WISENET continues to benefit from Affiliate Membership of FASTS (Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies)and its membership of WIP (Women into Politics). These coordinating bodies represent our interests as scientists and as women, by arranging conferences on policy matters, by lobbying and representations to governments. An informal liaison was established in 1998 with Australian Science Communicators involving exchange of newsletters and information on activities, comparable to existing liaisons with Women in Chemistry, Women in Engineering and the National Women's Media Committee. WISENET was represented in 1998 at the annual federal Round Table Meeting of Women's Non-Government Organisations.
Communication is chiefly maintained through the regular issues of the Wisent Journal, to which members are encouraged to send contributions and correspondence. The Website, newly established in 1998 (see Report) records updated information on relevant activities. The e-mail network of members has become more comprehensive, 59% of members having provided e-mail addresses.
The Link-representatives in each capital city, listed in the Journal, provide a nucleus for regional groups of members. Each such group was able in late 1998-early 1999 to hold a social function for local members to publicise Science Futures, Wisent's 1998 careers publication for schools. These functions were designed to bring together members and other interested people, to provide publicity for the Network's aims and encourage new members. Several of these functions were reported in the Wisenet Journal: those in Brisbane, Melbourne and Wollongong in Issue 49, November 1998 which featured a cover photograph of Wollongong celebrations, and the Perth event was described in Issue 50, February 1999.
WISENET is collaborating with the CSIRO union, FASTS and the National Tertiary Education Union in organising a conference in Melbourne to be held in November 1999. Planning discussions for this conference have included Link Team members from Victoria and from NSW.
Canberra.
ACT now has two representatives, Sue Stocklmayer (who is Public Officer
of WISENET Incorporated) and Janet Salisbury. Sue attended the 1998 Round
Table meeting organised by the Office of the Status of Women for the Minister
Senator Jocelyn Newman. Janet was nominated to attend the 1999 Round table
Meeting to which Wisenet was invited. Janet arranged a welcome by the Canberra
group for Dr Nancy Lane during her Australian lecture tour.
Sydney, Central Link Team.
The Sydney steering group had 5 informal meetings since the 1998 AGM,
meetings which sometimes combined workshops for enveloping the Journals. The
WISENET project planned for 1999, to promote science to women in remote areas,
did not proceed owing to lack of funding.
Sydney activities included participation in several conferences and meetings:
Diana Temple
Since the 1998 AGM, four issues of the Wisenet Journal (J 48-51) have been produced, including the 50th edition - quite a landmark.
J49 was put together by the Wollongong Team - Wendy Russell (Editor), Renate Griffiths, Sharon Robinson, Suchandra Balachandran and Toni O’Neill.
The Journal then returned to the Sydney Team comprising Julie Evans, Margaret Hartley, Judy Mackinolty, Heather Rossiter, Diana Temple, and Jean Hollis Weber. Jean retired as Hon. Editor to move on to the management of the Website and was replaced by Julie Evans. Judy Mackinolty has continued the important task of compiling News and Notes.
Andrew Netherwood has done a wonderful job with the layout in all four issues and Image Desktop Publishing has continued as our printer. Production of the journal has become even more streamlined this year. Even though Andrew is based in Wollongong, we communicate and transfer articles and images via email and have overcome the inevitable problems of incompatible software. It is now possible to obtain a copy of the layout from the web and print it out using Acrobat Reader. Many thanks to Andrew for his patience and perseverance.
Thanks to the many people who wrote or sourced articles over the past year. J48 had a Wollongong focus and included Science in Antarctica by Sharon Robinson. J49 included an excellent account of Audrey Cahn’s career by Leanne Tilley. In J50 we were delighted to congratulate Diana Temple’s AM by making her our "cover girl". This issue also included author and title indexes of Journals 1 to 50 compiled by Margaret Hartley. These indexes have been placed on the Website. J49 and J50 also included the last four of the Science Futures profiles, written by Nancy Ross, which were not included in the J47 special edition. Our main feature in J51 was Rosemary Sutton’s article Is CSIRO still a man’s world? which discussed the EEO development in CSIRO since 1984. We have already received some interesting feedback from this article which we hope to pursue in J52. J51 also included an obituary of Toni O’Neill who died in April. Toni was a the link-person for Wollongong and had contributed a great deal to Wisenet.
Next year: The Wollongong Team has asked to produce another edition, in memory of Toni O’Neill, and Canberra has also expressed interest in producing an issue. We would be delighted if anyone else is interested. Now that the production process is completely electronic the physical location of the editorial team can be anywhere.
Finally, a special thanks goes to Diana Temple for her guidance of the novice editor, her energy in discovering potential articles, her hosting of the packing evenings and the heroic task of actually taking the boxes to the Post Office.
Julie Evans
After several false starts over the past few years, the WISENET Web site finally went online again in October 1998, hosted at the University of Sydney through the kind intervention of Professor Graham Johnston of the Department of Pharmacology. As Web site editor, I have slowly been putting back issues of the Journal and other information on the site. Six complete issues of the Journal (including Science Futures), plus the index of profiles, are online, and I am slowly getting all the profiles online as well. It's a slow process since I need to scan the older profiles (many of the newer profiles I already had in electronic form, so they could be done quickly and easily).
I have not attempted to do anything fancy with the layout, partly because I want to ensure the site is accessible to people with older browsers or with limited vision. I do plan to improve the layout as I have time, though still ensuring that it stays within the accessibility guidelines. It's a bit boring, especially as compared to other organisations' sites; however, some of the others aren't very accessible.
The main requirement still remaining is publicity for the site: far more needs to be done, in terms of registering with search engines and contacting other sites to get a link to ours, but also in terms of publicising the site as we publicise WISENET in general. As Web editor, I need to (and will) deal with the search engines, but everyone in WISENET can assist in general publicity. Members can also assist by letting me know of relevant sites of interest that we could contact for reciprocal links.
Jean Hollis Weber
Nominations for the Central Link Team for 1999-2000 were accepted at a special WISENET meeting held in Sydney on August 9 to follow up AGM business. The following positions were filled. Members in other centres are urged to consider taking their turn at Wisenet's administration, which should be rotating.