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Australia, report 2001

Presented at IAML Conference, Periguéux, 2001

In July 2000 the central core of the new IAML (Australia) executive moved from New South Wales to Victoria for a two year term. The new executive is as follows: Georgina Binns - President (Monash University), Lynne Carmichael - Secretary (Australian Broadcasting Corporation Program Resource Centre), Lena Vigilante - Treasurer (University of Melbourne), Gordon Abbott - Vice President (University of Adelaide) and Jacqueline Pickard - Vice President (University of Tasmania). Currently membership stands at 37 individual and 20 institutional. There are a number of initiatives under development which is hoped will reflect and assist the membership across the diversity of library types.

  • IAML Access Group – One initiative was the development of a group to identify and work towards better access to our collections. This was developed following the National Conference in July 2000 where members expressed concern at the poor access to music and sound recordings in the national database, both in searching and content; a lack of appropriate funding; lack of support for smaller libraries; and an overall concern at collection development and management issues that we all face in our libraries. The Music Curator of the National Library of Australia, Robyn Holmes, has taken these issues to the Music Steering Committee of the National Library and developments are underway. The first inititative of this group is the development of a guide to searching music on Kinetica, the Australian National Bibliographic Database, with the co-operation of the National Library of Australia.

  • An Online Survey was undertaken amongst members– Data is currently under analysis and will be reported in more detail later this year. The survey is to ascertain how IAML (Australia) can have a presence in the internet environment including information that could be made available from the IAML (Australia) web page. The web page is currently up-to-date but requires some redesign to ensure that members and other interested parties have access to a useful resource for the music library profession in Australia.

  • The Australian Library and Information Association Continuing Professional Development Scheme (CPD) has accepted appropriate IAML activities (such as meetings and conferences) as eligible to be claimed under the ALIA CPD scheme. Promotion of activities can be placed on the CPD e-list and MLSIG e-list. This is an important development for the recognition of IAML as a professional organisation within the library profession in Australia.

Other activities include:

  • The Sydney Chapter have been working towards the placing of a bid for the 2007 IAML International Conference which has been accepted at this conference
  • The 2002 IAML (Australia) conference is to be held in Perth, Western Australia.
  • Continuo: Journal of IAML (Australia) continues to be published each year. Last years issue included the papers from the biennial conference and this year it is proposed that the issue of Continuo be focussed on a specific area of music librarianship – music in public libraries.
  • Outreach Project – East Timor. In 2000 IAML (Australia) set up a project to assist in the supply of music education materials to East Timor. Extensive destruction of infrastrucure including education facilities in East Timor had occurred during the unrest in 1999 and 2000. While East Timor is now on the way to becoming an independent country, obviously music education is not a first priority; however, as the country develops, educational facilities will re-open and materials will be needed. East Timorese composer (and former composer-in-residence at the Sydney Conservatorium) Simao Barreto is working to set up music education facilities in the capital Dili. IAML (Australia) assisted him in this project. Ten large boxes of books on music, scores and CDs have been received in East Timor. The Mary MacKillop Institute funded transport costs.

Georgina Binns,
President, IAML (Australia)