Cross Currents 2010 Joint Conference

The Australian Law Librarians’ Association (ALLA) and the New Zealand Law Librarians’ Association (NZLLA) held their second joint conference at the Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne on 29 September - 1st October 2010.

Message from Petal Kinder - Co-Chair of the Conference

The conference was extremely successful with over 220 attendees and feedback received has been very positive.

The planning of this conference was undertaken by a Joint Committee consisting of an Australian committee convened by Petal Kinder and a New Zealand committee convened by Kate Anthony.  Planning began in early 2009 with bi-monthly teleconferences progressing to monthly as the date drew closer. Sub-committees were formed to take on roles such as programme, marketing, sponsorship etc.

The Sponsorship sub-committee was very successful seeking sponsorship and Trade exhibitors for the conference. Platinum sponsorship was secured from LexisNexis and was very much appreciated. Thomson Reuters became a Gold sponsor with Gale Cengage Learning and SAI Global both becoming silver sponsors. CCH, First Software Solutions and HeinOnline all provided Bronze sponsorship. Both ALLA and NZLLA truly value the contribution made by these sponsors, without whom the conference would not have been as successful.

The Programme committee, headed by John Botherway, worked together as a team to come up with ideas for speakers and topics.  There was a nice balance of Australian and New Zealand speakers with an excellent balance of trans-Tasman topics. There has been a lot of very positive feedback on the programme with 96% of Survey respondents giving an overall rating for the conference of good to excellent.

The Conference dinner was held at the Melbourne Aquarium and the setting was stunning as well as novel. Catering for the conference was provided by an external company based in Carlton, Mary and Steve, and was highly commended by all attendees for the excellent quality of food, beverages and service.

PAMS Association Managers were hired as conference organisers The Committee and the Trade appreciated the way PAMS assisted them and the level of professionalism, enthusiasm and the depth of knowledge they brought to the Registration table.

Conference Website

The official Conference website is currently still available but will be decomissioned in due course. Information of lasting value such as papers (abstracts and full papers), podcasts, photos and information about the speakers will be available from within the ALLA website.

Please note, to view the program, papers, podcasts, speakers and photos, you will need to be an ALLA member and have logged in. Once you have done so, you'll see the relevant menu items to your left.

Conference Twitter

The Theme: "Cross Currents: Charting our Future..."

The name of the conference represents the waters which both separate, and yet bind Australia, New Zealand, the Asia-Pacific region and countries such as the United States.

Following this theme, the programme included such topics as:

• emerging technologies;
• trends in the profession;
• developments in law publishing and knowledge management; and

• the future of libraries.

 Committee

Platinum

Gold

Silver

Bronze