AGENDA |
KAC/2000/3/1 |
Kinetica Advisory Committee Meeting 6 December 2000 |
KAC/2000/3/11 |
Draft minutes of the Eighth meeting of the Kinetica Advisory Committee held at the National Meteorological Library, Bureau of Meteorology, Melbourne.
PRESENT
| Chairperson | Ms Helen Livingston Acting University Librarian, Deakin University |
| Members | Ms Marian Bate University Librarian, University of New South Wales |
| Mr Dale Chatwin Director, ABS Library Network, Australian Bureau of Statistics |
|
| Ms Pam Gatenby Assistant Director-General, Collections Management, National Library of Australia |
|
| Ms Kaye Hill Library and Information Service of Western Australia |
|
| Mr Philip Keane Head, Library and Educational Information Services, Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science, Adelaide |
|
| Ms Jan Maslen Associate Librarian (Information Resources), La Trobe University |
|
| Mr David Toll Deputy Director-General, National Library of Australia |
|
| Mr Trevor Wakely Technical Services Librarian, National Meteorological Library |
|
| Ms Meredith Wallace Manager, Information and Library Service, Parramatta City Library |
|
| Observer | Ms Jan Fullerton
Director-General, National Library of Australia |
| Officers in Attendance | Mr Andrew Wells Assistant Director-General, Resource Sharing Division, National Library |
| Ms Bryony De La Motte Director, Kinetica Customer Service, National Library |
|
| Ms Julia Trainor Director, Kinetica Database Services, National Library |
|
| Minutes | Mr Malcolm Park Kinetica Customer Service |
The meeting opened at 9.00 am.
AGENDA ITEM 1 |
WELCOME, INTRODUCTION AND APOLOGIES |
The Chairperson welcomed members and the apology of Sherrey Quinn was noted.
AGENDA ITEM 2 |
MINUTES OF THE PREVIOUS MEETING |
It was resolved:
KAC/2000/RES/5
That the minutes of the meeting of 27 and 29 August 2000 are a true and accurate record of that meeting.
AGENDA ITEM 3 |
DIRECTOR-GENERAL'S REMARKS |
Jan Fullerton, the Director-General commented on the following matters:
PictureAustralia This service was launched successfully on 4 September and has proved very popular. The Powerhouse Museum is in the process of adding its images and negotiations are underway with other institutions and groups to add their digitised visual material.
Meredith Wallace noted that at a recent NSW Ministry of the Arts meeting Picture Australia received many accolades.
Digital Services Project (DSP) Tenders for the DSP (a Digital Storage System and Digital Object Management System) have been evaluated and a shortlist created. The process of selecting a provider is underway.
Balanced Scorecard. The implementation of this management information system is complete and it is already providing the library with valuable information.
Digital publications and archiving The National Library has developed draft guidelines for the publishers and creators of web resources which aim to raise awareness of the issues involved in managing web resources for long-term access and to provide practical advice on action that can be taken. The publication, called Safeguarding Australia's web resources is available at www.nla.gov.au/guidelines/2000/webresources.html
A review of online government publishing has revealed disappointing results, with virtually no consistency in metadata or attention to archiving. This has very serious implications for long term access to government information.
There was extensive discussion of this issue
IT outsourcing. The National Library is continuing with this process, though because of the government review, the final date for tenders has been extended until 31 January 2001. The expectation is that the Library will go ahead with IT outsourcing. Ms Fullerton reminded members that Kinetica has been excluded from this outsourcing.
Consortium access to electronic resources CASL has approved the next phase of this project, which will pilot the acquisition and delivery of 3 or 4 resources to the National and State Libraries. Access for public libraries is not included in the pilot.
Review of Kinetica This will be covered in Agenda item 7 of the meeting.
International Standard Music Number Agency The National Library will implement the ISMN Agency for Australia during 2001. This forms part of a new commitment to music, led by the Curator of Music, Robyn Holmes.
AGENDA ITEM 4 |
KINETICA FINANCIAL INFORMATION |
AGENDA ITEM 5 |
KINETICA STATUS REPORT |
Andrew Wells spoke to these two items together and distributed the Kinetica Operating Statement and Kinetica Statistics.
