by Rob Penfold | Jan 5, 2026 | Events
📔 Event Description
Join ALIA HLA and VHLC (Victorian Health Libraries Consortia) for an insightful session on navigating the complex world of publisher negotiations. Learn practical approaches to securing better deals, managing costs, and building strong partnerships that benefit your health library and community. Whether you’re new to negotiations or looking to refine your skills, this event will provide actionable tips and real-world examples to help you achieve the best outcomes.
🎁 Presenters
Cass Gorton – VHLC & Monash Health
John Prentice – VHLC & ANZCA
Juliet Marconi – SA Health
Gnana Segar – Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District
Cass is the Manager – Access and Discovery at Monash Health Library and the Chair of the Victorian Health Libraries Consortium (VHLC). Cass has a background in librarianship, archives, and records management in health, government, and higher education.
John has been the library manager at the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists for over 9 years, and has been a VHLC committee member for much of that time working on deals with Springer, McGraw-Hill, Taylor and Francis and Elsevier. In a previous life at Victoria University he worked on licensing as part of the library e-services team.
Juliet is the Knowledge Manager for SA Health Library Service (SAHLS), responsible for the strategic directions for the Service and enterprise-wide procurement of online resources. Juliet rejoined SA Health in March 2021 when she returned from Cairns, Queensland. She joined the SAHLS team as Manager Library Services for the Northern Adelaide Local Health Network team in late 2022. Juliet was permanently appointed to the SAHLS Knowledge Manager role in January 2025. Since qualifying as a librarian, Juliet has worked in various health library management roles within both South Australia and Queensland, including project management roles in digital health, online services and information & knowledge management services. She is passionate about strategic planning and empowering staff to achieve their professional goals.
Gnana was educated in India and possesses 36 years of experience across three countries. He has dedicated his career to the evolution of Academic and Hospital libraries. Gnana is a specialist in leveraging technology to bridge the gap between complex information and user engagement. His career highlights include leading the creation of the first union catalogue across five universities and implementing the first open-source catalogue within NSW Health. His mission is to champion evidence-based clinical decision-making by providing timely, high-impact information services. Alongside his team, he focuses on empowering health practitioners with the skills to find, appraise, and apply research. By ensuring the best research is at the fingertips of those who need it, they directly contribute to superior patient outcomes and the long-term vision of healthy people and resilient communities.
✅ ALIA HLA Competencies
C3: Resources
C5: Digital, ehealth & technology
View HLA Competencies
🕑 When
Wed 25 Mar 2026
1-2 pm (Vic/NSW/TAS/ACT) / 12-1 pm (QLD) / 12:30-1:30 pm (SA) / 11:30am-12:30 pm (NT) / 10-11 am (WA) / 3-4 pm (NZ)
🗺️ Where
Online webinar Zoom – a link will be sent the day prior.
This event will be recorded and sent to attendees following the event.
💵 Cost
ALIA Members – Free (one of 14 reasons to consider HLA membership)
Non-Members – $30
📝 Register
Register / Additional Information
🧗♀️ Professional Development
One CPD hour towards Health Professional Development Scheme
by Rob Penfold | Jan 6, 2026 | Events
📝 Event Description
Join us for an engaging lunchtime session exploring the vital role health libraries play in safeguarding organisational history.
Discover practical strategies for building and caring for historical collections, and learn how to access National Library of Australia Community Heritage Grants to support preservation and digitisation projects.
Whether you’re starting a collection or planning a heritage initiative, this session will provide actionable tips and inspiration to keep your health service’s story alive.
🗣️ Presenters
Pat Stott – Eastern Health
Michelle Pitman – Grampians Health
Tania Barry – Northern Health
Cherish Mcdonald – Hunter New England Local Health District
Pat graduated as a Library Technician and worked extensively in primary schools. Joined Eastern Health in about 2008 as a Technician. Completed a Librarian Degree in 2017 with an interest in archives. Gained a Masters Degree in Data Management. Loves learning new stuff, loves discarding and weeding stuff, doesn’t want to specialise, and has a paint and art supply addiction.
