National Round Table on Access to Overseas Monographs through Australian Libraries
28 August 1998, National Library of Australia
COLLECTING FOR RESEARCH AND SCHOLARSHIP:
THE STATE LIBRARY PERSPECTIVE
Margy Burn
______________________________________
Introduction
I have been asked to give my perspective on access to overseas monographs and I do appreciate this opportunity of representing the view from within a State Library. My remarks will focus on the State Library of New South Wales, but I believe our situation broadly reflects that of all the state libraries, several of which are represented here today. State Libraries make a vital, yet often overlooked contribution to the provision of Australian research infrastructure. Our role is most often recognised in relation to the unique Australiana resources held in the State and National libraries, but also important is the access we provide to non-Australian library and information resources, particularly for independent researchers and members of the public whose access to other research collections is limited.
The State Library of NSW - a snapshot
Each year more than a million people visit our Macquarie Street complex, the majority of them to our two major services, the State Reference Library (SRL) and the Mitchell and Dixson Library Reading Rooms, and about a quarter of a million to visit our exhibitions. More than a million items from the collection are issued in the Library each year and we answer about 600,000 enquires received in person, by post, phone, fax and, increasingly, email. We are a small government department with just over four hundred staff and an annual budget of around $50 million. The collection size exceeds four million items in all formats including monographs, serials, government publications, newspapers, audiovisual materials, CD-ROMs, Internet resources and other computer files, ephemera, maps, manuscripts, pictures and oral histories.
Our acquisitions budget this year will be $4.1 million with the major contribution from the NSW Government topped up by Library Council funding derived from bequests, fundraising etc. In addition we estimate we receive collection materials worth an additional $1 million each year through donations, deposit schemes and under the provisions of the Cultural Grants Program, perhaps better known under its former name, the Taxation Incentives for the Arts Scheme.
In this forum I would like to single out some of the sources of overseas monographs which are received through donations, deposit or exchange. We receive overseas government publications through depository arrangements with organisations such as the EU, UN and Asian Development Bank. A sister library relationship with the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Library is the source of many of the Japanese publications we acquire each year and our strong relationships with the Sydney consular corps often leads to donations. Last year we received several hundred books in Spanish and Portuguese from consular sources for example.
Its important to stress were funded by the NSW government to meet the needs of the people of NSW, although the age, size and nature of our collections mean we provide services to a much wider client group.
Services to public libraries
The State Library sees itself at the hub of a statewide network of public library services of some one hundred public library services in NSW. One of the support services we provide to public libraries specifically relates to overseas monographs - that is, a multicultural collection of 55,000 volumes in forty languages which is available for loan to public libraries to support their provision of library materials in languages other than English. We lend 70,000 items each year from this collection, which includes fiction and nonfiction, adult and childrens material.
Interlibrary loan is another important support service to public libraries and although of course its not restricted to them they are our primary client group for loans of monographs. Of the 20,000 monograph volumes lent to other libraries last year, 75% of these were to NSW public libraries, 2% to other State Libraries and the National Library of Australia and 6% to university libraries. Only 0.17% of total loans were to libraries overseas and while I dont have the exact figures for our borrowing of overseas material for clients I believe it is equally insignificant. We estimate that 75% of the material we lend on interlibrary loan are overseas imprints - however its important to note that material in the Mitchell Library is not available for interlibrary loan and is only supplied in the form of copies.
Overseas monographs
The first thing I should say is that its difficult to be precise about non-Australian material in our collections. Our current library system is an old one - Im pleased to say it is being replaced as we speak - and extracting a range of management information from it can be difficult to impossible. Our collection expenditure is broadly divided by the two main subprogram activities of the State Reference Library and the Mitchell Library. Not all material acquired for Mitchell is Australiana and not all material in the State Reference Library is non-Australian. The information I will give on non-Australian acquisitions is based on expenditure for the State Reference Library which will include some Australian material. It will exclude the non-Australian material acquired for Mitchell, such as material emanating from New Zealand and the South West Pacific for example.
This year, of our total expenditure of just over $4 million, we will spend about half on non-Australian material. We spend about $800,000 on non-Australian monographs, (compared with $311,000 for Mitchell monographs, mainly Australiana) and our non-Australian serials expenditure will be about $1.5 million. Last year we added about 72,000 non-Australian monographs to our collection. With the A$ at its current all-time low we will be adding rather fewer this year.