NBD contribution
The holdings addition target for the year has nearly been reached by November. This has been partly achieved by some large retrospective additions of holdings by batch (notably Griffith University and Queensland University). Levels of batch contributions have been much higher than last year with 21 libraries using the service steadily. Online original cataloguing has been constant, though only at 80% of last year's level.
Digital material
The addition of records for digital material to the NBD has not been very high apart from the addition of Science Direct records. A further budget allocation is being sought to purchase bibliographic records for titles contained in other datasets.
Search Activity
Search activity targets have been exceeded.
KDD
Overall business has been steady for KDD. August was an excellent month, but October was disappointing (probably due to the Olympics). The KDD Payments Service has also been performing well with the target of 80% of KDD requests being paid for by the service being nearly met. It was pointed out that some of the 20% of transactions not covered by the Payments Service are for items supplied on a no charge basis.
Service Development
Delivery of Amicus 3.3 is expected before the end of the year.
Version 2 of LibriVision will be released soon. It will be is a little later than expected but has been delayed by improved quality assurance procedures by ELiAS. LibriVision 2 should deliver the following enhancements:
It will require a great deal of testing to implement these changes.
Marian Bate asked if there have been any budget control mechanisms developed for end user access to KDD. Mr Wells replied that this was being investigated for direct end user access as a part of the National Librarys plans for e-commerce. Ms Bate was interested in the possibility of issuing end users with an authorisation which would be allocated a budget. This could be applied at the group level as well. Ms Bate further queried whether the software would support these types of procedures and Andrew Wells agreed to take this up with Fretwell Downing and ELiAS. Mr Wells further pointed out that some of these issues are being addressed by LIDDAS, which Kinetica will investigate.
ACTION: Mr Wells
Andrew Wells attended the AMICUS User Group Meeting in London in September. The strategic directions of Amicus are encouraging. Mr Wells and Margaret Nichols (IBM GSA) met with ELiAS on several occasions to discuss problems and issues and delivered papers on the use of AMICUS and LibriVision in Kinetica. The relationship with ELiAS is working well.
Fretwell Downing
Andrew Wells informed members that we expect an upgrade to the VDX database and Web interface software in February. This will include improved rota handling and changes to the web interface to reduce the size of the form and number of steps required to complete a request. Mr Wells stressed the need for thorough performance testing of the new Web interface, accompanied by a roll back strategy if problems appeared in production.
Mr Wells noted that VDX is making inroads into the U.S. market which is beneficial in terms of shared development.
Financial
New user agreements that allow for more flexibility have been issued and despite some confusion for a few users, most were returned promptly. The 5% price rise will take effect on January 1 2001 and so far has not caused much comment from clients. Site licence offers for next year have been issued.
At this point Mr Wells raised an issue which had been raised by a current site licence customer. They would like to split their account so that their staff are on search transaction accounts while end users are covered by a site licence. After discussion KAC members agreed that a site licence is for the whole of a site and can not be given to just one part of a customer's account.
It was resolved:
KAC/RES/2000/6
Site licences should remain as a customer registration option for the whole of a customer's site and can not be used to cover only part of a customers account.
The Committee also discussed the supply of bibliographic records for electronic collections to libraries which did not plan to add their holdings for such collections to the NBD. Under the present charging policy, these records could be supplied to a customer at a very low cost, and without the benefit of addition of holdings to the NBD. KAC members concluded that supply of files of records from the NBD to customer libraries should continue to be restricted to records with holdings for a particular library. Libraries should be encouraged to add their holdings to records for electronic collections, and notified that files of bibliographic records would not be supplied if this was not done.
The Committee resolved that:
KAC/RES/2000/7
Products will remain linked to holdings information and will not be supplied where a library is not willing to add their holdings for the items to the NBD.
Marian Bate suggested setting a cap for price rises for site licences, so that users could guard against cost blowouts (say for introduction of end user access). National Library staff agreed that the principle of capping is good, but noted that it would need to be separated from general price rises and the implementation of it would need to be investigated.
Operating Statement
Mr Wells pointed out that revenue to date is 2% over last year, and is stabilising. Supplier expenses have been trimmed by around $450,000 with the non-purchase of Blackwell's Table of Contents file being the major expenditure reduction.
The Committee considered various proposals for reintroduction of the Blackwell's Table of Contents file. The general consensus was that the major reason for its discontinuation, to contain costs for all users, was still valid. Members felt that at the current price there is more value for money in purchasing records for electronic sets such as Science Direct. The file will be re-considered in budget planning in future years. Mr Wells informed Committee members that RLG has also cancelled its subscription to the Blackwell's TOC file. It was agreed that a message outlining this information should be posted to Kinetica-List.
