Australian Church Library Association - its Story

The Australian Church Library Association was started in 1990 with a meeting at Maughan Uniting Church, Adelaide, South Australia.  The pivotal person at the beginning of the association was the late Margaret Stiller.  Not only was she the founder but the moving spirit.  With single-minded devotion she called together a group of people dedicated to promoting the Christian faith through church libraries.  In the ensuing years she toured Australia encouraging individual church librarians in the growth of their own libraries as well as in networking within various Australian states.

In autumn of 1994 the first edition of the national "Off the Shelf" magazine was published with Margaret as its inaugural editor.

On 9-11 September 1994 the first Australia-wide conference of church librarians was held at Nunyara Conference Centre, Belair, South Australia.

Victoria was the first state outside South Australia to form its own chapter.  Their first meeting was at Glen Waverley Church of Christ on 30 July 1995.  Dorothy Carey was elected president and Rachel Hardie secretary.  The Victorian chapter also hosted the second biennial conference at Lower Plenty on September 4-6, 1996.

 At the beginning of 1996 Margaret Stiller travelled to Brisbane for a meeting of interested Queensland librarians.  A small group met at the Lutheran Church Office at Milton on 23 March.  The Queensland librarians then organised their first meeting at the Liguori Reading Room, Brisbane in July of that year.

 The New South Wales chapter was established on March 20^th, 1999 at St John the Baptist Anglican Church, Ashfield with 26 in attendance.  Members were distributed over a wide area from Canberra, Sydney, Newcastle and Armidale. This chapter was disbanded in 2003.

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