National Library of Australia
Electronic Information Resources
Strategies
and Action Plan 2002-2003
- Introduction
- Electronic Information Resources - Trends
- Policy Considerations
- Electronic Resources - Strategies and Actions
- Collecting
- Preservation
- Access to Electronic Resources
- Support for Sharing Electronic Information Resources
- Additional Information
- References
A copy of this document is available in pdf format for printing.
Introduction
This paper documents the National Library's proposed strategies and actions in relation to Australian and overseas electronic information resources for the period 2002-2003.
The National Library of Australia's priority within its Directions for 2003-2005 is that of "rapid and easy access to the wealth of information resources that reside in libraries and other cultural institutions and to break down barriers that work against this". The National Library is committed to undertake actions that progress this objective.
The term "electronic information resources" in this paper is taken to mean:
- Digital copies of existing formats such as print, manuscripts, maps, audio and pictorial items.
- Born digital formats such as electronic journals and web sites.
- Metadata describing the above electronic resources and resources in other formats.
The National Librarys role in relation to electronic resources includes:
- Collecting, preserving and making available Australian and other information resources in a wide range of formats, in accordance with the provisions of the National Library Act 1960.
- Provision of services to support the Australian library system in areas such as resource discovery (bibliographic and metadata services) and directory services.
- Contribution to international developments in library and information services in areas such as the development and promulgation of standards.
Detailed implementation programs support the strategies and associated actions outlined in this paper.
Electronic Information Resources - Trends
In the short to medium term, it is expected that the following broad trends in the information services environment will influence access to electronic information resources:
- Search engines will provide more efficient Internet search capabilities, allowing users to locate required information more easily and with greater precision. Many information sites will remain out of sight of search engines (the "deep web") and other mechanisms will evolve to locate this information.
- New layers of middleware such as improved authentication software will emerge, supporting activities such as e-commerce and other services requiring high levels of security.
- Issues of intellectual property rights on the web will become increasingly important and will be addressed through technological solutions.
- Web users will increasingly access information resources without intermediation by libraries or librarians.
- Portals as interfaces to information will be developed by a range of organisations, providing users with easy access to a defined range of useful electronic information intended to meet individual requirements.
- Commercialisation of the web will continue, particularly in relation to business activities on the web. Conversely, there will continue to be an expectation by information users that many services will be free or charged at low cost.
- Virtual reference services will become more prevalent and more sophisticated, reflecting the shift to the use of the Web and electronic resources. Reference services will increasingly be offered through the Web
- Collaboration will assume more strategic importance as a way of achieving similar goals across different sectors, and traditional information service providers will group in new and innovative ways.
Policy Considerations
The National Librarys strategies on electronic information resources take account of the above trends and will continue to be influenced by the Commonwealth Governments policies on online information access and the information economy. The experience and expectations of advisory groups and users of the National Librarys services will also continue to influence developments in access to electronic information resources.
A key policy issue underpinning the National Librarys strategies and actions on electronic information resources is the need to provide access to a range of information resources regardless of format. This involves providing access to a coherent collection of material including both electronic and traditional information resources. The UK eLib Electronic Libraries program has coined the term "hybrid library" to cover services that unite the functions of the traditional library with those of electronic, digital or virtual library services.
Further information on the National Librarys thinking on the issue of integrated access and hybrid library concepts is available in the paper The Challenge of Integrated Access : the Hybrid Library System of the Future.1
Electronic Resources - Strategies and Actions
The following strategies and actions for electronic information resources are grouped in the categories: collecting; preservation; access to electronic information resources; and, support for sharing electronic information resources.
Collecting
The National Librarys key objective in terms of its collecting role is:
"To ensure that a comprehensive record of Australian history and creative endeavour, and a selected record of universal human knowledge is collected and cared for".
The volume of electronic information resources being made available through the Internet is beyond the ability of any one library to collect and preserve. Therefore, the National Library will continue to work with libraries, publishers and other relevant organisations to ensure that important documentary heritage resources continue to be available for use through a system of distributed archives of electronic resources that are permanently accessible to the public.
