Peak Bodies Forum 2005
DRAFT
Minutes of the meeting of the Peak Bodies Forum, Monday December 12, 2005
Present:
| Jan Fullerton | National Library, chair |
| Tony Boston | National Library |
| Warwick Cathro | National Library |
| Jasmine Cameron | National Library |
| Mark Corbould | National Library |
| Anita Crotty | Council of Australian University Librarians |
| Lynn Fletcher | TAFE Libraries Australia |
| Pamela Gatenby | National Library |
| Gillian Hallam | Australian Library and Information Association |
| Cheryl Hamill | Health Libraries Australia |
| Ross Harvey | Charles Sturt University (on behalf of library educators) |
| Sandra Henderson | National Library (minutes) |
| Kym Holden | Australian Government Libraries Information Network |
| Geraldine McNulty | Australian School Library Association |
| Roxanne Missingham | Association of Parliamentary Libraries of Australasia |
| Jennefer Nicholson | Australian Library and Information Association |
| Anne-Marie Schwirtlich | Council of Australian State Libraries |
| Chris Zegelin | Australian Law Librarians' Group |
Apology: Lynne Makin, Public Libraries Australia
Minutes of the previous meeting.
There were no comments on the minutes of the previous meeting.
Senate Report on the Role of Libraries in the Online Environment. An update.
Jasmine Cameron spoke to the paper summarising progress on the recommendations of the Senate report. The Report remains a strong statement of issues the library community believes are important. There has been progress on many of the issues, despite the Government's response to the report which made it clear that federal funding would not be made available for initiatives proposed in the recommendations. There continues to be ongoing discussions about the legal deposit of electronic publications. Although progress has been slow for some years it is expected that DCITA will release a discussion paper in the new year. Roxanne Missingham suggested that a presentation on the outcomes could be the topic of an ALIA conference paper. Jan Fullerton agreed that more dissemination of the current status of the recommendations would be useful, and a report should be prepared for members of the ECITA committee and state ministers responsible for library matters.
National Licensing.
The recent National Licensing Forum agreed to move forward with the proposal for national licensing of selected electronic resources. Four working groups have been formed by the Reference Group, to look at products, costings, governance and a communications strategy. The products group has surveyed libraries only recently, and a report on the results will be available in the new year. There was a very high number of responses from school and public libraries, and over 800 responses in total.
Cheryl Hamill spoke briefly about the National Library for Health proposal being developed by the Department of Health and Ageing. A paper on national licensing of some clinical decision support resources will go to a meeting of the Australian Health Information Council in February 2006.
Anne-Marie Schwirtlich said there has been a lot of progress, and it might be useful if this could be communicated to the members of the Senate committee . Although the library sector has achieved a great deal, there remains much to be done. A national strategy for digitisation, for example, would be very useful.
Collections Council of Australia.
Anne-Marie Schwirtlich is the library sector representative on the CCA, and gave an update on CCA activities in 2005.
The CCA in 2005 has set up its office in Adelaide and established a web presence.
Work on a strategic plan is progressing. CCA operates on very limited finds, but is undertaking a range of activities, including involvement in the Australian Committee of the Blue Shield, a survey to determine skills needs in the conservation field over the next five years, and a submission to the Productivity Commission about the conservation of built heritage in Australia.
The relationship between CCA and the Collections Australia Network is being examined. CASL's view is that particularly useful activities for the CCA would be a national strategy and policy for digitisation, and an inquiry into collecting in Australia. Previous inquiries (such as the Myer inquiry into the visual arts) have succeeded in raising the political profile of the issues under consideration. If these activities are not undertaken the value of CCA to the library sector is limited. There will be five meetings of the CCA in 2006, and Anne-Marie would like to hear from libraries about issues she should raise.
Jennefer Nicholson commented that whereas libraries tend to get on and develop their services, the other sectors make little progress unless specifically funded for new services. There is also a need for the Statistics Working Group of the Cultural Ministers' Council to do some more statistical collection within the collecting industry.
