|
|
|
|
|||
Liz Wakefield
December 1996
1.1 To evaluate the Agriculture collections throughout the University of Melbourne library.
1.2 To identify areas of the collection which need improvement in currency and scope.
1.3 To lay the foundation for a collection management policy for the Agricultural Sciences area.
As with other sciences, the major journal literature in the agricultural sciences is increasingly available in English language editions, as are conference proceedings and technical report literature. There is currently little, if any, demand for foreign language material. Overseas students are well accustomed to studying in English.
The practical nature of this discipline is also one of the reasons for the multicampus location of the Faculties represented, with the consequent scattering and duplication of library resources, as many of these campuses have farms, or forestry areas attached.
The Faculty of Agriculture, Forestry and Horticulture is the main teacher and researcher in this area. It is the largest university faculty in Australia to offer training in both agricultural and related industries, food technology, horticulture and forest science. It now operates from eight campuses: the main campus at Parkville and the others from the affiliated colleges Creswick, Dookie, Burnley, Gilbert Chandler, Glenormiston, Longerenong and Macmillan. Undergraduate and postgraduate courses are offered in the areas of agriculture and related industries such as farm and horse management, dairy technology, forest science and technology and horticulture.
However, this Conspectus division, which covers the DDC range 630-639, also includes subjects of interest to other faculties. The Faculty of Veterinary Science, operating from two locations, is a major area of interest within the University. The Faculty is divided into the Department of Veterinary Science at Werribee, which is responsible for the teaching and research; the Veterinary Clinic and Hospital which offers undergraduate and postgraduate students clinical training or research opportunities and also offers fee based specialist advice and veterinary medical, surgical and pathological consultative services to the public at Werribee; The Centre for Animal Biotechnology and the Centre for Equine Virology both located at the Veterinary Preclinical Centre in Parkville.
The Faculty of Engineering has an interest in agricultural engineering, including water supply and farm machinery and the Faculty of Economics and Commerce has a strong interest in Agricultural economics. Landscape gardening and architecture, included in this DDC range is of little interest to the Faculty of Agriculture, Forestry and Horticulture but is a strong teaching area in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning. Postgraduate and post-doctoral research are of major importance in all Faculties.
Collections in the Agricultural Sciences are scattered across a number of libraries as a result of the multicampus structure of both the major faculties involved. The small collections of the affiliated colleges in the Faculty of Agriculture, Forestry and Horticulture have been developed to serve the needs of the local client groups and there is consequently a considerable degree of duplication and overlapping of material. The affiliation of these colleges has been a recent event, and with the exception of the forestry collection at Creswick there has as yet been no attempt to rationalise or coordinate the holdings or collecting habits of their libraries, and they have been left largely autonomous. The distance between the campuses and the relatively small collections of these libraries make it difficult to implement the usual policy of discouraging duplication of titles.
There is also a considerable overlap in the collecting interests of Veterinary Science and Agriculture, particularly in the area of farm animals, with a consequent certain degree of duplication of material. Attempts have been made to coordinate the collecting policy and circulation of books and journals between Parkville and Werribee on a regular basis, but geographical distance again make duplication difficult to avoid.
As with all the sciences, the Agricultural Sciences relies heavily on journal literature and it is difficult to keep pace with the new serial titles and still maintain a balanced collection with sufficient monographs to support undergraduate teaching. Increasing serial costs, including electronic serials, together with budgetary restraints make the task of ensuring the collections meets the various needs of all the users more difficult.
There are no major special collections of material in the agricultural sciences held in the University of Melbourne Libraries.
University of Melbourne postgraduate theses in Agriculture are held in the Thesis Collection of the Baillieu Library. A duplicate set of theses from the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Forestry is held in the Agriculture Branch Library.
This closed collection which houses valuable, older and vulnerable material contains some titles of relevance to the agricultural sciences, particularly in the areas of horticulture and landscape gardening. Some examples are:
(The Library holds a complete run of this journal with vols. 1-40 , 1840-1879 held in the BX collection).
The extensive Map Collection in the University of Melbourne Library contains a significant amount of material relevant to the agricultural sciences. Probably the most useful material is in the soils mapping area, where we hold a large series of reports by CSIRO and state agricultural departments. Some important series, particularly for Victorian Agriculture are:
The Veterinary Science Branch Library at Werribee has a collection of old veterinary books, mainly textbooks dating from the late 1800s to around the 1940s. There is also a collection of books (as yet uncatalogued) from the Veterinary Research Institute. The subject coverage is broad and includes veterinary medicine, anatomy, physiology and pathology, dogs, cats and farm animals.