AGENDA ITEM 6 |
KINETICA - DRAFT DESCRIPTION OF SERVICE |
Logo
Discussion on this item began with consideration of the proposed new Kinetica logo. The Committee advised that the old logo was distinctive and should be retained.
It was felt though that having a subtitle or description line below the name is a good idea, ie a `tag' line. After consideration and discussion of several suggestions, members recommended that this tag line should read `Australia's Library Network'.
Draft Description of service
Mr Wells introduced the draft description of Kinetica, informing the Committee that the document is intended to explain Kinetica to library managers and to non-librarian managers in organisations which use Kinetica. Committee members expressed the view that it would be difficult to meet the needs of both these target groups in a single document. Consequently the description suffered by being very vague in parts and overly technical in others.
KAC members suggested was that two different documents should be produced. One should be a detailed description, available on the web for librarians to download and re-jig for their own purposes. The other should be a one page glossy brochure basically outlining the big picture and benefits of Kinetica without using jargon.
Some specific suggestions made were:
If KAC members have any further comments at this stage for this description, they should forward them to Andrew Wells.
AGENDA ITEM 7 |
KINETICA REVIEW |
Andrew Wells explained that the National Library has been approached by the Productivity Commission to include Kinetica as a case study in its review of cost recovery amongst public agencies. He explained that the Productivity Commission would be looking at:
Kinetica will also conduct market research amongst the major stakeholders and a random sample of customers to obtain:
David Toll informed the Committee that he had attended Productivity Commission public hearings. The Productivity Commission will release a statement on its assessment of Kinetica's cost effectiveness as part of its report. The draft report is due in April with the final report due in August.
In response to a question from Marian Bate, David Toll informed Committee members that the outcome of the Productivity Commission's review will probably provide guidelines for charging, not prescriptive rules.
Mr Wells and Mr Toll made the point that the Productivity Commission report will probably be a better review than one we could have paid for. The indications are that Kinetica will get a good rating.
Helen Livingston raised concerns over the customer survey being the only means used to measure Kinetica's effectiveness. The responses could depend on who decides to answer, their current mood, recent dealings with Kinetica, etc. Andrew Wells replied that this is recognised and the review will attempt to also include qualitative work, focus groups and/or interviews, not just a simple survey. Mr Toll further elaborated that these issues will be taken into account and discussed with the consultant conducting the customer survey.
Further points that were made include:
AGENDA ITEM 8 |
KINETICA BUSINESS PLAN 2000-2003: DRAFT REVISION |
Andrew Wells explained that the second paragraph of the paper outlines the National Library's current thinking on Kinetica, with a focus on resource discovery and inter-library loans. There has been some concern raised over KDD linking to commercial suppliers, but overall it is seen as worthwhile. Marian Bate mentioned that at a Group of 8 meeting people did not seem concerned by this.
Helen Livingston informed the meeting that at the CAVAL Cooperative Collecting Seminar Kinetica was recognised as being the only tool available to analyse the national collection (while not being perfect for this, there is nothing else). Mr Wells noted that this was a good point and it would be added to the report.
Mr Wells went on to outline some of the changes in the report since it was last presented to KAC:
Discussion progressed to the development of a metadata repository, which Mr Wells believed would be linked to Kinetica but not physically a part of it. Helen Livingston said that if Kinetica is to be the repository for all resources it is important for relationships with ALX, CORC, EDNA, etc. to be considered and clearly defined. Ms Livingston also felt that many libraries are floundering on this issue and that the National Library should take a lead and specify what types of records Kinetica should contain.
Andrew Wells stated that simple web cataloguing is a useful first step in addressing some of these issues. Marian Bate questioned whether Amicus can handle metadata and Mr Wells and Julia Trainor explained that it was a matter of creating an extra index, which should not be too difficult. Andrew Wells went on to say that to keep revenue up in the future, we need to build the service around digital resources, but there are risks involved with this.
The point was made that Kinetica needs to market itself to non-users of the service. There was discussion of discounting the joining fee for a fixed period to encourage new users, which was generally thought to be a good idea.