Jasmine Cameron asked if the CCA has looked at copyright issues. Anne-Marie indicated that this was taken to the CCA some time ago, but it may be useful to put it on the agenda again.
Warwick Cathro asked if there was a relationship between the agendas of the CCA and the Cultural Ministers' Council (CMC). Anne-Marie said the CCA was not always on the agenda for the annual meeting of the CMC.
Digital Repositories.
Anita Crotty spoke on four repository projects.
The Australian Digital Theses project - an expanded metadata repository and OAI compliant format are in test. A new version of the service is expected to be launched at the end of 2005.
Anita reminded everyone that the repository is open to all, and the content is indexed in Google Scholar, and can also be found in Libraries Australia. In some cases abstracts only are available, because the creator has not given permission for the full text to be made available. In these cases the text will usually be supplied on request. Roxanne Missingham referred those interested in a paper from the recent EDT 2005 conference, about author views on electronic thesis deposit.
Work on Digital Commons software to aid self-deposit of theses is proposed in ADT.
ARROW (Australian Research Repositories Online to the World) is a project led by Monash University, which now has a range of services available. Swinburne University is using the ARROW model for their open journal publishing. The ARROW resource discovery service is now harvesting data from a range of sources, and will begin selective harvesting from PictureAustralia in the future.
The APSR (Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories) project has implemented three successful test bed programs during the year, and has run a number of forums and workshops.
RUBRIC (Regional Universities Building Research Infrastructure Collaboratively) is helping smaller universities utilise the knowledge gained in other projects, by providing these institutions with access to expertise and support to enable them to select projects they might find useful to become involved in.
CASL Information Access Strategy.
Anne-Marie Schwirtlich and Warwick Cathro provided information about the Information Access project. A number of projects are underway or planned, to improve access to collections. These include:
- Improving the design of the CASL website.
- Collaboration on subject guides produced within the CASL libraries. There has already been some work done on this.
- Consultations on improved navigation of indexes and databases pages. To date a survey has been done to determine which products are available in the CASL libraries.
- Federated searching of library, museum and archive collections. Warwick explained that the National Library has been exploring this with the Collections Australia Network, the National Archives and the National Gallery, with a view to a pilot service based on OpenSearch.
- An examination of the implications of the new Libraries Australia search service and links to 'get this item', and how these are exposed and promoted to users. It is apparent that more end users are being offered access to Libraries Australia search.
- Interlending pathways
The work will be a process of continuous improvement. Anne-Marie Schwirtlich has written to public library networks commending the work of CASL on these initiatives.
Libraries Australia.
Libraries Australia is now operating on a more robust software and hardware platform, and the CJK database has been able to be integrated into the Australian National Bibliographic Database. The four modules of the system are:
- Interlending
- Search. There have been six major releases of the search system this year.
- Cataloguing. This was implemented at the end of November, using OCLC-PICA software.
- Administration. This has been developed in-house to improve the management of user accounts, authentication and the products service.
There was a change to the business model this year, with the introduction of subscription pricing. The pricing model will continue to be refined.
Jan Fullerton explained that the release of the free search service in early 2006 will be a risk for the National Library. Unless libraries maintain their support for Libraries Australia by continuing their financial membership, further development of the service will not be possible. The free service will allow searching of the Australian National Bibliographic Database and PictureAustralia, but will not provide access to MARC records, personalisation or other value-added services.
The service will be launched at Parliament House, then in other locations around Australia. The intention is to have those state launches in public libraries, and to involve local politicians. Ideas for promotion of the service will be welcomed.
Geraldine McNulty said it would be useful to promote to teachers through their representative bodies.
Jan Fullerton added that while libraries need to ensure the service was readily visible, and libraries will remain key players, it was important that potential users understood that library membership was not essential.
Lynne Fletcher said TAFE Libraries Australia could promote the service on its website, and it would be useful to target meetings of TAFE librarians being held early in 2006. It would be useful to build scenarios appropriate to the various sectors.
Gillian Hallam said the promotion could dovetail with the '@ your library' promotions in Queensland.
