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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 48| December 2000


Expert advice: Expert Advisory Groups

Expert Advisory Groups (EAGs) are an important way for the National Library to receive advice from users and ensure that Kinetica meets the needs of Australian libraries. When Kinetica was established, the National Library in consultation with users and the Australian Bibliographic Network (ABN) Network Committee recognised that the pace of change in the library sector demanded that the Kinetica service have a dynamic and flexible advisory mechanism. In particular, standards for the various services provided by Kinetica are maintained though these expert groups.

EAGs are well placed to provide timely, informed and focused advice to Kinetica. The National Library appoints members with experience and skills appropriate to the subject of the EAG. The Library consults with interested organisations and individuals to identify the most appropriate people for appointment. The groups generally meet via teleconference, and operate for as long as is needed to develop advice on their area of interest or to achieve particular objectives. Kinetica customers are encouraged to comment on the work of the EAGs.

To date, six EAG’s have been established. The work of three of these is complete. The first EAG was established to advise on Cataloguing Workflows. This EAG provided valuable advice to users to assist them to move from cataloguing in the ABN environment to cataloguing in Kinetica. This advice included an extensive paper that identified the workflow implications and highlighted the main decision points for consideration by library managers. The second EAG reviewed all the resolutions of the ABN Standards Committee, and identified those that were still relevant in Kinetica. The outcome of this process is the Kinetica Cataloguing Standards available from the Kinetica home page at www.nla.gov.au/kinetica/kineticadoc_other.html. A third EAG was established to advise the National Library on the development and implementation of the Kinetica Document Delivery (KDD) service. Its work concluded with the successful migration to the new KDD service.

Three EAGs are currently active.

Access to Electronic Resources
This EAG provides advice on improving the availability of cataloguing and location information for electronic collections, and reducing maintenance costs in local systems and the National Bibliographic Database. The group has overseen a pilot project to demonstrate the use of Kinetica to improve access to electronic resources and has developed a survey to identify major electronic resources acquired by Australian libraries. The group will continue to advise on bibliographic standards for electronic resources and developing Kinetica services to assist Australian libraries to create and maintain access to electronic resources in their local systems.

Reference and End User Services
This EAG was established in September 1999. The group has made a significant contribution to the formulation of the development priorities for KineticaWeb at www.nla.gov.au/kinetica/future.html.

A number of the group’s recommendations have been implemented and others will be included in future development of the service. To encourage and support other libraries in providing end user access to Kinetica, several group members have made available end user documentation produced by their organisations via the Kinetica documentation web page at www.nla.gov.au/kinetica/kineticadoc_other.html. The group will continue to advise Kinetica on the development and implementation of end user access.

Subject Headings
This EAG advises the National Library on developing proposals to Library of Congress for the inclusion of new Australian subject headings in the Library of Congress subject headings (LCSH).

How can you participate?
Documents relating to the work of the current EAGs, along with terms of reference and membership lists, are available on the web at: www.nla.gov.au/kinetica/advisory.html#eag

The Expert Advisory Groups welcome your input. To offer your comments please contact a member of the appropriate EAG or send comments directly to Kinetica via email: kinetica@nla.gov.au or fax: (02) 6273 1180.
—Rob Walls

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Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: dthomas@nla.gov.au

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