National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 59| October 2002


E-Team examines OzLife

Members of the E-Team, (back row, left to right) Catherine Pelligrino, Kyle Richards, Paul Alcausin, (front row, left to right) Francisse Jose and Evey Wegner
Members of the E-Team, (back row, left to right) Catherine Pelligrino,
Kyle Richards, Paul Alcausin, (front row, left to right) Francisse Jose
and Evey Wegner

The E-Team program in Canberra was developed by the Australian Quality Council in cooperation with businesses around Canberra. The aim of the program is to provide a structured workplace experience opportunity that is challenging and rewarding for students and beneficial to host organisations. This is the second occasion that the National Library has participated in the
E-Team program.

The 2002 E-Team were a group of Year 11 students from Lake Ginninderra College who gave up a week of their school holidays in July to visit Reader Services at the National Library. The students, Paul Alcausin, Francisse Jose, Catherine Pellegrino, Kyle Richards and Evey Wegner, their teacher, Kevin Howard, and their workplace facilitator, Julie Ward, had attended a training day in June to learn about the principles and tools of quality management.

The students’ task at the National Library was to analyse and identify opportunities for improvement in the OzLife: Australian Biographical and Book Review Index. OzLife is an electronic database which provides access to the citations of articles, either biographical or book reviews, in major Australian newspapers and journals. Records have been added to OzLife since July 2000 and records are being added retrospectively to 1997. Biographical records from the Canberra Times date back to 1989.

On arrival, the students were introduced to the National Library with a tour of the reading rooms. They then attended a briefing session detailing the processes involved in entering and retrieving data in the OzLife database. Applying tools learned on the training day the E-Team students constructed flowcharts, customer models, and cause and effect diagrams to break down the process into clear and concise steps. The students then interviewed and observed reference librarians involved in the process to develop a clear understanding of their tasks in the entry of data into the OzLife database. This involved recording the length of time taken to index a newspaper for biographical articles and subsequent entry into the database. In addition, members of the public in the Main Reading Room, and a number of specialist researchers in the Petherick Reading Room, were interviewed about their knowledge of OzLife.

The E-Team made some interesting and useful recommendations such as simplifying the data entry form, eliminating unnecessary fields, creating auto-fill fields and checkboxes for common entries, as well as promoting the database.

At the end of the week the E-Team presented their report to a number of interested National Library staff members, the Australian Quality Council representative, Geoff Adcock, the principal, Rosemary Richards, and teachers, Janet Johnson and Kevin Howard, of Lake Ginninderra College.

The E-Team impressed Reader Services staff with their enthusiasm, flexibility, IT skills and their ability to work cooperatively during a very busy week. A number of their recommendations are presently being considered by Information Services and have prompted a more extensive review of the database. Involvement in the E-Team program has been a rewarding experience for both students and staff in Information Services and we would certainly recommend participation in the program to others.
—Julie Ward

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