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DRAFT MINUTES OF THE KINETICA ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING

Wednesday 20 August 2003

Arthur Waterhouse Lounge

Mt Lofty House

Adelaide

Friday 22 August 2003

The Hindmarsh Room

Stamford Grand Hotel

Glenelg

The Meeting commenced at 10:00am

Present:

Chair

Maxine Brodie

Macquarie University

University Librarian,

Acting Chairperson

Mr Craig Anderson

Chief Executive Officer,

Yarra Plenty Regional Library

Mr John Arfield

University Librarian,

University of Western Australia

Ms Pam Gatenby

Assistant Director-General,

Collections Management,

National Library of Australia

Ms Linda Luther

University Librarian,

University of Tasmania

Ms Patricia Scott

Bibliographic Services Librarian,

University of Adelaide

Dr Warwick Cathro

Acting Deputy Director-General,

National Library of Australia

Ms Elizabeth Ellis

Mitchell Librarian and Director Collection Management, State Library of New South Wales

Ms May Priddle

Director, Information and Record Services

Department of the Treasury

Ms Judy Engall

SCIS Unit, NSW Department of Education and Training

Mr Chris Taylor

Executive Manager, Information Access and Delivery, University of Queensland

Observer

Ms Jan Fullerton

Director-General,

National Library of Australia

Officers in Attendance

Ms Roxanne Missingham

Assistant Director-General, Resource Sharing Division,

National Library of Australia

Mr Rob Walls

Director, Kinetica Database Services,

National Library of Australia

Ms Cheryl Brickell (Minutes)

Director, Kinetica Customer Services,

National Library of Australia


Agenda Item 1 Welcome, introductions and apologies

The Chair welcomed members to the Meeting. An apology from Ms Sherrey Quinn was noted.

Members unanimously voted for John Arfield to take on the role Chair of the Committee, commencing from the next meeting, replacing Maxine Brodie who recently resigned from her role as Chair. The Deputy Chair, Craig Anderson chaired the Meeting. It was agreed that Craig would announce the new Committee Chair at the 2003 Kinetica Annual Users' Meeting.


Agenda Item 2 Minutes of the previous meeting and business arising

(KAC/2003/1/2) (KAC/2003/1/3)

1. Minutes of the previous meetings and business arising

  • March 2003 meeting

  • March 2003 workshop report

KAC/2003/2/1

KAC/2003/2/2

To accept the minutes of the March meeting held on 11 and 12 March 2003. Moved: Patricia Scott; Seconded: John Arfield.

To accept the report of the Strategic Planning Workshop held on the 11 and 12 March, 2003. Moved: Pam Gatenby, Seconded: Judy Engalls.

It was resolved that the minutes of the Kinetica Advisory Committee meeting held on 11 and 12 March 2003 including the minutes of the Report on the Strategic Planning Workshop held as part of this Meeting are a true and accurate record of the meetings.

On behalf of the members, Roxanne Missingham extended sincere thanks to outgoing members Craig Anderson and Maxine Brodie for their valuable contributions to the Kinetica Advisory Committee. Ms Linda Luther, University Librarian at the University of Tasmania was welcomed to the Kinetica Advisory Committee as a new member representing the Council of Australian University Libraries (CAUL).


Agenda Item 3 Director-General's remarks

Ms Jan Fullerton reported on the following.

  • The Deputy Director Genaral's position at the National Library is now vacant following the resignation of Mr David Toll. Dr Warwick Cathro was welcomed to the Committee as the Acting Deputy Director General.

  • The AskNow pilot project continues to operate successfully demonstrating the significant benefits that can result from strategic collaborative partnerships between Australian state, national and public libraries. The success of this service can be measured by the number of regional users accessing it and the positive feedback from users received by participating agents. The National Board of Singapore and the National Library of New Zealand have recently joined the Pilot.

  • PictureAustralia continues to grow with an increasing number of participants, with the State Library of South Australia's membership being officially recognized at a launch this evening.

  • MusicAustralia and AustraliaDancing are two other federated collaborative services that the Nhas initiated. MusicAustralia is the NLA's most challenging and innovative service, demonstrating more complex and sophisticated technical functional requirements than PictureAustralia and involving collaboration with Screen Sound, the Australian Music Centre and the Australia Council.

  • Since March the Nhas focused on the future direction of Kinetica. This process has consumed a significant amount of staff time and effort. The progress from this work will be discussed today as part of Agenda Item 5.


