Peak Bodies Forum 2003

Minutes of the meeting held 17 November, 2003

Council Room, National Library of Australia

Present:
Jan Fullerton National Library (Chair)
Warwick Cathro National Library
Jasmine Cameron National Library
Evelyn Woodberry Council of Australian University Librarians
Madeleine McPherson Council of Australian University Librarians
Dagmar Schmidmaier Council of Australian State Libraries
Helena Zobec ALIA TAFE
Jennefer Nicholson ALIA
Christine Mackenzie ALIA
Melanie Adam Australian Law Librarians' Group
Tom Stoddart Federal Libraries Information Network
Pru Mitchell Australian School Library Association
Chris Williams Public Libraries Australia
Joyce Kirk University of Technology, Sydney, representing library educators
Melanie Kammermann Health Libraries Australia
Roslynn Membrey Australasian Parliamentary Libraries Association
Marie-Louise Ayres National Library
Sandra Henderson National Library (minutes)

Ms Fullerton opened the meeting by indicating that the purpose of the Forum is to identify opportunities for joint national action across library sectors. Public Libraries Australia attended the Forum for the first time, and Professor Kirk was invited to attend to represent library educators.

1. DEST infrastructure projects

Ms McPherson introduced this item, saying that the newly funded projects provide a basis for future scholarly communication, and support the research patterns outlined in the Houghton report. A concern is the extent to which the needs of high end researchers may differ from the needs of other users, such as students.
The Australian Research Information Infrastructure Committee (ARIIC) provides advice to DEST, and it is clear DEST has moved from the previous competitive grants process to encouraging collaboration to develop national infrastructure. There were questions about the processes for reporting the progress and outcomes of the projects, and the National Library and CAUL have undertaken to communicate results to the wider community.
ACTION 1. That the National Library and CAUL ensure communication about the DEST projects reaches the wider library community, to assist in the integration of results into other library sectors.

2. MusicAustralia

Dr Ayres from the National Library's Music and Dance Branch provided an overview of the MusicAustralia project, which is to be launched in February 2004 with over 6,000 items. The Library is discussing participation in the project with a number of potential new partners, including universities. There is scope for the application to provide solutions in other areas where the output of research is an art work of some sort. The online storage and delivery of such materials presents problems for many institutions.

3. National site licensing

The discussion on this issue was informed by the paper prepared by David Toll and Eve Woodberry following the previous Peak Bodies Forum.

In recent years there have been a number of purchasing consortia formed (CEIRC, FLIN, CASL). It remains difficult to find products which are of general interest within any group, particularly outside the higher education sector, and this limits the possibility of broader cooperation. Collaboration between consortia also requires a higher level of management, and this is difficult to organise, but several of the groups represented expressed an interest in discussing cooperation.

Ms Kammermann provided an overview of the situation in the health sector, where state health departments are the decision makers. Decisions have usually been made with little consultation with libraries, and in some states arrangements are now starting to fail. Health Libraries Australia would like the issue addressed nationally.

In the TAFE sector, there is state funding, which favours larger states, and there is some inequity because institutions in some states have involvement in both TAFE and university education.

It was agreed that a national forum to discuss licensing and related issues would be a useful development, and several sectors have agreed to undertake some preliminary research into the issues.

An ALIA forum in 2002 discussed the range of existing consortia models and highlighted the need for support for special libraries, which often lack the expertise and resources to negotiate effectively. ALIA is working with CAL on developing a model licence for the corporate sector, and implemented the ALIA CIPS (Co-operative Information Purchasing Services) for ALIA institutional members, in partnership with ALDIS Associates Pty Ltd. A further forum is to be held on February 2, 2004.

Ms Schmidmaier outlined the CASL Consortium arrangements, and has subsequently supplied a briefing paper on this (Attachment 1).

Ms Woodberry outlined the CAUL consortium arrangements and said it would be useful to be able to compare the licence conditions offered to various consortia. Mr Stoddart indicated that FLIN is working on developing some licence conditions which would include permission to share such information.

Ms Fullerton stated that a true national site licence is probably needed for only a few resources, such as an encyclopaedia, dictionary, APAIS and similar resources. For schools, resources such as APAIS are currently unaffordable in many cases. Ms McPherson drew attention to the initiative by the Department of Primary Industries in Queensland, which licenses a number of EBSCO and other databases for statewide use, but use is restricted to individuals.

Ms Fullerton said the issue of client use of licenced resources is closely related to other issues on the agenda, and to recent discussions at the Australian Library Collections Task Force meeting. There is some scope for exploring the issues around opening existing consortia to a wider membership, and Ms Woodberry confirmed that the CAUL agreements already include the TAFE sector where the university involved has a TAFE component.. The extent of common need should be explored between the various sectors, as is happening in NSW where the State Library is investigating closer ties with schools.