A number of lists were checked to test the collection strengths in the Agricultural sciences. Efforts were made to check in particular the monograph holdings both in overseas and Australian material, as the shelf scan had given an impression of a lack of Australian content in some areas and a considerable amount of out of date material. However, as in all in the sciences, serials in this area are considered of prime importance and considerable time was spent on checking relevant lists of serials.
The holdings of the smaller college libraries were not checked as they are not yet included in the University of Melbourne catalogue.
In general the results of the list checking reflected the impressions of our holdings gained from shelf scanning, although, particularly in the Parkville Agriculture Branch Library, the shelf check impression of outdated material in need of weeding and relegation to store, could not be really confirmed by list checking as most of the lists were of more recent material. It did confirm the need to use a variety of methods of assessing the collection.
Literature of the agricultural sciences is a very useful checking tool. It is up to date, substantial and thorough. The lists have been drawn up by an international group, which gives it less of an American bias than the Malinowsky bibliography. This is particularly significant in a field where local conditions are important. The volumes cover both old and new material and provide substantial lists of 'best books' which are ranked for both developed and developing countries, the rankings being based on citation analysis.
The ANB holdings hit rate was very low in many areas. However, a vast amount of Australian published material which is included in ANB, particularly in the horticulture and pet care in the veterinary science class numbers are not deemed to be appropriate for inclusion in our collections because they are not tertiary level. Although we do keep some non-tertiary level titles for general reference use, space and budgetary restraints preclude most of this kind of material from being acquired. Indeed we are more likely to get comments from users that the material we have accepted on our Australiana approval plan is not of a sufficiently high academic level. Nevertheless attention does need to be paid to acquiring Australian non trade material particularly relevant conference proceedings.
| Title | No. checked | No. held | % |
| Olsen: Core monographs for developed countries - 1st
& 2nd rank checked |
|||
| Soil science |
293 | 172 | 59 |
| Crop science | 152 | 101 | 66 |
| Agric. ec. - top ranked 20 only | 20 | 15 | 75 |
| Animal science | 492 | 316 | 64 |
| Forestry | 267 | 180 | 67 |
| Total | 1224 | 784 | 64 |
| Malinowsky | |||
| General agriculture | 16 | 4 | 25 |
| Animal and veterinary science | 32 | 17 | 53 |
| Plant science, agronomy and horticulture | 60 | 29 | 48 |
| Total | 108 | 50 | 46 |
| ANB (for details see attachment) | 1732 | 504 | 29 |
| ABN | Held Aust. | Held Vic. | Held VU |
| 631.6 Clearing, drainage, revegetation | 117 | 101 | 44 | 10 | 9 |
| 632.7 Insect pests | 118 | 90 | 43 | 16 | 14 |
| 636.4 Swine | 184 | 131 | 64 | 40 | 22 |
| 637.1 Milking & milk processing | 94 | 40 | 29 | 10 | 11 |
| 639.2 Commercial fishing, whaling, sealing | 475 | 332 | 96 | 34 | 7 |
| Total | 988 | 694 | 276 | 110 | 11 |
As with the monographs, the Olsen bibliographies Literature of the Agricultural Sciences proved extremely valuable, providing lists of core journals both in the developed and developing countries. SCI lists were also useful for providing core lists.
| Title | Checked | Held | % |
| Olsen: Core journals | |||
| Soil science | 46 | 34 | 74 |
| Crop science | 96 | 72 | 75 |
| Agric. economics | 89 | 64 | 72 |
| Animal science | 64 | 54 | 89 |
| Forestry | 60 | 53 | 88 |
| Total | 355 | 277 | 78 |
| Malinowsky | |||
| General agriculture | 20 | 14 | 70 |
| Animal and veterinary science | 24 | 22 | 92 |
| Plant science, agronomy and horticulture | 38 | 23 | 61 |
| Total | 82 | 59 | 72 |
| SCI | |||
| Agricultural economics & policy | 5 | 5 | 100 |
| Agrculture | 56 | 37 | 66 |
| Agriculture, dairy & animal science | 28 | 20 | 71 |
| Agriculture, soil science | 20 | 16 | 80 |
| Fisheries | 18 | 2 | 11 |
| Forestry | 15 | 13 | 87 |
| Veterinary sciences | 63 | 43 | 68 |
| Total | 205 | 136 | 66 |
Academic staff were invited to comment on their perception of the collections, particularly in the Agriculture Branch Library on the Parkville Campus, and the Veterinary Science Branch Library both for their own teaching and research needs and in more general terms.