Our Collection Development Policy outlines the level of past and current collecting activity for subject areas in the Librarys collection, arranged by Dewey classification, according to the agreed definitions known as the Australian Conspectus levels, on a scale of 0-5.
Current Collecting Intensity
Our current collecting intensity is directly related to the availability of funding. There is no subject area within the collection of the State Library which is considered out of scope. The only level 5 subjects (defined as comprehensive: a collection which includes all significant works of recorded knowledge in all applicable languages, for a necessarily defined and limited field. This level of collection intensity is one that maintains a special collection - the aim is exhaustiveness) are highly specialised areas within the Mitchell collection, e.g. NSW bibliography.
Most of the non-Australian areas of collecting activity are at levels 2 or 3, basic or intermediate, basic being defined as a collection of up-to-date material which introduces and defines a subject. It may include dictionaries, encyclopaedias, standard and significant works, access to appropriate databases, audiovisual material and a few popular and major serials and intermediate: a collection containing a broad range of resources adequate to support most tertiary instruction, sustained independent study, work-based interests or specialised inquiries. It includes a wide range of basic works in appropriate formats, fundamental reference sources and bibliographical works, a significant number of classic retrospective materials, a representative journal selection and access to databases. Rather too much of our collection is at level 1, minimal: defined, baldly, as few selections are made beyond very basic introductory material.
In reality, the volume of material being published and the limits of our funding mean we are now collecting across most subjects at a fairly low level and selecting from review sources and trade literature, rather than through specialised bibliographies. We collect in more depth from countries with whom there is a close historical or demographic relationship, like the UK, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, South Africa, and on subjects in which there is considerable current interest, HIV/AIDS for example, or World War 1 - a perennial hot topic in the schools curriculum it seems, and related to an Australiana collection strength for us. We also collect in more depth subjects which put the Australian experience in an international context, for example, federalism or first nations. Our collecting intensity is stronger in subjects for which there is high demand - those wishing to travel or do business overseas are very well served by our collections.
With 95% of the collection in closed access stack it is relatively easy to analyse stack slips to reveal use of the collection. High use subjects in the State Reference Library are generally collected at levels 2-3 and in Mitchell at levels 3-4. High use subjects, which account for 20-30% of the collection use, include the social sciences (300s) management, applied sciences and technology (600s) the arts (700s), history biography and geography (900s). Low use subjects like linguistics (400s) which receive less than 1% use are only collected at level 1.
Japanese history, English history, environmental management
Of the ten fields of study which are the subject of special attention today Ive analysed our overseas published monograph holdings in Japanese history, English history and environmental management. I chose this material because all three can be easily defined in the Dewey Decimal Classification scheme (JH 952, EH 941-2, EM 333.7-9, 363.7, 354.3 DDC21). They all fall into what we consider to be reasonably high use areas for our collection, especially English history and environmental management which we would be collecting at levels 2-3. I thought Japanese history might be interesting because of the Tokyo sister library relationship.
The data I have is for material which is recorded on our automated catalogue, generally speaking acquired in the period 1980 to date. We have 3558 titles in environmental management, 4109 in English history and 361 in Japanese history, of which 47 are in Japanese and 114 have a Japanese imprint. I would call this a respectable level of collecting for a state library collection, given the extent of our resources but its depressingly inadequate to support advanced or specialised research.
Having said that, I would like to emphasis that we give considerable priority to acquiring material which is requested by our users, however specialised. For monograph material which is suggested by clients we will acquire almost anything in English which is in print, even if it might technically be out of scope of our Collection Development Policy. This reflects a higher policy commitment to client service over strict observance of the Collection Development Policy. A recent request for a copy of "Stimmung" for six voices is an example of something which is technically out of scope but which we acquired because of a request from a client. This example allows me to make a comment on the ridiculous limitations of thinking within territorial boundaries. Our clients request may well have been stimulated by the knowledge of a forthcoming performance of the Stockhausen song cycle by that fine Australian performing group, The Song Company.
Foreign language holdings
Most of the overseas published material in our collection is predominantly in English, with the exception of our multicultural collection, which I mentioned earlier. The multicultural collection is a back-up collection, typical of public library collections; not kept permanently, but the stock replaced as it gets tatty or read-out. The highest circulating material in the multicultural collection is Chinese and we have 4111 Chinese language titles in the multicultural collection for the period from 1980 to date, compared with only 720 in the main collection. The Tamil community, though small in number, is highly literate and takes an active interest in our Tamil collection, to the extent of donating money and material to extend it. Tamilis would be a minority population in most local government areas and most public libraries would have difficulty identifying sources of Tamil books. For this reason there are a relatively large number -1579- of Tamil titles in the multicultural collection and, I was surprised to discover, 196 in the Librarys permanent collection.