ACTION: Kinetica to investigate discounting the joining fee for a fixed period to encourage new users
The meeting broke for lunch at 1.30 and resumed at 2.15
AGENDA ITEM 9 |
KINETICA BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS |
OCLC
Mr Andrew Wells reported that there has been no advance with talks with OCLC.
Te Puna
Te Puna talks are well advanced and draft contracts have been exchanged for consideration. Te Puna holdings still can not be viewed in Kinetica, but work is progressing on this. It has been agreed to link the two VDX Inter Library Loan systems and Kinetica would like to see the payments system of Kinetica also linked to Te Puna.
British Library
There has been a good take up (nearly 400 libraries) of the special offer to Kinetica clients to join Inside Web. Kinetica would like to include Inside Web as a target database via Z39.50.
DW Thorpe
Thorpe have been talking with Kinetica, but due to some technical issues they have not progressed. Global Books in Print should be Z39.50 compliant late next year. Thorpe will not get the price of Global Books in Print from Bowker until January 2001 and so can not work out their charging yet. The NLA will ensure that the price set for access to Books in Print data does not undercut Thorpe's charges to its present Australian customers
RLG
Good relationships have been maintained and our extremely good price for RLIN has continued.
Infotrieve
Kinetica is facilitating a link from KDD to pass information on to Infotrieve, possibly to be implemented in the first quarter next year. The NLA would like Infotrieve to return an ILL protocol message to KDD and will see whether this can be negotiated. There will be no commercial relationship between Kinetica and Infotrieve.
Other
Discussions with one Australian e-books publisher to link to them from the NBD are progressing with the intention to implement this in the medium term.
AGENDA ITEM 10 |
KINETICA ANNUAL USER'S MEETING - ISSUES AND ACTION |
KAC members felt that the papers provided were self-explanatory and did not need further discussion. Andrew Wells informed the Committee that the letter from Linda Luther of the University of South Australia Library has been replied to.
AGENDA ITEM 11 |
KINETICA ANNUAL USER'S MEETING 2000 - EVALUATION |
KAC members were pleased that overall the comments have been very positive. It is particularly pleasing that there are so many positive comments on the parallel sessions and the non-National Library presentations.
Regarding the feedback on encouraging more CEO's to attend the Annual Users Meeting, Helen Livingston made the point that libraries send who they feel can best represent them. Jan Fullerton suggested that some more one on one meetings could be organised between CEO's and senior National Library staff to facilitate better communications.
KAUM 2001
Bryony De La Motte suggested that as previous year's calls for nominations for a Chair of the meeting have generally received no response, that the Committee should invite a person from Queensland to be Chair.
Jan Fullerton invited members to nominate issues for the AUM to cover. The Committee felt that cataloguing digital materials is a major issue and should be a focus of the meeting.
Bryony De La Motte informed members that when the chair is identified Kinetica would call for papers for the 2001 AUM.
It was resolved:
KAC/2000/RES/8
That the NLA should identify a suitable person to chair the Kinetica AUM in 2001.
AGENDA ITEM 12 |
KINETICA CATALOGUING ISSUES |
Julia Trainor noted that the Annual User's Meeting had identified several areas of concern which Kinetica staff are now working on. The National Library will commission an independent usability workshop with the Kinetica Client. Two main outcomes are sought. Firstly, the workshops will identify the most efficient (best practice) workflows in using the Client, which will be documented in Kinetica manuals. Secondly, the workshops will identify the most important requirements for enhancements, and these will be passed on to ELiAS.
Union Catalogue Profile
While Kinetica would like to implement the Union Catalogue Profile for use with the Z39.50 Extended Services for Update, ELiAS is unlikely to support this in the medium term. Kinetica is seeking a definitive statement from ELiAS on this. Once this has been clarified Kinetica will clearly state this to users of the system.
Batch Loading
Julia Trainor reported that while the matching and merging of records is good in Batch*Link, resolution of potential duplicate records is inefficient, and a backlog has already developed. Kinetica has considered the possibility of asking users to work through the errors generated by their batch loads, but this is not considered appropriate as the software is inefficient. IBM GSA has been asked to cost various enhancements to the improve the efficiency of the process
Helen Livingston asked if there was money for both the Batch*Link enhancements and Web reporting, noting that if not, then Batch*link must be the priority. Julia Trainor replied that the Batch*Link enhancements would probably be implemented in a staged process and as such there is money for both these projects.
