ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 44 | April 2000
New members and directions for the Australian Library Collections Task Force
On 24 March, continuing and new members of the National Librarys Australian Library Collections Task Force met to chart new directions for 2000, which will build on the very successful activities undertaken by the Task Force in 1999.
The Task Force, which is chaired by the Librarys Director-General, Jan Fullerton, was established by the Library in 1998 to investigate and report on issues that affect access to monographs in Australian libraries. In 1999 a number of activities were undertaken to improve the library sectors understanding of these issues. These included a major national survey on contributions to the National Bibliographic Database (NBD) by libraries in various sectors; a major national survey of the experiences of academics in the fields of Psychology and English when accessing books to support their research, the findings of which were published in Looking for Books by Professor Leon Cantrell; an analysis of the levels of access to books experienced by authors of PhD theses; and a series of user focus groups. An investigation of the types of books that are ordered through interlibrary loan services at the Universities of Sydney and Queensland was also undertaken, and information about collections not recorded on the NBD was collected from libraries in all sectors. The views of libraries and users were then sought on the relative priorities for adding these materials to the NBD.
At the end of the year, the Library decided that the Task Force should widen its terms of reference to enable it to address additional issues. New members were appointed to strengthen the groups capacity to address these further issues, and to increase the involvement of newer universities. As a result, Mrs Liz Curach from the University of Western Sydney, Dr Klaus Altmann from CSIRO Armidale and Professor Adrian Gibbs from the Research School of Biological Sciences and Associate Professor Paul Turnbull from the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, both at the Australian National University, have joined the Task Force.
At the meeting on 24 March, members discussed in detail the issues affecting access to serials in Australian librariesin particular the move from print to electronic provision of serialsand agreed that an investigation of these matters would be a high priority in 2000. Professors Neville Fletcher and Adrian Gibbs are taking the lead on a major national study on the availability of core journals in the fields of physics and biology, and the experiences of researchers in these fields when accessing relevant materials. The results of this study should be available mid-year.
It was clear at the meeting that there was a great deal of enthusiasm amongst all the members from the library and research community to work together on issues of common concern. Additional information about the work of the Task Force is available on the Librarys web site (http://www.nla.gov.au/initiatives/alctf/), or from the Coordination Support Branch of the National Library on (02) 6262 1481.
![]() |
| The Australian
Library Collections Task Force meeting attendees (left to right): Diane Costello, Jill Wilson, Paul Turnbull, Neville Fletcher, Leon Cantrell, Liz Curach, Ross Coleman, Jan Fullerton (Chair), Klaus Altmann, Julia Trainor, Paula Williams, Adrian Gibbs, Jasmine Cameron,Janine Schmidt |
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: tford@nla.gov.au