Staff Papers

eXploring new dimensions: revisioning library services in the post web environment

Roxanne Missingham, Assistant Director General, Resource Sharing, National Library of Australia

Abstract

Libraries have provided user focused services for many centuries. The development of the web has enabled a focus on online collections and access support services. After almost a decade of online delivery, this paper reviews the needs of Australians and some of the innovative developments in Australian libraries. It also considers two key questions:

- Have these developments enabled users to overcome the barriers, particularly requirements to know how libraries are organised to truly have a successful find and get experience digitally? and

- What skills have been required of library staff to develop these innovative services?

This paper reports on research into Kinetica, based on focus groups and surveys of end users and library staff. It also covers surveys and focus groups of individuals using the National Library's Copies Direct services as well as other reviews. It then offers some thoughts on the new services which are emerging and comments on the skills and attributes required by library technicians and librarians to develop the next generation of digital library services.

Introduction

Libraries are an exciting place to be in this era of delivering services and resources online. Australian libraries have adapted very quickly to the new challenges of the late twentieth and twenty first century – the most recent of which has been the Internet. In taking up these opportunities to provide revelant services in new forms, there has been a significant change in the skills and roles of library staff. Australian libraries have, for example, moved to provide most of their catalogues on the web and to digitise resources and deliver them online.

Library technicians have had a vital role in all the new developments. The skills, enthusiasm and adaptability of technicians underpins new and extended services in resource discovery, online reference, interlibrary lending, acquisition and resource description.

While the employment of library technicians and librarians has remained fairly constant over the past decade, many have moved into related areas of work – knowledge management, information technology and client service areas. These recruitment trends have no doubt been influenced by the sorts of skills and attributes that we have been required to demonstrate in our daily work. The online services and client focused services have enabled us all to reach new audiences, create new personal competencies and see ourselves as broadly skilled individuals.

This paper provides an overview of some of the developments of innovative online services in Australia and their success in meeting the expectations of users in the modern environment. It also offers some insights into the development of new skills and abilities by library technicians and librarians to support the delivery of innovative and user focused services. The paper then suggests how we might look at our skills to encourage others to see us as an exciting career particularly young Australians.

Our turbulent environment

Libraries have served Australians wherever they are with an enthusiasm that overcomes distance - ours is a large country, with a network of public, state, university, research and special libraries spread across 7.7 million square kilometres. There has been a strong history of cooperation, built on the recognition that the national collection would inevitably be distributed with a range of strengths in libraries across the nation.

In the twenty first century the expectations of librarians and users have radically changed. The development of the Internet, in particular the World Wide Web, has resulted in a radical change in access to information and services. Australians have been rapid adopters of communications technologies, in particular the Internet. At the end of September 2004, there were 5.7 million Internet subscribers in Australia (ABS, 2005a). This was an increase of from 520,000 (10%) from March 2004. Australians also use the Internet from a relatively early age – 84% of 18-24 year olds in 2002 accessed the Internet. (ABS, 2003)

Library use is also a major part of the lives of Australians. The most recent statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics record 105 million visits to local government, national and state libraries in 2003-04, local government libraries account for over 95% of visits. (ABS, 2005b)

In October 2004 research was undertaken into the information seeking behaviour of Australians using focus groups and interviews in public, state and university libraries (for details of the project see Missingham 2005). Participants were able to discuss their general information behaviour and then focused on their expectations of access to the Australian library network. Public library users were selected who had used Information Australia. University based participants and independent scholars had used the Kinetica search service to access the Australian National Bibliographic Database, some through their local catalogue OPAC via Z39.50, others via the Kinetica Search interface.

The research identified some very interesting trends in information seeking behaviour:

Expectations of online access to information about library collections is now very high:

Interestingly the barriers perceived in terms of obtaining access to collection materials once they were found through the Australian National Bibliographic Database were seen as very significant. Charging for interlibrary loans and opaque interlibrary loan processes were cited by users in all three groups as significant barriers to accessing collection materials. Perhaps the strongest mismatch between and resource discovery service and user needs was expressed with the following comment:

“Found one particular book that I was after and when I finally placed the order a message came back that I would have to pay $13 for the book – I found out the publisher had 500 copies of the book for sale at $15 and I could have bought the book – that was the last time I used it - the book came from the State Library and I got the impression it was a rare book and you had to use it for a set period - since bought that book.”

