National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 59| October 2002


Collecting Advisory Committee Meets
Pictured (left to right) are Angela Brown, NLA; David Toll, NLA; Peter Haddad, NLA; Professor Elizabeth Webby, University of Sydney; Jan Fullerton, NLA; Professor Stuart Macintyre, University of Melbourne; Philip Jackson, NLA; Professor Jim Fox, Australian National University; Pam Gatenby, NLA; Andrew Gosling, NLA; Margy Burn, NLA; Chris Foster, NLA.
Pictured (left to right) are Angela Brown, NLA; David Toll, NLA; Peter Haddad, NLA; Professor Elizabeth Webby,
University of Sydney; Jan Fullerton, NLA; Professor Stuart Macintyre, University of Melbourne; Philip Jackson, NLA;
Professor Jim Fox, Australian National University; Pam Gatenby, NLA; Andrew Gosling, NLA; Margy Burn, NLA; Chris Foster, NLA.

Two years ago the National Library established the Collecting Advisory Committee with members drawn mainly from the university sector. The aim of the committee is to contribute advice and guidance to assist the Library in developing its collections, and providing services based on the collections.

The current members of the committee are Professor Susan Bambrick, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of Southern Queensland; Professor James Fox, Director of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University; Professor Malcolm Gillies, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Australian National University; Professor Stuart Macintyre, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne (Chair); Ms Rosemary Sorenson, Courier Mail, Brisbane; and Professor Elizabeth Webby, Professor of Australian Literature, University of Sydney.

The committee held its fourth meeting on 5 August 2002. As on previous occasions, Library staff presented a number of papers and oral reports on issues and developments relating to the collections and access to them. Topics covered included the role of the committee, the Library’s new Strategic Directions Statement 2003–2005, the availability of the Ebsco Academic Search Premier serials aggregator service, recent benchmarking studies, the new AskNow! Online live reference service, and the success of Booksearch, an initiative to celebrate the Library’s birthday last year. Members were interested to learn of the increase in the books acquisitions budget (resulting from revaluation of the collection). 

Collecting priorities were discussed in detail with particular emphasis on possible oral history interviews. Interviews with Indigenous leaders, important figures in Asian studies, women journalists, publishers, people from the field of information technology, and Asian leaders who had studied under the Colombo Plan were suggested. Other topics discussed included multicultural archives activity in the National Library and the State libraries, collections overlap in major research libraries, the Australian Research Libraries Collections Analysis Project, Legal Deposit and electronic publications, the revision of the Library’s Electronic Information Resources Strategies and Action Plan, and the Senate Inquiry into the Role of Libraries in the Online Environment.

The committee meets annually.
—Angela Brown

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