ACTION 2. . The National Library will convene a Roundtable on the issue of consortia licensing of electronic resources in the second half of 2004.
ACTION 3. The National Library, CAUL and CASL will undertake research into current licensing principles and practices, and into the feasibility of determining a basic set of national electronic resources.
ACTION 4. The National Library and CAUL will examine the issues around evaluation of e-resources, and particularly the use of COUNTER to measure the use of such resources.

4. Individual access service model

There was a short discussion of this item. Developments of interest include the recent announcement by Amazon of a full-text search facility , and the SETIS project at Sydney University which will provide access to a number of out-of-print titles.

5. Government publications

Since the announcement about the closure of government bookshops, both ALIA and the National Library have held discussions with NOIE. It was agreed that libraries need to be sure what it is they need before they pursue further talks with NOIE and other government agencies. It was decided a RoundTable on the issue would be useful, and groups such as journalists, law societies, the Academies and ACOSS may also have views on this issue. It was decided that a national forum would be a useful way to pursue this. ALIA volunteered to host a Round Table, and the National Library offered to provide assistance in organising the event.
ACTION 5. ALIA will host a Round Table on access to government publications during 2004. The National Library will assist.

6. Digitisation

Digitisation of newspapers is seen as a high priority area. Ms Fullerton indicated that the National Library is preparing a scoping paper on the issue.
ACTION 6. The National Library will distribute a scoping paper on national newspaper digitisation.

7. Research into electronic serials

This issue was addressed in discussion of agenda item 3. The research will be part of the work to be undertaken in the lead-up to the Round Table on the licensing of electronic resources.

8. The national electronic collection

Ms Fullerton told the meeting that the National Library is convening an international conference in November 2004 on the issue of the preservation of digital materials. Mr Williams said it would be useful if the National Library could provide advice to local libraries and authorities on the preservation of records. Ms Fullerton agreed that the Library could develop an information package on this for wide distribution.
ACTION 7. The National Library will prepare a simple information package on the management of publications for long-term access.

9. National store

Although there have been some advances, particularly in the university sector, with state stores, there is no business case for a true national store.

10. Research into user behaviour

The recent DEST report on Changing research practices in the digital information and communication environment will be the subject of a National Scholarly Communications Forum in early 2004. The report confirms that researchers make extensive use of Google, but still place much importance on printed peer reviewed journals. There is a strong move to collaborative research work, and behaviour is still geared to meeting the needs of the current 'reward' system in higher education. The extent to which the behaviour of high end researchers reflects that of all users is unknown, but it is possible undergraduates and other library users have quite different needs and behaviour patterns.
ACTION 8. The National Library, CAUL and CASL should seek to be involved in the NSCF meeting to be held in early 2004.

11. Senate report : The Role of Libraries in the Online Environment

Ms Cameron said that the timeframe for a response to the report was unknown, but similar reports in the past had not been responded to quickly by the Government. It was the general view of the meeting that lobbying both State and Federal members of Parliament may be useful to ensure that the report remains topical, and public libraries could promote the recommendations to local and State representatives. Ms Schmidmaier suggested that cross-sectoral discussions in the states could be useful. ALIA had proposed these discussions at its National Policy Forum.
ACTION 9. All Peak Bodies representatives to urge their organisations and members to contact State and Federal parliamentary members to express support for the recommendations of the report, and to urge a timely response from the Federal Government.
ACTION 10. Public Libraries Australia members should promote the recommendations to local and state governments.
ACTION 11. ALIA will convene cross-sectoral discussions on the report in each state.

12. Review of the Digital Agenda Act (DAA)

Ms Nicholson introduced the paper on this topic, saying that both the current review and the ongoing Free Trade Agreement negotiations could have major implications for libraries and users. The outcomes of both are due are due at the end of 2003. ALIA agreed to produce a one-page information sheet on the FTA issue which could be distributed to libraries.

Ms Cameron indicated that a problem for the National Library in preparing a submission for the DAA review was a lack of factual data. It was agreed that it would be useful to define what was needed to support the library case in the future.

Ms Woodberry reported that CAUL had provided a submission and also been involved in contributing to the AVCC, DEST and ALCC submissions. Ms MacPherson and Ms Woodberry reported that they had a meeting scheduled with DFAT to discuss the FTA on Wednesday this week.
ACTION 12. ALIA will produce an information sheet on the possible copyright implications of the Free Trade Agreement negotiations.
ACTION 13. The National Library will liaise with the Australian Libraries Copyright Committee to define what information should be compiled to support future reviews.

13. Public Libraries Australia (PLA)

Mr Williams reported that a Memorandum of Understanding has been signed between ALIA and Public Libraries Australia. Membership drives for PLA are underway in four states. PLA is developing a proposal for Regional Solutions Program funding, to create a regional information product. The PLA board will meet in Sydney in December.