Agenda Item 4 2002-2003 Kinetica Statistical Information Report (KAC/2003/2/3)

Ms Roxanne Missingham spoke to this paper highlighting the following:

  • Searching activity continues to grow especially in end user search activities;

  • Negotiations with public libraries have resulted in site license agreements for public library associations in NSW, Victoria and Queensland. This has resulted in significant increases in the use of Kinetica services by these libraries with a 20% overall increase in searching attributed to these libraries in the last 12 months;

  • Coverage of the NBD expanded significantly in 2002/2003 including a complete reload of one universities holdings. It is anticipated that 2 million records will be added to the NBD in the next 12 months;

  • KDD requests are slightly under target however it is anticipated that recent implementation of access to new suppliers using the ISO/ILL protocol will result in maintaining the level of use of this service;

  • The reduction in revenue was balanced by an equivalent reduction in salary and supply expenditure.

To accept the Kinetica Reports. Moved: Linda Luther; Second: Patricia Scott

ACTION

Members requested that for future meetings the Kinetica Statistical Information Report contain separate statistics for end user searching, as far as it is possible for this information to be gathered, and for a trend line to be included in graphs.


Agenda Item 5 Kinetica Future Options report (KAC/2003/2/4) CONFIDENTIAL


Agenda Item 6 Kinetica Authorities Survey (KAC/2003/2/5)

Rob Walls spoke to this paper.

Following the report of the Expert Advisory Group on Authority Delivery in 2002 Margaret Kennedy coordinated a survey to ascertain the level of authority work being undertaken in local library systems, but not included in the NBD.

Rob Walls noted the following significant findings from the paper.

  • 74 survey responses were received;

  • the Nand the state libraries do 88% of authority work on the NBD;

  • there is a significant amount of authority work being done on local systems but most of this is not being contributed to the NBD;

  • the factors for not contributing authority data to the NBD extend beyond the complexity of the Client and include:

    • priority of work;

    • a low awareness of the significance of contributing to the NBD; and

    • the uncertainty surrounding which heading is an authority.

Pam Gatenby noted that, with the implementation of Voyager, the Nis currently exploring how to contribute authorities to the NBD. In addition the small number staff in the Nwho have an appropriate skills base to competently deal with authority work is an issue, which needs to be examined.

Elizabeth Ellis suggested financial issues be reviewed to consider means of increasing the number of libraries contributing authority data to the NBD. This will be examined as part of Kinetica's future business plan.

ACTION

The Nwill discuss the issue of authorities with relevant stakeholders including the state libraries to develop a strategy paper to address the issue of contributing quality authority data to the NBD.


Agenda Item 7 Theses Coverage on the NBD (KAC/2003/2/6)

Roxanne Missingham spoke to this paper.

Roxanne noted the article attached to the paper by Paul Genoni and Roberta Cowan, highlights a range of issues about access to Australian theses. She had spoken to the authors to seek information on their priorities to improve access to theses.

The following issues were raised.

  • the addition of abstracts in theses records on the NBD would improve retrieval for the NBD

  • records of all Australian theses should be in ADT;

  • cooperation between Kinetica and ADT was endorsed; and

  • KAC noted that theses records for ADT are contributed by a variety of staff in universities and the workflows need improvement.

ACTION

Roxanne will collaborate with Chris Taylor and staff at ADT to discuss ways of increasing contributions of quality searchable theses records to the NBD. The ability to improve easy access through Kinetica such as a drop down box from which to select different formats will also be investigated.

  1. Consider means of improving research infrastructure through increasing data, especially abstracts.
  2. Work with ADT on workflows and record sharing.
  3. Links to work in Kinetica on interface design for easier access to subsets.

Agenda Item 8 Kinetica Public Library Portal (presentation) (KAC/2003/2/7)

Cheryl Brickell spoke to this paper.

Using a PowerPoint presentation Cheryl highlighted the progress to date of the Public Library Portal initiative. Issues highlighted by the Portal include:

  • authentication;

  • inter-library loans; and

  • marketing and training.

Members agreed that the portal interface had potential for end users in all library contexts. This has been confirmed by recent interest shown by special and academic librarians.

Cheryl noted that the critical milestones for the Pilot have been met and that the prototype will be launched in October 2003 across the five pilot sites.


Agenda Item 9 Sharing data with Australian subject gateways (KAC/2003/2/8)

Roxanne Missingham and Chris Taylor spoke to this paper.

At the Kinetica Strategic Planning Workshop conducted during the previous Committee meeting in March 2003 members agreed that coverage of online Australian resources should continue to be improved and that developing more collaborative relationships with coordinators of Australian subject gateways may provide opportunities to obtain records for these resources.

