Bob on RAILS and tangents
Click 06 has been a very strange time for me. The conference dinner was the strangest of times. Dr Click had decreed we must not sit with our work mates. I moved to the front of the ballroom and spied a table with vacant seats. It was quite a shock for both myself and my honours supervisor from almost 30 years ago, in a totally different career, to be seated beside me (partner is one of the CEOs of the very successful CLICK 06 trade display)- six degrees of separation. That is the tangent by the way.
RAILS started at 16:30 on Friday Sept 22nd. The circle of chairs in room 1 level 2 Perth Convention Centre grew in circumference as more people left the food and drink of the closing celebration of Click 06 and joined RAILS 3. This session was taken up with a discussion on whether there should be a database of LIS researchers and LIS research. It was decided that both was needed. The researcher database will be incorporated into the CILIP (UK) database. The research database will be a part of the ALIA research set. A proposal was put forward to actively devise a list of journals that the LIS academics, educators and practitioners may put forward to DEST (AUST) for RQF purposes. If you are interested in this process keep an ear to the RAIL or this blog.
Saturday, Saturday, Saturday, Saturday - conference opens at 8:30 but the State Library (WA) at 10:00. Quick thinking Dr Click sends out an email early enough to pre-warn us all and registration goes without a hitch.
The presented papers were on a wide variety of subjects from provison of legal information services to how you might provide information preventing suicide in the XY human population. We were snowballed by graphic novels - ah Astroboy, my hero! I must admit I had to many carbs in the lunch or was it that after so much information over so many days that the left and right brain leaked, whatever the IM & KM was a bit out to lunch for a Saturday for me (1st session after lunch) but I did get the jist of the relevance of Australian LIS courses, outside Australia - bottom line - let’s all do some laughter yoga. Terminology, once again ‘Is your word tomatoe the same as my word tomatoe?’ Note this was true for both the session on LIS courses and to the sessions on info literacy.
The last word go check out the Navigator program for year 12 students of English developed by the State Library of New South Wales, something to aim for.
Well by this time most of the attendees had been conferencing for days, we were absolutely bushed. I’m de-RAILed.
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