Michelle qualified as a late-in-life librarian from Curtin University in 2019 and has worked at the Horsham campus of Grampians Health since November that year. This role has her straddling the vicissitudes of being, simultaneously, a “solo” librarian, while also being part of the library team at the Ballarat campus. She’s however, very grateful for this support or it would get very challenging very quickly! Her professional interests are library marketing, health history and generative artificial intelligence in health and scholarly communications. Her personal interests are her cat ‘Lola’, sourdough bread making, reading Sci-Fi & epic fantasy novels and watching endless YouTube chateau renovation channels!
Tania is an experienced information and knowledge professional with over 20 years’ experience across academic, local government and health sectors. Her work focuses on strategic leadership, workforce development and building high-performing teams that deliver inclusive, community-focused services. In her current role at Northern Health, she leads library and information literacy services, ensuring staff, students and community members can access and apply evidence-based information to support health outcomes.
Cherish a wearer of multiple hats, she can wax an eyebrow (was a beauty therapist in a past life) while doing a literature review (poorly, area of PD) and whip up a smart-looking CANVA graphic to market library services. Cherish is passionate about equity of access to health information and library services, a good espresso, the collection and maintenance of organisational history, and library marketing. She recently completed a Master of Library & Information Science at CSU, and is on the organising committee for the Hospital Librarians COP. Most importantly, she has an honorary PhD in snack collection for her two chaotic children and French bulldogs, in the words of Em Rusciano, a “maximalist power queen” and very tired.
✅ ALIA HLA Competencies
CA3: Resources
View HLA Competencies
🕐 When
Tuesday, 28 April 2026
1-2pm (Vic/NSW/TAS/ACT/QLD);
12:30-1:30pm (SA/NT);
11am-12pm (WA);
3-4pm (NZ)
🗺️ Where
Online webinar Zoom – a link will be sent the day prior.
This event will be recorded and sent to attendees following the event.
💵 Cost
ALIA Members – Free (One of 14 reasons to consider HLA Membership)
Non-Members – $30
✍️ Register
Register / Additional Information
🧗♀️ Professional Development
One CPD hour towards Health Professional Development Scheme
by Rob Penfold | Jan 16, 2026 | Events
📝 Event Description
This hands-on workshop will show you how to use Canva to create engaging and professional videos for library promotion and education resources. This session covers:
• Editing a Canva video template
• Image and text editing, animations and effects
• Using Canva record and screen capture
By the end of this training, you will have created your own short video ready to share for library promotion or educational purposes.
People who have prior experience with Canva will get the most out of this session. There will be hands-on activities. Participants will need access to a Canva account prior to the webinar.
👉 Numbers restricted to 40 participants – get in quick
🧑🏫 Trainers
• Eunice Ang – Medical Librarian, Northern Health
• Keren Moskal – Clinical Librarian and Education Lead – Monash Health
✅ ALIA HLA Competencies
C4: Leadership and management
C6: Health literacy and teaching
View HLA Competencies
🧗♀️ Continuing Professional Development (CPD)
Worth 1 hour towards the Health Professional Development Scheme
🕐 When
Tuesday, 5 May 2026 1:00 pm – 2:15 pm AEST (75 minutes)
🌏 Where
Online Zoom webinar – a link will be sent the day prior.
💸 Cost
ALIA Members – $40 (savings of $35 if you were an HLA Member)
Non-Members – $75
✍️ Register
Register / More information
by Rob Penfold | Mar 12, 2026 | Events
“A four-day, free, virtual professional development event for information professionals supporting evidence synthesis services in libraries and other information workplaces”
Registration is free and includes the full schedule of symposium sessions. All sessions will in English, held on Zoom, with Zoom-integrated captioning and transcripts available.
Shortly before the event, you will receive an access link for the LESSS Zoom event by email
Registration closes on June 11, 2026.
Sessions (except for networking events and roundtables) will be recorded with transcripts, but presenters may chose to not release that recording for viewing after the conference
View the Symposium home page
by Rob Penfold | Mar 12, 2026 | News
Set aside these dates for the 2026 Health Libraries Conference
This is a joint effort between HLA & HLi, so it will be twice as good
Theme: The Fire Within : Passion and Purpose in Health Libraries
More details to follow …
