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37th Annual Report 1996-97
International Activities

Objectives

  • To maintain and develop a significant presence in the international library and research community, aligned with Australia’s longer term foreign policy, trade and humanitarian objectives.
  • To integrate the Library’s developments effectively within the international system of information and library networks and networked applications.

The Library’s international programs take two quite distinct paths. On the one hand the Library has a responsibility to represent the Australian library community internationally on professional and technical issues of importance to Australian libraries, while on the other hand we see a role for cooperation with our library colleagues in the region to assist the further development of libraries in their countries.

Some of the activities described in the chapter ‘Services to libraries’ illustrate the Library’s international collaborative initiatives over the design of access to information on the Internet, and they will not be repeated here. With respect to other international professional issues, the Library continued its involvement with the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). The Director-General served his final full year as Treasurer and member of the Executive Board of IFLA, while the Library continues to take an active role in IFLA’s Regional Section for Asia and Oceania. We strengthened collaborative links with research libraries in the United States by joining the Research Libraries Group, an influential policy-making body.

Other significant international representations by Library staff included the Information Superhighway Asia ’96 Conference in Singapore, the Coalition for Networked Information workshop on metadata for digital pictorial images in Ohio, the Japanese National Diet Library’s International Symposium on Preservation in Tokyo and the Digital Libraries Conference in London.

The Library combined its expertise in library technology with the objectives of its Regional Cooperation Program in an interesting new project in Papua New Guinea this year. The Regional Cooperation Program assists developing country libraries in our immediate geographical region. The Papua New Guinea Internet Project aims to provide the Papua New Guinea Office of Libraries and Archives with Internet access facilities. This project was modelled on the Vietnam Internet Project, conducted last year with the National Library of Vietnam. Library staff made field visits to Port Moresby, and in May installed a local area network in the National Library of Papua New Guinea, together with electronic mail facilities and a World Wide Web information server. We trained local staff in the use and maintenance of these facilities, which were designed to facilitate links with related digital communications and networking developments in the country. The 20-year-old relationship between the two national libraries was greatly strengthened by this project.

Through the Regional Cooperation Program the Library sponsored a librarian from the National Library of Laos to participate in a computer-based cataloguing course at the University of New South Wales. In addition, the Library donated a number of used computers and microfiche readers to libraries in Western Samoa, Kiribati and Vanuatu, and made gifts of $2000 worth of Australian books to ten Pacific Island nation libraries. The Library engaged in a joint project with the Asia–Pacific Special Interest Group of the Australian Library and Information Association to produce a directory of libraries and archives in the Pacific Islands.

For the past eight years, the Library has acted as the coordinator for a UNESCO-sponsored subsidised document delivery project for the Asian Scientific and Technological Information Organisation. The purpose of the scheme was to encourage the flow of scientific and technical information around the Asia–Pacific region, and to familiarise Asian librarians with international document supply facilities and mechanisms. Having exhausted the UNESCO funds, the scheme was brought to a close on schedule during 1997. Over the life of the project some 10,000 document supply requests from libraries in 14 countries were processed by the National Library of Australia. In its last year, the service provided 1897 articles to ten countries. Bangladesh, Iran and Indonesia were the biggest users of the service.

The Library hosted a number of visits and training attachments by international information professionals from a variety of countries.


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