the information agenda.

It was a challenging, confronting Conference. What we do with what we learned is obviously up to us. Joyce may well prove prescient in her suspicion that ALIA 2002 will in hindsight be seen as a watershed.

Ian McCallum
26 May 2002

Contact for further information on the Issues Forum:

Ian McCallum
Libraries Alive! Pty Ltd
ian.mccallum@alianet.alia.org.au