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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 53| October 2001
Kinetica:
Progress Review
The National Librarys Kinetica service is now two-and-a-half years
old. It enables users to find materials in Australian libraries, and
libraries to share descriptions of resources and request material for
their users. It is widely used by national, State, university, research,
public and special libraries. In moving from the Australian Bibliographic
Network (ABN) to Kinetica the Library chose a service outsourced through
contract with IBM GS. This contract continues to 30 December 2003.
At the Kinetica Annual Users Meeting in August 2000, the National
Library announced that it would undertake a progress review of Kinetica.
This review formed part of the Librarys ongoing program of
performance reviews. The results are highly relevant to consideration of
the strategic issue of the Librarys future role in national resource
sharing services.
The issues examined in the mid-term assessment of Kinetica were:
- Economic analysis of the impact on the Australian library system of
the Librarys resource sharing services, particularly the National
Bibliographic Database offered through Kinetica;
- Assessment of the effectiveness of the Kinetica service in meeting
its objectives;
- Assessment of future demand for centralised access to library
resources in all formats held in Australian libraries; and,
- Investigation of models for financial support of National
Bibliographic Database objectives.
Kinetica currently offers access to the following databases:
- National Bibliographic Database (NBD): Contains
records of print and electronic resources held in Australian libraries
in all formats. As at 30 June 2001 the NBD contained 12 149 739
Bibliographic records, 33 213 340 Holdings, 1 591 630 Authority records.
- Australian National Chinese Japanese Korean Service: Contains
records of Chinese, Japanese and Korean materials held in Australian
libraries. Database records are in vernacular and transliterated
scripts. Over 1.15 million bibliographic records and 350 000 holdings
records.
- Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN): Contains
records of resources held in major United States and other research
libraries, maintained by the Research Libraries Group. Over 104 million
bibliographic records.
- Kinetica Authorities: Authorised forms of names and subject
headings used in the NBD. Over 1.5 million records.
The report notes the following trends:
- There is a high level of participation in Kinetica among Australian
libraries;
- Kinetica is continuing to improve its coverage of the collections
held in Australian libraries;
- There is a high level of satisfaction with the Kinetica service; and,
- There is a continuing need for the NBD to facilitate resource sharing
among Australian libraries.
Future issues identified in the report include:
- The need to achieve increased end user access to the NBD via
Kinetica; and,
- The need to consider the Librarys future role in national resource
sharing services.
The full report is now online at www.nla.gov.au/kinetica/progress.html
Kinetica customers played a vital role in influencing the development of
the service and contributed to the report through a survey, focus groups
and the Kinetica Annual Users meeting. Kinetica customers will continue to
actively influence the development of the service through the Kinetica
Advisory Committee, State User Group meetings and other advisory
mechanisms.
Roxanne Missingham
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Gateways: dthomas@nla.gov.au