14. National forums

The meeting was briefed about other planned national meetings. These include a forum on information needs in the visual arts, and the Forum on Library Services for People with Disabilities.

15. Information literacy

The report was noted.

16. Valuation of collections

There was a brief discussion of this issue. Although some delegates were uncertain of the usefulness of undertaking such an exercise, for others it is mandatory. A number of those present indicated that it is useful to be able to cite collection value when arguing for additional funds for the housing and maintenance of collection assets.
ACTION 14. The National Library will make available on its website information about its collection valuation procedures and policies.

17. Independent scholars

Ms McPherson spoke on this issue, saying that for university libraries licensing was not often a major obstacle to provision of access to resources by independent scholars, but issues of security sometimes were. It was thought that genuine independent scholars would be given "special borrower" privileges in most university libraries, but CAUL might need to give more attention to this. It was suggested that it might be informative for a representative of the Independent Scholars Association to be invited to speak to a CAUL meeting.
ACTION 15. The National Library will write to the Independent Scholars Association of Australia, recommending they liaise with CAUL about the issues relating to access to research resources.
ACTION 16. The National Library will ensure the issue of access to electronic resources by independent scholars is on the agenda for the site licensing Round Table.

18. Library education

Professor Kirk spoke briefly about library education. The community of library educators in Australia is small and people are dispersed geographically. There are probably fewer than 40 educators in universities Australia-wide, with little interaction between the different library schools. The community has not had the benefit of the well funded research traditions of the UK and the US and there is only limited research being done in the library schools in most cases.

Teacher-librarianship is an area of concern, because some state governments are not recruiting teacher-librarians. There are only two or three universities now offering teacher-librarian courses. Another growing trend is the recruitment of non-librarians into graduate positions in major libraries. Conversely, fewer than 50% of librarianship graduates go into library jobs, and Ms Fullerton suggested that more needs to be done to promote libraries as good places to work.

It was agreed that it would be useful to continue to invite a representative of library educators to the Peak Bodies meetings.>
ACTION 17. The National Library will invite a representative of library educators to Peak Bodies meetings in the future.
ACTION 18. Professor Kirk will report back to the group about the Peak Bodies meetings.

Other business

The Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences met for the first time in Melbourne recently. CHASS promises to be an important body for libraries. It was agreed by all present that this had been a very useful meeting, and the group should meet more regularly.
ACTION 19. The National Library will convene annual meetings of the Peak Bodies Forum

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Attachment: CASL Consortium 'opt in/opt out' model

 

The CASL Consortium comprising of State, Territory, national and public libraries was formed for the purpose of acquiring access to commercial electronic information resources.

Its aim is to simplify licensing arrangements, improve cost benefits for member libraries, and to explore opportunities for making electronic resources more widely available to Australians, regardless of where they live.

In its development stage the Consortium saw distinct advantages with establishing a 'core set' of products to which all members would subscribe.

It was intended that an optional set of products or 'opt in/opt out' model would be implemented once procedures were established. For a small consortium the 'core set' approach seemed to optimise the potential for negotiating favourable prices with vendors. This approach was also seen as appealing from the point of view of equity of access, with a common set of products and services being available to users of all participating libraries.

In practice, however, there were some impediments to this approach. Some members already had good access arrangements for some products of the identified 'core' products, which was not advantageous to change. If the core set of products were mandatory, this would either exclude that library from the consortium, or those particular products from the core set. In addition, some potential members were better funded than others. Some did not have the funds available for all of the products in the core set.
The Consortium strived for a 'core set' as the ideal, but in practice the core set was limited to just three products.

The CASL Consortium has since expanded and developed and today, uses an 'opt in/opt out' model and has subscriptions to fifteen electronic resources, has six new products under negotiation and has identified around sixteen new products to trial and evaluate in 2004.

Through the forward workplan Consortia members identify the products to be trialled, evaluated and negotiated each calendar year. The workplan is divided into quarters to achieve better alignment across financial years and the budget cycle. This has enabled Members to plan for subscriptions in line with their acquisitions budgets and has streamlined the "ad hoc" approaches from vendors to the Consortium. Each quarter members are forwarded trial information for each of the products identified through the forward workplan. Members are generally given six weeks to trial the products and provide an evaluation and expression of interest to the CASL Convenor.

Evaluations and expressions of interest are collated into one document and sent out to Members for their information. Discussions commence with vendors regarding consortia pricing and access provisions if three or more Members express interest in a product (however negotiations have been undertaken for fewer than three Members when it has been advantageous to purchase a subscription through the Consortium).

The 'opt in/opt out' model is seen as providing the greatest amount of flexibility to Members. However negotiations are sometimes prolonged if the number of interested Members reduces throughout the process.

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