So what does this mean? In a nutshell it demonstrated that Australians seeking information rely upon libraries as well as the Internet. They value the access we provide through our collections and access to other library collections and wish to search easily and seamlessly. Most importantly they want to “find” and “get” in one service – not just find something in a catalogue and then have to figure out how to get it. It also demonstrates that we still have a way to go which will enable us to continue to meet challenges to overcome barriers from our users.

Our reaction: Innovative services

For libraries to respond to these needs and deliver relevant services we need to take advantage of the enthusiasm and skills of our library staff – library technicians and librarians, and work in broader teams with information technology, business analysis and user communities.

Three new services demonstrate positive reactions by the library community – Libraries Australia, Ask Now and Arrow.

Libraries Australia focuses on enabling users to find and get resources from Australian libraries. Currently a subscription based service, the new interface implemented in December 2004 supports easy, “Google” style searching, in addition to advanced and command searching of over 40 millions items held in Australian libraries. It has modern features, for example misspelling English language words, countries, places or names will result in a suggestion from a dictionary of over 270,000 terms (see Jspell 2004) . The search service also supports searching via common synonyms, for example a search for “~car” will also search for the terms automobile, auto, motorcar and machine (see WordNet 2004).

Users are able to “get” as well as “find” resources:

For bookshops that support a Web Services interface such as Amazon (see Amazon 2004), the new service is able to automatically check availability using an ISBN query against the bookshop’s database

Figure 1: Libraries Australia Basic search screen

Figure 1: Libraries Australia Basic search screen

Ask Now is a chat reference service initiative of the Council of Australian State Libraries. A user can ask a question and receive an answer immediately. The service is available via the Internet can be used by anyone with a standard PC and Internet connection, from Monday to Friday from 9.00am to 7.00pm (50 hours per week), taking advantage of the different time zones across Australia. Staff from the National, State and Territory libraries are rostered for three 'seats' each session. Users can ask their questions and be answered by someone outside their home State or Territory. The National Library of New Zealand and the National Library Board of Singapore are also participating in AskNow!

It allows a reference librarian or library technician to chat with the user online and to send web pages through to the user's computer screen. Users can be guided through a search as the user and librarian view the same web pages. Apart from the benefit of an immediate answer to a reference enquiry from off-site users, the service also enables the complete transcription of the librarian/user interaction to be emailed to the user at the end of the session together with any web addresses which the librarian has provided during the course of the chat reference session.

Users come from all over Australia and from all age groups. Forty per cent of users come from outside the major population centres. Many are unsure of the best way to search the Internet to find the information they need and by working through the search with a librarian users improve their own information literacy. Through collaborating to bring about the AskNow service, each participant has been able to offer their users a new service and to provide an effective means of reaching off-site clients that would not be possible on their own.

Figure 2: Ask now screen

Figure 2: Ask now screen

ARROW ( Australian Research Repositories Online to the World) aims to identify and test software or solutions to support best practice institutional digital repositories comprising e-prints, digital theses and electronic publishing. It also will result in the development and testing a national resource discovery service using metadata harvested from the institutional repositories by the National Library of Australia. It supports online repositories which enable development of a collection of research resources by the project partners – Monash Uniervsity, University of NSW; Swinburne University of Technology and the National Library of Australia. The discovery service offers many exciting features including recently added content and recently accessed research. The project demonstrates libraries moving into provising a collection and access “space” for online research resources.

Figure 3: ARROW resource discovery service

Figure 3: ARROW resource discovery service

These three examples demonstrate successful developments in helping users, wherever they are, access our collections, ask reference questions and also to share their research materials in an online environment.

Our skills and careers

All the new developments, and supporting existing library services, has been achieved by a combination of staff and vision. The number of library technicians and librarians in Australia has remained relatively constant over recent years, university figures are broadly indicative of the total labour market:

Figure 4: Employment trends

Figure 4: Employment trends

Ultimately this means that we have been able to deliver new services with our existing workforce. The skills and attributes of library technicians and librarians has however changed to meet these new needs. With a little imagination the changing nature of library employment can be seen as developing a whole set of new skills which are in the realm of extreme sports.

Our new skills have emerged in areas such as:

EXTREME MOUNTAIN CLIMBING: We have met extreme challenges in providing services based on new media and new forms of resources. One of the great challenges has occurred with the development of online information, relevant to all our services. So how did library staff climb extreme mountains to explore electronic resources? We have developed new standards for descriptions of electronic resources to enable our users to climb the alps to “find” these resources – through "Dublin Core metadata" and through preservation metadata for the collection resources we digitise. Dublin Core data is now used by governments through agreed standards such as AGLS, by federated search services such as PictureAustralia and as fundamental infrastructure for the semantic web. Library technicians have often implemented the new description standards to produce records that the world is able to access. All these developments enable mountains of information online can be managed and searched efficiently because of the ground breaking work of descriptive standards.

