UP staff members serve in MAIG at the 18th Annual LIASA Conference

The 18^th LIASA Annual Conference took place at the Birchwood Hotel in Gauteng from 2 to 6 October 2017.

Three staff members of the Department of Library Services serve on the LIASA MAIG (Marketing and Advocacy Interest Group) Executive Committee: Elsabé Olivier as the Chair, Gerda Ehlers as the Public Relations Officer and Cora Bezuidenhout as the Treasurer. We attended the conference in our capacity as MAIG Executive members and not only introduced the new MAIG Lightning Round Sessions to the Conference on Tuesday 2 October 2017, but also hosted a successful Annual General Meeting on Wednesday 4 October 2017.

At the Annual General Meeting each LIASA MAIG member was surprised by the donation of a copy of the book “We are the champions: the champion trees of South Africa” – a unique and stunningly illustrated record of the 75 officially designated 'Champion Trees' of South Africa for their libraries. This book was donated to the Chair by the authors Enrico and Erna Liebenberg and it was the authors’ wish that these books find a place in the libraries of South Africa for every tree lover and those who value the conservation and protection of our natural heritage for future generations.

The new Lightning Round session was extremely popular – more chairs had to be carried into the venue due to the huge interest in this session. During the Lightning round session library marketers had the opportunity to share a successful marketing campaign or outreach activity of their libraries, but in a time period of only 5 minutes. Many found this tough to do!  Seven marketers from academic and research libraries, school libraries and public and community libraries competed for the first prize – a tablet sponsored by UKS. The three judges Elsabé Olivier (UP), Gerda Ehlers (UP) and Neesha Ramsumar (Universal Knowledge Software (Pty) Ltd) unanimously declared René Schoombee, an Information Facilitator of Laerskool Rustenburg the winner.

I am proud of our UP colleagues who support LIASA by being active members and who also play a leadership role on a national level. MAIG’s objective is to unite library and information workers responsible for marketing and advocacy, to exchange new ideas and experiences around marketing, and to advance marketing and advocacy of library and information services in South Africa.

LIASA MAIG members with their copies of the book "we are the Champions".