The National Library is building a national collection of selected Australian electronic resources (the National Collection of Australian Online Publications, formerly known as the PANDORA Archive). The Library is committed to providing ongoing access to the resources in the collection in the same way as it has traditionally provided ongoing access to Australian information resources in print and other formats. The National Library distinguishes between those resources it collects for preservation as part of the nations documentary heritage, and the resources for which a link is provided from the catalogue but for which the Library does not accept a preservation responsibility.
At this stage, legal deposit is not available for electronic information resources under Commonwealth legislation. Therefore, permission has to be obtained to collect and archive electronic resources. The National Library will continue to seek the extension of legal deposit provisions to electronic information resources in order to ensure a greater range are preserved for on-going access.
Noting the trend towards electronic only publishing by government agencies, the National Library will continue to influence these agencies to adopt emerging web publishing standards in order to facilitate ongoing access to government information.
Specifically, the National Library will adopt the following strategies in collecting electronic information resources:
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STRATEGY |
ACTIONS |
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1. Ensure that the most significant Australian electronic resources are collected/archived with a view to long-term preservation by:
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Apply the following three-tier collecting model to online resources:
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2.Ensure overseas electronic resources are collected in accordance with the current Collection Development Policy to meet information needs of researchers. |
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3. Apply and encourage practices to ensure
persistence of
access to Australian electronic resources |
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4. Continue to collaborate with Government and other relevant Australian organisations in relation to the collecting and managing Australian electronic information resources. |
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Preservation
The National Librarys key objective in terms of its preservation role is:
"To preserve and maintain all Australian and significant non-Australian library materials to ensure they are available for current and future use".
The National Librarys main preservation objectives are to preserve those information resources collected as part of Australias documentary heritage, and to help others preserve those electronic resources for which they take responsibility.
Specifically, the National Library will adopt the following strategies in preserving selected electronic information resources:
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STRATEGY |
ACTIONS |
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1. Apply appropriate preservation strategies to the National Librarys own collections of electronic resources for long-term access. |
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2. Provide leadership to Australian libraries and other relevant organisations in developing policies and techniques for preserving electronic resources, and participate in international forums to develop electronic preservation standards. |
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Access to Electronic Resources
The National Librarys key objective in terms of its information access services role is:
"To ensure that the Library provides effective and open access to its own collections, and to information sources elsewhere".
The Library will continue to provide a wide range of information resources through its Web site, with the catalogue a key resource discovery point. The National Library intends to maintain a holistic view of its resources through its catalogue. In addition, the National Library intends to provide users with access to more detailed subject or format-based listings and to links to remote resources. The aim is to provide users with integrated views of the information resources available to them.
The National Library is responding to user expectations of increased access to digital content, regardless of the users location, through:
- Ongoing digitisation of Australian collection items in a variety of formats print, pictorial, map, manuscript and sound recording, and the development of delivery services for these materials.
- Licensing of electronic data sets to provide direct access to electronic journals and other information that is commercially available.
- Provision of links in the catalogue to Internet resources that meet the collecting guidelines outlined in the Collection Development Policy.
- Development of services such as PictureAustralia that provide convenient aggregated search access to digital content held in a variety of Australian libraries and other organisations.
- Participation in the development of digital reference service in and beyond Australia.
Digitisation of parts of the National Librarys Australian collections commenced in 1995. Since that time, there has been a steady increase in the availability of digitised pictorial works, maps, manuscripts and sheet music. The National Library has also cooperated with RMIT Publishing and the Copyright Agency Limited to provide a commercially available service based on digital images of a wide range of journal articles indexed in the Australian Public Affairs Information Index (APAIS) and the Australian Medical Index (AMI). At this stage, the demand for increased access to digitised content is being addressed through an expanded digitisation program.
The National Library has traditionally maintained a record of Australias publishing output. In recent years this has been in the form of a subset of the National Bibliographic Database the record of library materials held in Australian libraries. In future, electronic information resources will be considered as part of the national publishing output with strategies devised to enable integrated searching across Australian information resources in all formats.
In keeping with its role as set out in the National Library Act 1960, the National Library will continue to offer a core set of services free of charge. This is consistent with the trend of free access to a large amount of the information content available via the Internet. More value-added services (such as access to Kinetica) have traditionally been charged in order to recover a proportion of their costs. This will continue to be the case but, wherever possible, free or subsidised access will be provided.
