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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 50| April 2001


RLG Visits ‘Down-Under’

Karen Smith-Yoshimura & staff from Asian collection Branch

Second from left: Karen Smith-Yoshimura with
staff from the Asian Collection Branch

Photograph: Greg Pook

 

A whirlwind! There is no other way to describe the visit to the National Library from Karen Smith-Yoshimura, Research Library Group’s (RLG) energetic and expert Manager of Bibliographic Initiatives.

The Library is a member of RLG, and Karen’s visit was to ensure that the Library receives the maximum benefit from its membership. Karen gave Library staff an overview of RLG services and activities, including a presentation on the Cultural Materials Initiative, which is a collective digital information resource to support research and learning. The Library will contribute digital images from its Images 1 service to the Cultural Materials Initiative.

Karen’s interest in East Asian languages (she speaks Japanese, Chinese and some Korean) resulted in a visit to the Library’s Asian Collections, where she admired items in the collection and discussed East Asian digital initiatives with the staff.

Karen also met with staff of the National Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) Service. RLG is the best single source of CJK records for Australian libraries, and the conversion of RLG databases to Pinyin romanisation will enable the Library to upgrade the CJK service. Discussions with Karen laid the way for replacing the current FTP batch service with a real-time Z39.50 service.

Karen’s world standing on character set standards and the romanisation of East Asian scripts was too good an opportunity to miss. Although staff would gladly have devoted 2 days to the topic (without exhausting Karen’s expertise) we had to limit ourselves to an hour or two on this complex but critical subject.

The National Library is a heavy user of the RLG union catalogue as a source of cataloguing for its overseas collections, particularly for retrospective cataloguing projects and for Asian materials. It is the Library’s membership of RLG that enables Kinetica users to access RLG databases at attractive prices. Karen’s visit provided an opportunity for Kinetica staff to review the access and billing arrangements, to ensure we continue to enjoy the best price for our usage of RLG databases.

The Library is a participant in RLG Shares, an international group of research libraries providing each other with inexpensive and speedy interlibrary loans and document delivery. The Library uses Shares to deliver services to its own users, and to provide documents as part of its Supply 1 service. Karen’s visit was an opportunity to review the Library’s use of Shares, to plan for the forthcoming upgrade of the Ariel software (which supplies documents as email attachments) and to discuss a trial of ILL Manager (a local ILL management system).

Karen also visited Preservation Services to meet staff involved in digital preservation and the management of PADI, the Internet subject gateway on Preservation of Access to Digital Information. Colin Webb, Director of Preservation Services, participates actively in RLG preservation initiatives, and Karen discussed with Colin the emerging standards for preservation metadata.

As a member of RLG, the Library receives regular publications and electronic communications. Communication channels were reviewed to ensure that Library staff receive RLG information quickly and efficiently. Several library staff were invited to join specialist RLG working groups to share expertise internationally.

At the end of Karen’s visit, it was clear that we had not even begun to exhaust her knowledge or energy. But it was time for Karen to move on to visit other RLG members in this part of the world: the National Archives of Australia and the National Library of New Zealand. Karen’s visit has helped the Library to make the most of its participation in RLG, and the benefits of her visit will continue to be enjoyed for some time to come.
—Julia Trainor

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