The paper reported on what developments have taken place regarding the forging of collaborative partnerships to improve coverage of online Australian resources and included discussions at the Australian Subject Gateways Forum (ASGF) meeting held in May 2003.

Key issues raised by Committee members included:

  • subject gateways are generally small operations with limited funding and staff resources;

  • the role of Australian subject gateways in the resource discovery model;

  • the Australian Virtual Engineering Library (AVEL) and EdNA expressed interest in participating in a pilot to further investigate improving coverage of Australian online resources; and

ACTION

Roxanne Missingham will continue to discuss with relevant Australian subject gateway organisations the possibility of establishing a pilot to ascertain the feasibility of improving coverage of, and access to, online Australian resources.


Agenda Item 10 Proposal for an Expert Advisory Group for Kinetica Document Delivery (KAC/2002/2/9)

Roxanne Missingham spoke to this paper.

Members agreed to establish an Expert Advisory Group for Kinetica Document Delivery (KDD) to investigate and report on options for the future development of the service. Moved: Maxine Brodie; Seconded: Chris Taylor.

Members suggested that it would be advisable to include in this Group KDD members and a non user of the service.

ACTION

A message will be sent to Kinetica customers through KDD-L asking for nominations to be a member of the Expert Advisory Group for Kinetica Document Delivery and outlining the terms of reference of the Group.


Agenda Item 11 Kinetica Status Report (KAC/2003/2/10)

Roxanne Missingham spoke to this paper.

An overview of Kinetica activities was provided in the Status Report.

Highlights to this report included the following:

  • investigations are currently taking place at the Nto assess the extent of records that would be encompassed by any application of Functional Requirements for the Bibliographic Record (FRBR) and if it is viable to incorporate FRBR into the future developments of the Kinetica service;

  • Kinetica is currently developing the service to enhance access to a range of microform collection sets held in Australian libraries. Over 50 microform sets are now available through this service; and

  • in May 2003 the Deutsche Bibliotek Database, the union catalogue of the National Library of Germany, was made available through Kinetica

Adding to an overview of Kinetica training, Linda Luther raised a concern that Library Schools appear not be teaching uniformly cataloguing and KDD to students. Roxanne Missingham stated that Schools now do not pay for students to use the Kinetica service for training purpose and that a strategic paper on Kinetica training will be presented to the Committee next year which should inform the Nand members about factors which affect the effective delivery of Kinetica training nationally. The issue of use of Kinetica in library schools is an area where Kinetica staff will follow up with each teaching institution to discuss how programs can include Kinetica.


Agenda Item 12 Electronic and Microform Collections: Progress report (KAC/2003/2/11)

Bemal Rajapatirana spoke to this paper.

A summary was provided of the progress to date of the service that enables libraries to purchase MARC records for electronic full text collections and the development of the complimentary service for microform collections sets.


Agenda Item 13 Kinetica Subject Headings Review Panel (KAC/2003/2/12)

Bemal Rajapatirana spoke to this paper.

This paper updated Committee members on the progress of the Subject Headings Review Panel (SHRP) since the last meeting held in March 2003.

New developments included:

  • establishment of the subject headings 'Aboriginal Australians' and Aboriginal Tasmanians' in the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) - replacing the old and outdated headings 'Aborigines, Australian' and 'Aborigines, Tasmanian';

  • changes to the period subdivision that are used for Australian, Australian states, territories and capital cities have now been implemented. The current period subdivision '1990-' was closed off at 2001 and a new subdivision '2001-' was established; and

  • the panel members have had their email addresses placed on the SHRP Web page to encourage greater interaction with the library community.


Agenda Item 14 National Bibliographic Database: Quality issues (KAC/2003/2/13)

Rob Walls spoke to this paper.

This paper reported on the current initiatives aimed at improving the quality of the National Bibliographic Database (NBD) and including database maintenance, Batch*Link, Batch, Loading, the Batch Update service, Global Holdings Update and refinement to the Kinetica matching algorithm.


Agenda Item 15 Commonwealth Government Metadata Pilot Program Report KAC/2003/2/14)

Rob Walls spoke to this paper.

This paper provide an update on the progress of the Commonwealth Government Metadata Pilot Project which aims to improve access to government print and electronic documents through Kinetica and to improve the NBD coverage of Commonwealth government electronic publications.

