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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 42 | December 1999


NLA and the National Academies Forum in partnership

The NLA formally meets with the National Academies Forum (NAF) on an annual basis to discuss activities and issues of common interest. This is a useful arrangement to increase awareness of the Library’s activities in the research community

The National Academies Forum comprises the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, the Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of the Humanities, all of which attract academics of high scholarly distinction. The NAF coordinates activities by the four academies.

In September, the chair of the National Academies Forum, Professor Malcolm Gillies, and representatives of the other academies met with senior National Library staff to review progress on joint projects over the preceding 12 months. These included the work of the Australian Library Collections Task Force; the Symposium on Scholarship, Intellectual Ownership and the Law; the Malthus Bicentenary Conference; the work of the National Scholarly Communications Forum; and the Access to French-Based Research Resources Project.

Each of these initiatives has increased the library community’s understanding of issues that impact upon the information needs of scholars. At the same time, the activities enhance the scholarly community’s understanding and input to a range of National Library initiatives that will help to meet these needs.

The September meeting recognised the need to build strongly on the success of the recent Symposium on Scholarship, Intellectual Ownership and the Law and is was agreed that the National Library and NAF would jointly develop a major series of scholarly forums in 2000 and 2001. The Library discussed its Strategic Directions Statement and comments on the statement were invited from the academies. NAF agreed to share with the Library their response to the Government’s Green Paper on research funding and the academies agreed to assist the Library with the Overseas Collecting Review and the ongoing work of the Australian Library Collections Task Force. NAF was also briefed on the implementation of Kinetica, the Digital Services Project, and the Reference Integration Project.

The meeting concluded with a mutual reaffirmation of the importance of this strategic partnership, and agreed to reconvene again formally at the end of 2000.

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