“Rising Dragons, Soaring Bananas” International Conference

Henry Liu from Mt Roskill Community Library attended Going Bananas, a yearly international conference organised by New Zealand Chinese Association (NZCA), which was set up in 1935. This year, the conference title was Rising Dragons, Soaring Bananas, and was held by NZCA in association with ISSCO (the International Society for the Studies of Chinese Overseas).

Differing from the three previous conferences, Rising Dragons, Soaring Bananas had a Community Session and an ISSCO Breakout Session running at the same time.

About 350 representatives from different places around New Zealand, China, Singapore, Australia, Fiji, Canada and United States attended the meeting. Auckland City Libraries sent her eight staff to attend.

Sam Minchin, Service Delivery Manager – online, gave a presentation at the Community session on the first afternoon to launch the Chinese Digital Community, which enormously raised audience interest. The Chinese Digital Community contains topics (i.e. articles, stories), photos, documents, videos, audios and web links, and is expected to grow and evolve over time as people add to it.

It was designed to preserve the heritage of the Chinese living in New Zealand, and is for anyone and everyone who's interested in sharing information about what it means to be Chinese.

"We hope the site will provide future generations with better, faster and easier access to information that houses the memories of those who have contributed deeply to the building of this nation," says Kai Luey, Chairman, NZ Chinese Association.

On the second morning’s seminar, “Using Chinese Communities Online”, Yan Wang and Kah-Bee Chow demonstrated in groups how to use the site and helped attendees to upload their photos, family history documents, etc.. According to the observation on the Chinese Digital Community website, the number of documents, topics and images added after Sam’s presentation doubled, tripled and even quadrupled. The number is still going up steadily.

The conference lasted for two days from 18-19 July in Owen G Glenn Building, Business School, The University of Auckland. You can view the conference papers and presentation by speakers, online.

Ninth Australian Library History Conference

On 25-27 June 2009 David Verran presented an abstract to the Ninth Australian Library History conference in Melbourne on Government promotion of public libraries in New Zealand, 1869 – 1935.

I had three goals to achieve whilst there:

1. The first was to visit the Victorian Archives Centre (also known as the Public Record Office and have an in depth conversation with them about the practical applications of Web 2 technology. As with us, they are progressing the provision of wikis and public accessibility to database content, with the aim of facilitating online hosting of audio and visual content from Victorian residents - akin to the Kete pilots we have underway here.
   
   
2. The second was the State Library of Victoria and to eventually leave with a bundle of leaflets etc from their Genealogy Librarian. What was satisfying was the acknowledgement that what they were doing is what we were doing, that we both share similar problems, but in some ways we have moved further into digitisation. I was nevertheless taken aback when it was suggested that once you digitise something then you can discard the original index! What they did have also, which we don't, is a voiced activated people summoning system called Vocera (an IBM system).
   
   
3. The third was the main official reason for attending: the Ninth Australian Library History Conference - subtitled 'Collections, characters and communities'. In reality it should have been renamed the Australasian Library History Conference, as it was attended by both myself speaking on nineteenth and early twentieth century New Zealand library history, and by Mary Ronnie who delivered the 2009 Foxcroft lecture - Carnegie down under, a century of the Dunedin Public Library. The proceedings will be published, and it was great to give a New Zealand library history perspective to the conference

The conference

The first conference devoted to Australian library history dates from 1984 and in 2009 with two speakers from New Zealand and two Carnegie Corporation researchers from the United States of America the ninth became effectively an Australasian one. I hope that the tenth will be officially called an Australasian Conference.

Back in 2004, I attended the first international conference on the history of mechanics’ institutes, which was held at exactly the same venue and in the same room. Thus, when I spoke this time on government promotion of public libraries in New Zealand, from 1869 to 1935, I felt I was continuing the story from the 2004 paper I delivered.

To a New Zealander, papers on interloan for Australian special libraries, a history of the law librarians’ association in Australia, and personalities at the Victorian Supreme Court Library had few points of similarity. However, many will know of the Carnegie Corporation and it’s funding of 18 New Zealand public libraries, including Thames and Dunedin, along with the financial support given to the far-reaching Munn-Barr report. John Barr from Auckland City Libraries joined Ralph Munn from Pittsburgh to investigate New Zealand libraries in 1934, and issue this crucial report. The two American researchers attending this conference are trawling through the various repositories of Carnegie Corporation archival material, and their contribution was most interesting in establishing points of comparison with Australia.

