Public Libraries Australia (PLA), the Queensland Public Libraries Association (QPLA), ALIA and the Townsville City Council are partnering to bring you:

QPLA/PLA CONFERENCE 2009 : CHANGE AND CHALLENGE
11 – 14 October 2009 Jupiters Townsville Hotel and Casino

The theme of the conference is appropriately Change and Challenge. It will feature many outstanding speakers and will highlight how we can deal with change and challenges in the three key areas of technology, organisations and community more effectively. The program features several concurrent sessions thereby allowing you to tailor the sessions you attend to your own needs and interests. Check out our exciting programme at the PLA conference website.

Keynote Speakers

Using technology in a time of social and organisational change – Dr Michael Stephens is currently a library and information science educator at the Dominican University Illinois, USA and is an international speaker on libraries, technology and innovation.

Future trends: demographics, libraries and change – Bernard Salt is a highly respected commentator on consumer, cultural and demographic trends. He is a regular contributor to The Australian and the author of The Big Shift: Welcome to the Third Australian Culture.

Public Libraries, social inclusion and community development – Noel Pearson is an influential Aboriginal Australian lawyer and land rights activist. He believes Indigenous policy needs to change direction, notably in relation to welfare, substance abuse, child protection and economic development.

Other speakers

The conference program (available here) contains an exciting range of speakers from public, state and the National Library of Australia covering topics such as digitisation, cultural change, community development, managing collections and much more.

Forums

Three exciting forums will bring together panels of passionate and committed library professionals to discuss and debate the themes of the conference.

Blog and tags

You can follow the latest news before, during and after the conference by checking the conference blog (http://auspublib2009.wordpress.com/) or adding it to your favourite feedreader (RSS feed).

• Read speaker profiles to find out who will be speaking about what at the conference.
• Discover which companies will be exhibiting at the conference, and find out about special deals.
• Keep up to date with changes to the conference program .
• Discover the best things to do and places to visit in Townsville.
• Read reports of conference sessions.
• Ask questions, debate and discuss the keynote and concurrent sessions.
• Look for last minutes changes to tours, programs etc.

For those of you who like to blog, tweet, photoshare and slideshare, there is also a conference tag. Please add the tag to your posts, photos, tweets etc. so your colleagues from around the world can follow the conference through your reports, discussions, debates and images.

Tag for blogs, photoshare and slideshare: qpla09
Hashtag for Twitter: #qpla09

I look forward to meeting you in Townsville in October!