WA Retirees Annual Report

This annual report is too good to hide in our wiki!  Thanks Kerry

ALIA Retirees WA

Annual Report 1 January – 31 December 2015

Since taking on the Convenors job with the ALIA Retirees Group WA in May 2014 it has been my wish to encourage conviviality and “staying connected” amongst the group. We continued the informal meetings started by WA’s inaugural convenor the late Pat Gallaher, at the Aroma Coffee Shop at the State Library of WA and since the beginning of 2015 a core group of around 6 of our circa 30 members has been attending, with meetings held on 29 June and 19 October 2015 where our conversations included:

• Making contact with local ALIA groups to advise them of our interest in their activities and making an effort to attend Branch events;
• Contemplating future direction/s for the ALIA Honours Board;
• Continuing an oral histories of WA librarians project started whilst K Smith was at Curtin University;
• Visiting a variety of libraries;
• Contributing articles to inCite, particularly on “Staying Connected”;
• Noting that Life Member Mollie Jones had passed away and organising an obituary for the Retirees website;

But we wanted more than just having coffee and a chat so in 2015 some of us:

• Visited the relatively new Success Public Library in the southern outskirts of Perth in March 2015, and took in their “Pram Jam” session where there were lots of mums, lots of littlies and lots of prams, all acting out the rhymes and stories being told. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• Visited the Wanneroo Public Library and Community History Centre and Museum in July 2015:

• Visited the newly refurbished Curtin University Library, an outing organised by its recently retired University Librarian Imogen Garner, who is a member of our group:

• As if that wasn’t enough there was the ALIAWest Great Library Quiz Night fundraiser on Thursday 3 December 2015 where we did miserably.

The Quiz night Our table

Our first coffee meeting for 2016, where we will continue our conversations on many of the items listed above and plan our year, will be after the heat has passed, at the end of February 2016.

Dr Kerry Smith, FALIA

Convenor, ALIA Retirees WA