The future of the catalogue.
Pam Gatenby introduced this agenda item, saying that the National Library was examining whether it needs its own OPAC once Libraries Australia search is freely available. A group is looking at enablers and inhibitors. A plan to address inhibitors is being refined, including the need for access to requesting, detailed item information, and other data not available in Libraries Australia. The report will be widely circulated when completed. A paper which includes discussion of the role of the catalogue, by Judith Pearce and Janifer Gatenby, is available on the Library's site.
Resource Sharing Forum.
Tony Boston referred to the work of the National Resource Sharing Working Group and National Resource Sharing Policy Advisory Group. The final forum of the NSRWG in 2004 identified a number of areas for future consideration.
A Resource Sharing Forum is being proposed for mid-2006, to review progress on issues such as:
- The review of the ILRS Code;
- The impact of the free Libraries Australia service;
- A best practice resource;
- The use of a wiki to maintain this resource
- Policy issues for resource sharing
- Likely developments in "getting" over the next few years.
ILRS Code.
The draft of the new code is available.
A project to work on baseline costs is being proposed.
Jan Fullerton said the proposed Resource Sharing Forum needs to consider copyright issues for the future, and give thought ahead of time to what 'getting' will mean over the next ten years, and what factors will improve or impede the process.
Report from CAUL.
Anita Crotty explained that universities are now working within the Research Quality Framework.. Universities must collect a considerable amount of data to comply , and new requirements which will require much more research information to be made publicly available are foreshadowed.
Most Australian universities now have a research repository or a system which functions as one. There is a much greater interest in bibliometrics, and consequently much more interest in, for example, journal impact factors.
An e-Research Coordinating Committee has been set up by DEST and DCITA, and includes representatives from those departments as well as CAUDIT and other organisations.
CAUL continues to support the Australian Libraries Copyright Committee(ALCC) and the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).
Jan Fullerton asked if there were any issues where CAUL's interests overlap with those of others, which could be issues for consideration by the Peak Bodies Forum. Cheryl Hamill asked about workforce planning, and Anita Crotty indicated that some groups are doing work on this.
New technologies.
Mark Corbould gave a demonstration of several new technologies which may impact on the way libraries deliver services. They included:
BitTorrent;
RSS - which is being used by some libraries to deliver news about activities or new acquisitions [see, for example, State Library of Victoria RSS Feeds, ANU Library new titles RSS feeds];
A9 search;
Podcasting, which could be used to distribute audio presentations;
Blogs and blog readers such as Bloglines;
Wikipedia;
Flickr.
Jan Fullerton said that the NLA is actively exploring a number of these technologies, which will require us to relinquish some control over collecting, but will allow the community of interest to contribute to the collection. Anne-Marie Schwirtlich added that the State Library of Victoria aims to use Flickr, for example, to collect Commonwealth Games images.
Warwick Cathro spoke very briefly about the People Portal project, which the NLA is working on to integrate information about people. A virtual reference page will be constructed from sources such as Bright Sparcs, the Australian Dictionary of Biography and the Dictionary of Australian Artists Online.
Jennefer Nicholson asked if filters on library computers could interfere with the operation of new technologies, and Mark Corbould agreed that this could be the case.
Copyright update.
Sarah Waladan from the Australian Libraries Copyright Committee joined the meeting to give an update on copyright issues. Three major reviews are in progress.
- The fair dealing/fair use review, for which a response is expected in January.;
- The enquiry into technological protection measures exceptions, which has the potential to remove current exceptions and replace them with more specific ones; and
- The Digital Agenda Act review, for which a government response is expected in 2006.
The issue of the definition of a 'corporate library' is still of concern.
Libraries in Education.
Fiona Hooton joined the meeting to describe the NLA's involvement in a pilot project with The Learning Federation. 300 items from the Library's collection were selected by a TLF researcher and learning objects have been created around them.
Anne-Marie Schwirtlich said that several CASL libraries want to work with the Learning Federation, to create learning objects and expose their collections in this way.