Ms Livingston asked how the issue of web resources on the NBD should be furthered. There was some discussion on this issue and the Committee felt that a progress report on the National Library's policy developments in this area should be distributed via the Kinetica List.
In response to a question from Marian Bate on problems some libraries using Voyager and Innopac systems were having using Batch*Link, Ms Trainor replied that most of these issues have been resolved. She informed members that not all of the problems are with the software, but are to do with the way it has been implemented at various sites. Some customers have suggested that the National Library should encourage system suppliers to undertake developments, but in the area of local installation and use, this is not appropriate. Ms Livingston then asked if there are any libraries that want to use Batch*Link but cannot. Ms Trainor replied that all libraries are either using the service or moving steadily towards doing so.
Ms Livingston asked about the progress on addition of holdings information to the NBD, and if there are any major gaps. Ms Trainor answered that the major gaps are closing progressively. Monash University, Queensland University of Technology and the State Library of Queensland still have significant gaps, but the Library and Information Service of West Australia is catching up. Ms Livingston then suggested that the perception among some that there are still major gaps in the NBD is a misconception, which Ms Trainor confirmed. Jan Fullerton made the point that there is still an issue with libraries cataloguing materials on their local systems but not adding this information to the NBD (particularly for electronic items).
Ms Trainor mentioned that Patricia Scott from the University of Adelaide has expressed interest (at the Annual Users Meeting and subsequently) in contributing upgraded records to the NBD. Ms Trainor explained that the batch loading software generally retains the database record, and only inserts new fields if they are not already present in the database record. No other libraries have expressed interest in using the Batch*link service to upgrade records on the NBD, and it would be difficult to justify any expenditure on such an enhancement. Committee members were not aware of any other libraries requiring this service.
Kinetica Web reporting form
Julia Trainor informed the Committee that this project to provide a web form for reporting brief records is well underway. The target for the project is smaller and special libraries, and the form will be able to accommodate all formats of items including electronic.
Ms Trainor then raised the issue of whether libraries contributing these records should be eligible for a rebate. KAC members advised that libraries contributing in this form should be given the same incentive as libraries contributing holdings.
It was resolved:
KAC/2000/RES/9
That Kinetica customers adding bibliographic records to the NBD via the Kinetica Web cataloguing interface may be classified as Class B contributors.
AGENDA ITEM 13 |
REVIEW OF CJK SERVICE - PROGRESS REPORT |
Julia Trainor reported that both the internal review of the CJK and a consultant's independent review of customer satisfaction are well underway. Initial indications are that CJK users are generally satisfied with the service and feel that it is value for money.
Ms Trainor also reported that the conversion to Pinyin has been very expensive and will probably take another twelve months to finalise and resolve all associated problems.
Ms Trainor reported on the review of the CJK service, and drew the committee's attention to two likely recommendations which may be controversial in the first instance. The first is a likely recommendation to discontinue the National Diet Library subscription, as this is very costly to purchase and to process, and there is complete overlap with records on RLIN. The second is the likely recommendation to discontinue the practice of entering 'on order' records on the CJK database, requiring Kinetica staff to resolve the matches with incoming full records, and to transfer library holdings to trigger downloading of upgraded records. This service is very costly in Kinetica staff time. These two savings will be achieved by introducing direct Z39.50 links between the RLIN and Kinetica CJK databases. This will enable CJK users to enjoy the benefits of complete online copy cataloguing rather than the current batch process.
NEXT MEETING
The next meeting of the Kinetica Advisory Committee will be held in Canberra in late March (Friday 23 or Friday 30 March). Bryony De La Motte will advise members of the final date and venue.
The following KAC meeting will be held on the Gold Coast at the Grand Mercure Hotel, Broadbeach on the 25 and 27 July, in conjunction with the Kinetica Annual User's Meeting.
Special Thanks
Kinetica Advisory Committee members extended special thanks to Andrew Wells who will leave Kinetica and the National Library in January. The Committee also thanked Trevor Wakely for organising this meeting and refreshments and EBSCO for sponsoring the meeting.
The following agenda papers were embargoed:
Kinetica Financial Information
Kinetica Business Plan 2000-2003: draft revision
Review of CJK service - progress report
Kinetica - description of service
The meeting closed at 3.40 pm