Bibnuus / BibNews

 

The LIASA Western Cape branch presented in conjunction with the US Embassy a workshop regarding advocacy: Are you a library advocate? Marketing and promoting your library. Annemarie Maritz, Joanne Arendse, Melinda Heese, Lucia Schoombee and Marié Roux attended this workshop held at the US Consulate in Cape Town. The workshop was presented by Karen Hartman, Information Resource Officer of the US Embassy in Pretoria, and Kathryn M. Harris, Director of the Illinois Historical Library. Marketing library services as well as how to target stakeholders, decision makers and customers were covered. A large part of the day was devoted to a practical session in which each group had to design an advocacy plan for a specific scenario.

   
       Annemarie Maritz                  Joanne Arendse                 Lucia Schoombee    
      
   
      Marié Roux                      Melinda Heese

Johan Engelbrecht attended the Sabinet Online Client Conference from 8 to10 September in the Kruger National Park, Skukuza. Approximately 100 other clients of Sabinet were represented at the conference. The programme included national and international speakers, for example Aart Boessenskool's (RAU) talk about "Where are you in the value chain?". Rein van Charldorp of OCLC Pica (Netherlands) delivered a talk on "The OCLC environmental scan". On a more informal level Freek Venter gave an overview of the Kruger National Park and Quinton Coetzee (of 50/50) did a very interesting talk about the San people of the Kalahari by comparing their lifestyle with that of a corporate business. The following quote from Aart Boessenskool made an impression on Johan: "Create more value than you consume".

SARIS (the South African Research Information System) held a workshop in the auditorium of the JS Gericke Library on 21 September 2004. This project is aimed at creating better access to online resources for South African researchers. The topic of the workshop was SARIS - Empowering the researcher via access to online resources.

New challenges for librarians and users were discussed as well as a tentative plan to improve access for all researchers, for example by means of "open access" (free availability of royalty-free literature on the public internet). The important need for digital curation emerged. The plan is to create integrated management systems which will be cost effective and sustainable. The following staff members of the Library Service attended the workshop: Elda Nolte, Johan Mouton, Berta Els, Elbie van Wyk, Miriam Terblanche, Henriëtte Swart, Pieter du Plessis, Marleen van Wyk, Annemarie Maritz, Steven Fredericks and Delene Pretorius.