An approach has been made to the Department of Education, Science and Training for funds to develop a schools version of AskNow!
Lynne Fletcher indicated that the model is also being used in TAFEs, with libraries being able to get learning objects from a repository, redevelop or refine the content, then re-deposit the new version.
Jan Fullerton said the NLA wants to pursue the issue of extending access to the learning objects being created, which are presently available only to the schools sector.
Parliamentary Papers Series inquiry.
Jennefer Nicholson spoke briefly about the review into the distribution of Parliamentary Papers. A number of the organisations represented at the Peak Bodies Forum have made submissions, but no outcome has been announced. The ALIA submission made it clear that until there is a reliable and secure system in place for the distribution of these documents electronically, the present system should remain in place.
Education for librarianship.
Gillian Hallam spoke about figures produced for the ALIA Education Reference group, which indicate that the numbers of graduate students is steady, the number of bachelor students has been declining over the last ten years, and there has been a drop of around 30% in library technician students over the same period. 50% of graduate students and 60% of undergraduates are enrolled at Charles Sturt University.
Pam Gatenby commented that there are noticeably fewer National Library staff undertaking studies than in the past. Factors in this seem to be the cost of study, and the fact that there is often no real benefit to the individual from pursuing additional study. Lynne Fletcher added that the TAFE sector is seeing more pressure for higher level courses, such as Advanced Diplomas, to be offered, particularly following the closure of some university courses.
The ageing of faculty is another issue the LIS schools must address. It is difficult to recruit academics, and Ross Harvey said a doctorate is now regarded as the entry level qualification for teaching staff.
Chris Zegelin stated that libraries should be vigilant in ensuring that professional qualifications continue to be important. This is particularly the case in areas such as law, where a professionally qualified librarian is more accepted by the other professionals in the organisation.
Jennefer Nicholson indicated that there is still evidence that new graduates have trouble finding work. Ross Harvey explained that if the skills taught are not those wanted by employers, it is up to the employers to make this known to the teaching institutions.
ALIA is continuing to work on LIS education issues, as is a training and development task force of AGLIN.
Gillian Hallam said it may be useful to hold a workforce planning forum at Click06 in Perth.
National Broadband Strategy.
Jennefer Nicholson reported on some economic modelling by the Digital Content Working Group which indicates that the likely cost of upgrading online access for all public libraries in Australia would cost around $60 million. ALIA will continue to report back on developments with National Broadband Strategy.
CASL update.
Anne-Marie Schwirtlich reported that CASL had met recently in Wellington, and is looking to auspice a tour of New Zealand public libraries by State and public library staff in Australia. CASL will meet with CAUL during the Click06 conference.
The agenda for the last CASL meeting included some discussion of censorship. Dagmar Schmidmaier has undertaken to raise the issue with ALIA.
National Library for Health.
Cheryl Hamill have a brief report on recent meetings in Melbourne considering the issue of national licensing of clinical decision support resources. The Department of Health and Ageing is progressing the issue through the Australian Health Information Council.
Internet filtering.
Jennefer Nicholson indicated that a number of Federal politicians are interested in this issue, and in Tasmania filters would be mandatory on public library and online access centre computers from early 2006.
ALIA is continuing to provide information to politicians advocating that filters not be employed in libraries. The issue was addressed in a 2002 survey by ALIA
and a new survey will be carried out. There is further information on this issue on the ALIA site.
ACTION ITEMS
1. A report should be prepared for members of the ECITA committee and state ministers responsible for library matters.
Responsibility: NLA
Timeframe: first quarter 2006.
2. All members are invited to advise Anne-Marie Schwirtlich of any matters which could be taken to the Collections Council of Australia.
Responsibility: All
Timeframe: as matters arise.
3. The National Library will distribute a paper on the future of the catalogue when internal discussions are concluded.
Responsibility: NLA
Timeframe : 2006.
4. Proposed Resource Sharing Forum to include consideration of likely developments in 'getting' over the next ten years.
Responsibility: ALIA, NLA
Timeframe: first quarter 2006