Four papers made at least part reference to the Munn–Pitt report, which is the equivalent report for Australia, and it was very useful to make cross comparisons. What was also interesting was hearing about mechanics’ institutes particularly in Victoria. Mechanics’ institutes virtually died out here in New Zealand by the late nineteenth century, and eventually local council funded public libraries replaced them. Auckland City Libraries started out in 1880 in the former premises of the Auckland Mechanics’ Institute, to 1887, and inherited the Institute’s remaining book stock, along with of course Sir George Grey’s gift of books and those from the old Auckland Provincial Council library.

What is also of note are some of the strong personalities who dominated the Australian library world, and who have had significant biographies written about them, such as John Wallace Metcalfe and Geoffrey Remington. Geoff Alley is the New Zealand equivalent.

Some may remember the circulating libraries, or book clubs. One speaker had done extensive research on their geographic distribution in Melbourne and had located over 1800 separate libraries. Whether this is worth doing here as well is a mute point.

Nevertheless, it is the ongoing contacts that you make at conferences that matter, and some recalled my speaking at the 2004 conference – it was great to catch up.

New Zealand Law Librarians Symposium May 7 & 8 2009

Theresa Rogers attended two sessions at the New Zealand Law Librarians symposium held at Auckland City Libraries.

Employment law
Greg Cain, Partner at Minter Ellison spoke on the changes in employment law since the introduction of the new government. The changes so far are:

• 90 day trial periods
• Kiwi saver
• Restart – redundancy package
• 9 day fortnight

Changes to come are:

• Holidays – the ability of employees to trade in their 4th week of annual leave
• Collective bargaining – Unions will need to get permission from employers to get access to employees at the workplace
• Dispute resolution – mediation will continue to be the primary problem solving mechanism however there will be changes to the Meditation Services so they will be properly resourced with qualified mediators.
• Also, there will be changes to the Employment Relations Authority to ensure that the Authority acts in a more judicial manner (the aim is that this will allow relatively simple access to justice while ensuring robust & judicial results).

The most interesting aspect the information about the 90 day trial periods is aimed at:

• benefitting small to medium employers
• became effective 1 Mar 2009 (by written agreement between the employee & employer)
• During the trial period an employee may be dismissed and the employee is not entitled to bring a PG (Personal Grievance) or any other legal proceedings in respect of the dismissal
• It is not available to employers with more than 20 employees or it the employer has previously employed the employee

However there are issues already surfacing like when does employment ‘begin’ (when they sign the contract or when they physically start work); Do casuals count?; What about fixed term contracts?; What about giving notice?; Also there is no impediment to bringing a PG or legal proceedings other than in respect of the dismissal (eg they could claim racial discrimination).


AUT law school
Professor Noel Cox, Auckland University of Technology spoke on the process of allowing AUT to offer a law degree. Evidently, universities cannot just decide themselves that they are now going to offer law degrees, there is a set process that they must go through. This process is in three stages:

1. The Council of Legal Education must give its approval
2. The New Zealand Universities Vice Chancellors Committee must also give their approval
3. The Tertiary Education Commission must also give their approval

Part of the process is looking at the resources that the institution offers to support this degree (eg staffing expertise and physical resources – with particular attention to library resources).

AUT gained these approvals and in March of this year commenced their first intake of 80-90 law students; the law degree will be fully established in 4 years time. A significant number of these students are mature students (in fact one is 78 years old!!!!). AUT decided that they did not want to be exclusive with this degree so it is available to anyone who wishes to apply, however they must maintain a ‘B’ average or above in the law papers to continue studying.

AUT will be focusing this degree on ‘Commercial Law” – which will have a much more generalist application. Evidently most law graduates leave the profession within 5 years & less that have ever practise law at all. Intellectual Property; Company Law and Legal Ethics will be compulsory papers for all graduates.

AUT are currently recruiting law staff, they have appointed Ian Eagles as Dean of Law & the degree will be located within the faculty of Business – it has become now ‘Business & Law”

Positively Parliament seminar

On the 6th of May 2009 members of Wellington’s Parliamentary Library held a seminar on using and managing parliamentary publications entitled ‘Postively Parliament’. The Parliamentary Library provides a research and information services to Parliament and the public. This seminar was attended by Louise Linnell, Jo Owen, Elspeth Orwin, Janelle Penney & Paul Veart.