Rob Walls stated that the aim is to eventually make the NBD a 'one stop shop' for all government publications and that the long term objective is to develop efficient workflows to enable the automatic downloading of these records to Pandora. Rob further mentioned that current standards would resolve the brevity of the metadata records and the potential problem, highlighted by Warwick Cathro of duplicate records.


Agenda Item 16 Kinetica Annual Users Meeting (KAC/2003/2/14)

Roxanne Missingham spoke to this paper.

Members welcomed Bronwyn Halliday to the meeting. Bronwyn will chair the 2003 Kinetica Annual Users' Meeting. Bronwyn reminded Members of the tours of the State Library of South Australia that have been organized for members and delegates and the launch of the State Library of south Australia's membership of PictureAustralia organized for that evening.

Members agreed to broaden the terms of reference for the Innovation Award based on the recommendations of John Arfield and Sherrey Quinn, both of whom judged the awards this year. The terms of reference will now encompass using the Kinetica service in a way that is deemed innovative for a specific library context. This will enable small and medium libraries to apply without needing to expend extensive resources.

It was agreed that from 2004 KAUM would take place in October to prevent clashes with other library conferences. It was also agreed to hold the 2005 KAUM in Melbourne.

The Meeting recommenced at 12.00pm, 22 August 2003 in the Hindmarsh Room at the Stamford Grand Hotel, Glenelg.

Apologies: Chris Taylor


Agenda Item 17 Kinetica Annual Users Meeting 2003 (KAC/2003/1/14)

1. KAUM review

Bronwyn Halliday advised that the meeting was well run and that the storyboard she had to walk her through each session was excellent. The only issue was that the podium was a bit awkward and high.

Craig Anderson suggested that the two display screens worked very well and audiovisual equipment was good, other than some microphone problems.

Pam Gatenby suggested that the innovation session was too long and contained too much detail.

The parallel sessions were reviewed and Jan Fullerton suggested that the formulae for sessions needed more consideration. Elizabeth Ellis and May Priddle noted that the Government publications session was very timely and that the presence of Colin Thomas from NOIE was particularly valuable. The session highlighted the importance of the Commonwealth government publications metadata project and the need for continued communication between the National Library and the National Office of the Information Economy.

Craig Anderson questioned whether the enhancement session was really worthwhile and the Committee discussed whether it might have been too close to the enhancements review. It has a very strong focus on the Cataloguing Client. Patricia Scott noted that she would email her comments elaborating on the issues raised in this parallel session to Kinetica. Craig suggested that it might have been timely to focus participants what they would do if they did not have a cataloguing client. Patricia Scott suggested that perhaps more research should be undertaken on issues relating to contribution of data.

Maxine Brodie suggested that if parallel sessions were held again that delegates should be given a number of questions beforehand upon which to focus their discussions the results of which could provide valuable feedback to the KAC and NLA. Craig Anderson suggested that it might be beneficial to have each parallel session break up into smaller groups of say 10, to increase active participation.

2. KAUM 2004

Discussion on the KAUM for 2004 focused on the need to attract a wider range of managers, reference librarians, interlending librarians and cataloguers. Judy Engall emphasised the importance of involving staff from all levels and all aspects of library operations in the AUM.

Craig Anderson suggested that the program could be divided into sections with registration possible just for these sections. The first morning could focus on strategic issues to encourage participation from CASL, CAUL, Public Libraries, and COFSTA at a managerial level. The program for this morning could include a history and overview of our planning for the future, steps we are taking to develop the service and a high level approach. In the afternoon the session could be more oriented to nuts and bolts - more relevant to operational staff.

It was agreed that state user groups should be a stronger part of the issues development process. Kinetica could seek greater consultation through state user meetings and then the results of the discussions could be fed into the Kinetica Annual User Meetings. It would enable more considered discussion of issues and greater customer input. Linda Luther noted that when Nstaff visit a state participation in the state user group is increased.

Jan Fullerton noted that the KAUM for 2004 needed to be seen in the context of the total communication plan for the future of Kinetica, with an emphasis on maintaining the confidence of Australian libraries. John Arfield suggested that the discussion with CAUL should encourage dialogue on future developments.

KAC members agreed that having a local organising committee was successful and should be continued.

After discussion on venues for the 2004 KAUM in Canberra it was agreed that the National Library would be the most appropriate location and that attendance was unlikely to exceed 300.

3. KAC membership

Jan Fullerton thanked Craig Anderson and Maxine Brodie for their contribution to the Kinetica Advisory Committee and noted that this would be their last meeting.

The meeting closed at 12.45 pm