German is another high use language which I included because our community profiles show it is a language where there is demand by readers who wish to read in their second language, not just their first. We have a strong relationship with the German community through the consulate and the Goethe Institut. Recently, we have embarked on a collecting drive with the German speaking community in NSW to build on our strong nineteenth century holdings and increase our holdings of archives and manuscripts relating to twentieth century German experience in Australia. The German speaking community or those who wish to read in German have access to 6000 titles in our collection - equally split between the multicultural collection and our permanent collection. Contrast this with the German publishing output which last year alone amounted to 57,580 new titles.
Services to scholars
In conclusion I would like to talk a little about the services we provide which support research and scholarship. The State Library values its association with scholars and researchers, who are key client groups, particularly of our Australian Research Collections. Currently except for the clients of the Mitchell Library we dont have sufficiently detailed information about the users of our other services. But the user profile of the Mitchell Library is instructive I think. Of our current readers ticket holders not quite 1800 have been issued to persons describing themselves as academics, scholars, authors, historians, or employed in libraries, archives, museums and galleries; 1700 to business people, nearly 3000 to students, and 2400 to a group called by us as independent learners people pursuing their own interests who are not formally affiliated with an educational institution, including independent scholars and researchers.
Student use
Given this opportunity to address a senior academic audience its important to stress the very high use made of state and public library services by students. Our surveys consistently show that 40% of our users are students drawn from tertiary institutions and upper secondary school. This demand from students puts considerable strain on our services and resources. With our lean resourcing, and the fact that our role is primarily to provide services to members of the public who have no educational institution affiliation it is a challenge to provide appropriate services to meet the needs of very differing client groups. Collaborative relationships with the education sector which address some of the demand in state and public libraries from students, particularly those relying on flexible delivery, are an important recognition of the role played by state and public libraries in the countrys educational infrastructure. Our partnership with Macquarie University on the Access to Life Long Learning Project is a good example of such a collaboration.
We welcome the opportunity to participate in collaborative proposals. The ARC funded Australian Cooperative Digitisation Project, a collaboration involving Sydney and Monash Universities, the National Library and ourselves, which is digitising Australian publications for the period 1840-45 is a very valuable example of the way state and national libraries can contribute to the development of research infrastructure. This was also a model in that the two libraries were involved in planning from the outset. We would welcome other opportunities to develop closer relationships which may not require large grants, such as residencies for scholars for example.
Retrospective conversion
One area of obvious neglect in terms of Australian research infrastructure and the overseas monographs in Australian state and national libraries is the material acquired before the widespread automation of cataloguing in the 1980s. As the Early Imprints Project, later renamed Australias Book Heritage, showed, our libraries are treasure houses of overseas monograph material which is not recorded on the National Bibliographical Database, and never will be without access to significant research infrastructure funding. (Australias Book Heritage added 71,000 records to the National Bibliographic Database for pre-1801 imprints substantially drawn from the holdings of the National Library and State Libraries of Victoria and New South Wales.)
The state and national libraries have not received the same level of project funding for retrospective conversion of card catalogues as have university libraries. What funds we have must be applied to our unique Australiana resources, our contribution to recording and making accessible Australias published heritage for this country and the world. At the State Library of NSW we are currently retroconverting the Dixson Library printed book collection. This is a small collection of 20,000 volumes and because of its Australiana and bibliographic significance we are doing a full retrospective conversion. It will take us at least two years. This project has been chosen so we can establish what it will cost to retroconvert the Mitchell Library printed books collection - some 300,000 titles. The Mitchell retrospective conversion cannot be done without special external funding, and at the moment this has not been secured.
In this context it is hard to see when we might ever secure the funds to retroconvert the State Reference Library collection, which is twice the size of Mitchell. We know from an earlier attempt at retroconversion which stopped after five years that for much of this material there are no other Australian holdings recorded on the National Bibliographical Database. You will conclude from these remarks that I strongly support recommendation R2.
I hope my remarks have been revealing to those of you who are perhaps not so familiar with State Library collections. Thank you for the opportunity of speaking today.
Margy Burn
Director,
Australian Research Collections and Collection Services
State Library of NSW