Description of parliamentary information service - Katherine Close
Katherine gave a description of the Parliamentary Information Service, which responds to public requests for information about various aspects of parliament. They also act as a referral service for whom to contact within parliament.

Research papers produced by the Parliamentary Library on a variety of subjects are published on the New Zealand Parliament website and provide a wealth of easily accessible data. For example, recent titles include New Zealand Health system reforms; Young people and gangs in New Zealand; Immigration chronology: selected events 1840-2008.

Parliamentary process & documentation – Barbara Stedman & Mike Keane
Barbara, research librarian, law and government team and Mike, eServices Co-ordinator - Training, Parliamentary Library, took us through the parliamentary process and then presented a case study (she used the Policing Bill 2007) to follow the bill through all its stages - from its introduction when the bill is laid on the table (no debates), to the final assent.

In particular, they provided details about the process of bills through each reading and the difference between the Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives and the Journals of the House of Representatives. It was also good to find out exactly what online coverage the Parliament website has for such things as the Supplementary order papers (SOPs), and the usefulness of the Bills Digests.

Parliament’s website & related websites – Mike Keane
Mike Keane, eServices co-ordinator, Parliamentary Library, raced through parliament's revamped website and gave a very good overview of this most interesting and informative site. The recent revamps have made the site even better and of course this is a continual process. The site appears easy to navigate and contains an immense amount of information - check out the home page! He covered other related sites and useful links:

• The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (which has things like a complete ministerial list)
• Dept of Internal Affairs (which has a wealth of varied information)
• Beehive (the official website of the government of New Zealand, which includes releases by ministers)
• and Elections
  

Hidden gems – historical perspective – Katherine Close
Katherine described the wealth of material the Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (often referred to AJHRs) contain, particularly those from the 19th and early 20th centuries. (From the 1940s onwards the level of detail strongly declines). The reports of one-off bodies like Royal Commissions, and the annual reports of government departments, published in the Appendices, contain highly detailed information on a wide range of political, social and economic topics of historical interest. They also include many mentions of individuals which make them of great interest for family history research.

She also spoke of the wide variety of illustrations they contain, including lithographs, maps, charts and photos, and recommended the following reference: “Maps in the Appendices to the Journals, House of Representatives : a chronological listing” / R.P. Hargreaves. Dunedin [N.Z.] : Geography Dept., University of Otago, 1968.

Collection Management – Katherine Close & Cath Anyan
Katherine and Cath covered the state of parliamentary publications in public libraries and universities throughout New Zealand. Publications such as Bills and the Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (A-Js) are kept in a limited number of libraries and in many cases they are in a deteriorating condition (including Auckland City Libraries’ copies of the A-Js). In the case of Bills, many libraries have also thrown their older copies out. Due to this, there is an increasing demand for digitisation of parliamentary publications,

Another area of collection management touched on was statutes. Up until 2003 the Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO) published statutes in bound volumes. However after 2003 there was a change in their policy, with statutes only being published individually. Auckland City Libraries now sources its bound statutes from Brookers, who still publish bound volumes. The reason for this change by the PCO was due to the increasing volume of material available on the parliamentary website.

The final area covered was the trialling of the 'e-committee' process. This has been designed to allow online submissions to select committees and subsequent publication of these submissions on the parliamentary website. Currently the e-committee process has only been used the Commerce Committee's Inquiry into Affordable Housing (and one other), but there are plans to widen its use.


Q&A, feedback, future developments – Moira Fraser & Cath Anyan
The seminar finished with a discussion by Moira Fraser regarding future developments, and the possible digitization of more parliamentary papers. There is currently no budget for retrospective digitization, but Moira requested feedback to help inform where best to start and to give information for presenting a business case for funding.

There was a difference of opinion between librarians from public libraries and those working at law firms. While public librarians were keen to see the A-Js digitised, starting from either the nineteenth century or the mid twentieth century, law librarians wanted to see the Parliamentary Debates/Hansards digitised first. Unluckily for both, a lack of funding means neither will be digitised in the near future.