The Research Applications in Library and Information Science (RAILS) 6 conference was held on Friday the 22nd of January, 2010 at Charles Sturt University’s Canberra Campus. Academic, student and practitioner researchers from around Australia gathered to share their research, renew friendships, and dream up new projects. The organising committee for this year's RAILS consisted of Dr Anne Lloyd, Dr Bob Pymm, and Damian Lodge - many thanks to them for their efforts, much appreciated. On behalf of ALIA, Derek Whitehead, University Librarian at Swinburne presented the ALIA RAILS 6 Scholarship to Jia Tina Du, PhD candidate at QUT (above left).
The program was diverse with papers on a wide range of topics, from an analysis of the choices and decisions that inform entry into the library and information profession, to the role of cognitive coordination in web search. The full program is available at: http://www.csu.edu.au/faculty/educat/sis/RAILS6.html.
An important part of any meeting is the social networking - at right Kerry Smith from Curtin infiltrates a table of blokes at lunch (Gobinda Chowdury, UTS; Peter Macauley,RMIT; Michael Olsson UTS; Damian Lodge, CSU; Mike Middleton QUT and Mark Brogan, ECU )! Apologies to all the other people I took photos of. I am a very poor photographer, and you wouldn't thank me for posting them :-) Here's to meeting in another year at the next RAILS!