10.1 A major problem with the collections in the Agricultural Sciences is the scattering across a number of locations, resulting in uneven and duplicated holdings. The duplication of monographs is difficult to avoid with the geographic distances between campuses and it is inevitable that the same core titles will be held in several places. Future access to the catalogues of the smaller college libraries will help to avoid unnecessary duplication, as titles not in heavy demand will be able to be requested on interlibrary loan.
10.2. Monographs. There was a strong impression in the Agriculture Branch Library of overcrowded shelves which could be improved by relegating to store a large amount of older outdated material. The collections are uneven in strength and reflect changing agricultural interests. There needs to be some attention paid to acquiring at least some material on areas outside a purely local interest. For example there is very little on tropical agriculture, which although naturally is not of great importance to Victorian agriculturalists, would be useful to have in the light of developing Asian interests.
10.3. Reference tools, indexing and abstracting services. The Library holds most of the major general dictionaries and encyclopedias in this discipline and efforts are made to keep up date, although because of the usually high price of handbooks and encyclopedic works this can be difficult. Some gaps were noticed in more specific subject areas.
The Library holds or provides access to the major indexes and abstracting tools, such as CAB abstracts, in print and/or electronic format.
10.4 Journals. Holdings of journals generally in this division are fairly good for core titles. Keeping up, however, with new titles within the current budget is very difficult and further funding would be of great benefit. For non core titles alternative access by other means such as document delivery services and online access, will have to be further explored, to ensure that subscriptions for all titles essential for teaching and research are maintained. Although major journal literature is increasingly published in English, as mentioned earlier, it would be worthwhile investigating to see if there are any, particularly Asian, journals which might strengthen our collection, in the light of increasing numbers of overseas students and interest in Asian agriculture.
There are several areas within the Agricultural Sciences which have very good collections at a teaching and graduate study level, such as parts of the Animal husbandry collection, but fall short of being ranked at level 4 research level. Other areas outside the range of this Conspectus division, identified by Veterinary Science academic staff as being of good research level and needing to be maintained, particularly in light of the closure of the CSIRO library, are immunology and parasitology.
11.1 Forestry. Overall this is a strong collection. It is important that this area be maintained at a high level and preferably raised to a level 4. The area of agroforesty, silviculture and forest genetics is a developing one and there is interest, particularly at Creswick, in looking to provide expertise for Asian forest industries. The collection will need to reflect this international interest.
11.2. Soil science. Again, this is a strong collection across all locations. However, it is uneven in coverage, and there is a need for older material to be relegated to store. Ideally this collection should be lifted to a level 4 to support the strong interest in this area.
Tropical agriculture and forestry in general need to be enriched. There is developing interest in this area for Australia and South East Asia. Some particular topics of current interest are sandalwood production, community forestry, draught animals, and heavy reliance is placed on interlibrary loan for material in these areas.
631.2 Use of agricultural structures. The general area of agricultural engineering (not specifically covered in this DDC conspectus range) needs strengthening.
631.6 Clearing, drainage, revegetation.
632 Plant injuries, diseases, pests. Attention has been paid to this area in recent times, and the current acquisition level needs to be maintained.
633.2 Forage crops.
634.8 Grapes.
636.2 Dairy cattle. This area, particularly at Gilbert Chandler, needs attention.
636.3 Sheep. A lot of older material held which needs weeding and replacing with more current material.
636.4 Swine. A well used collection which could benefit from extra and up to date material.
636.6 Birds other than poultry. A minor area which could benefit from some additional material to cater for the developing area of ostrich and emu farming. Veterinary Science could also do with some attention to 636.5 Poultry.
637 Processing dairy & related products.
639.7 Nothing held in the Agriculture Branch Library. Material should be acquired on worms and snails to achieve a basic minimal coverage.
639.8 Aquiculture. Some attention has been paid in recent times to this currently minimal collection and the acquisition level should be maintained.
639.9 Conservation of biological resources.
Academic staff also commented on areas in the collection which fall outside the DDC range of this Conspectus division. These areas include agricultural economics, agricultural engineering microbiology, molecular biology and vaccines. Immunology and parasitology, mentioned earlier as a strength were also seen as falling behind in easy access to relevant journals.
Last modified: August 18 2004.
| | Find a Library | | About ALG | | Pathways to Australian Information | |
| | For Libraries | | Online Exhibitions | | Help | | Contact ALG |