BUNGEE JUMPING: The digital environment has also provided an opportunity to leap forward by creating new information resources – from digitising a wide range of materials in our collections to taking in new complex media which require new infrastructure, access services and delivery. The move to digitise collection material has, in recent years, taking us to into signification work on standards, services and interoperability. But the prime purpose of digitisation has been to provide users with access to the rich resources available within our physical collections, to enable new audiences to use and build upon the resources libraries have been acquiring and curating for hundreds of years. Public libraries such as Lake Macquarie, Campbelltown and Wollongong as well as university, national and state libraries have digitised fabulous image and other collection materials, and library technicians have often done the scanning, resource description and delivery work. Users, wherever they may be, have benefited and libraries have become more relevant in a very competitive information space. Developments are also built upon understanding new issues, creating standards and sharing information, working together to make future leaps as exciting and successful. We have jumped into the digital environment with a cord based on the practices and visions developed over may decades which have enabled up to pull new ideas and approaches back to benefit our users. Definitely exciting and adventurous territory tackled by library technicians around the world.

ORIENTEERING: Creating new services within our libraries has taken us to where no librarian had gone before. Reference/user services have seen enormous change, not the least with the launch of virtual reference services which give users access, wherever they are to online real time quality support services. Developing new online reference services has much in common with orienteering – the basic map of user needs, the services we want to deliver and the concept of service standards. The compass is our unerring direction and desire to connect our users with information. There are extra points for taking a creative, efficient route, matching control points with the decisions about what sort of service should be provided and how it should be delivered. Ask Now is staffed by library technicians and librarians meeting the needs of thousands of Australians by walking with them into new areas of knowledge exploration.

ENDURANCE: Perhaps the greatest extreme sport in which we all excel is, however, endurance. Budget woes, increasing costs of library material and uncertainty about funding have been faced bravely by library staff for many many years. Libraries have reshaped collections, developed new and innovative ways of fund raising and worked together to seek new ways of acquiring resources to keep our services and collections to the best possible level for our users. Consortia are a great example of libraries working together to take positive long term action to purchasing. By collaborating, consortia enable libraries to acquire electronic resources with the best outcomes for vendors, information producers and libraries. Participation in these activities enables libraries to develop skills and knowledge and be very efficient, increasing their ability to withstand the next rounds of budget challenges and endurance tests.

Conclusions

Library technicians and librarians have demonstrated the ability to develop new skills worthy of admiration and recognition. We need to remember that our achievements so far have been against many odds, with uncertain goals and taken resources which demonstrate that we providing an opportunity for those seeking excitement and challenge.

The services we have developed – such as Libraries Australia, Ask Now and ARROW have involve library technicians in the project work underpinning the development of the services such as testing, data contribution, reference work and interlibrary loan activity.

So when you next talk about employment in libraries remember our strengths demonstrated by the extreme sports that we have tackled and conquered.


References

ARROW http://arrow.edu.au

Ask Now http://www.nla.gov.au/infoserv/askus.html

Australian Bureau of Statistics (2005a) Internet Activity, Australia . ABS catalogue no. 8153.0 Canberra : ABS, 2005 http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/e8ae5488b598839cca25682000131612/6445f12663006b83ca256a150079564d!OpenDocument

Australian Bureau of Statistics (2005b) Public libraries, Australia . ABS catalogue no. 8561.0. Canberra : ABS, 2005 http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/DBB34301DFEB6F15CA256A780002A098?Open

Australian Bureau of Statistics (2003) Measures of a knowledge-based economy and society, Australia Information and Communications Technology Indicators . Canberra : ABS, 2001.

 Jspell (2004) The Solution Café. Jspell Web Spell Checker. http://www.jspell.com/

Libraries Australia http://librariesaustralia.nla.gov.au/

PictureAustralia http://pictureaustralia.org/

Missingham, R., Wilson, F., Smith, J. (2005) “Evaluating the public library portal”, paper presented to the Information Online 2005 conference, Sydney, http://www.nla.gov.au/nla/staffpaper/2005/missingham1.html

WordNet (2004) Cognitive Science Laboratory, Princeton University . WordNet®: a lexical database for the English language. http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~wn/

 

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