Specifically, the National Library will adopt the following strategies in accessing electronic resources:
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STRATEGY |
ACTIONS |
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1. Maintain and develop the Librarys Website to operate as the Librarys primary interface for delivering online services to both onsite and offsite users. |
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2. Provide integrated access to:
through continued development of the National Library catalogue and information portal. |
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3. Extend the availability of digitised information content (including digitised National Library collections) and access to other electronic resources. |
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4. Develop virtual reference services that support users wherever they are located. |
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5. Collaborate with other organisations on the development of delivery systems (such as portal technologies and rights management systems) that enable users to have improved access to electronic resources. |
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Support for Sharing Electronic Information Resources
The National Librarys key objective in terms of support for the Australian library system is:
"To ensure that Australians, wherever they live or work, have access to information resources in Australia and overseas".
The National Library will continue to support the provision of services and systems, developed collaboratively, which provide access to print and electronic information resources held in the collections of Australian libraries. Australia is fortunate in having a number of important national resource sharing services already in place: the National Bibliographic Database, the Australian Libraries Gateway (including the Interlibrary Resource Sharing Directory) and the Register of Australian Archives and Manuscripts. In addition, Australia has a well-established tradition of library cooperation manifested in a national interlibrary loan network that is now based on open standards. Technologies are in place to enable the delivery of electronic information resources from remote library collections using document delivery services such as Ariel.
The Kinetica service aggregates information about the resources available in many Australian libraries. The National Library believes there is an ongoing role for aggregated searching of print and electronic information resources. The National Library is committed to developing services to share metadata describing electronic information resources and seeks the support of Australian libraries and other organisations to achieve this.
There is a clear advantage in minimising the need to create more than one record describing an electronic resource (metadata record) where the one record can be reused or shared in many different products (eg. National Bibliographic Database, National Library catalogue, PictureAustralia, Register of Australian Archives and Manuscripts and other libraries catalogues). This principle follows the successful reuse of bibliographic records through services such as the Australian Bibliographic Network and Kinetica. The reuse of records for different products lowers the overall costs of Australian libraries and is a key plank of national resource sharing within the Australian library sector.
There is a continuing need for the development and implementation of technical standards that support key functionality such as cross-database searching, operation of directory products, cooperative document delivery, and authentication of users. The National Library will continue to collaborate with others in the interests of developing necessary standards in emerging areas of electronic information resource discovery and delivery.
Specifically, the National Library will adopt the following strategies in support of sharing electronic information resources in Australia:
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STRATEGY |
ACTIONS |
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1. Extend the concept of resource sharing among Australian libraries to include electronic resources, by continuing a range of activities which facilitate the use of nationally operated bibliographic and metadata services for the description, discovery and delivery of electronic information resources. |
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2. Improve access to resources in Australian libraries by developing a new model for the generation of union catalogues and directories for particular subjects or formats, such as the Register of Australian Archives and Manuscripts, from the National Bibliographic Database. |
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3. Provide a deeper and/or broader level of access to resources in a given format or on a given subject. |
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4. Collaborate with other libraries on consortia acquisition of a selection of full text electronic resources, with the ultimate aim of providing all Australians with access to these resources regardless of location. |
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Additional Information
Additional information on the above strategies and actions may be obtained from the National Library. For information on:
Collecting contact Pam Gatenby (02) 6262-1672
Preservation contact Colin Webb (02) 6262-1662
Access to electronic resources contact Margy Burn (02) 6262-1301
Support for sharing electronic information resources contact Roxanne Missingham (02) 6262-1484
In June 2001 the Library of Congress released an Action Plan for Bibliographic Control of Web Resources. The plan was updated in 2002. Developments from the Action Plan will be monitored, as a number of the proposed actions will have implications for the National Library of Australia and other libraries.
References
1 Pearce, Judith and Cathro, Warwick. "The Challenge of Integrated Access : the Hybrid Library System of the Future." A paper presented at the 10th VALA Biennial Conference and Exhibition, Melbourne, Victoria, 16-18 February, 2000. Available: http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/nlasp/article/view/1347.
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