National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 60 | December 2002


Editing team for Blackwell's Table of Contents data
Editing team for Blackwell's Table of Contents data

Blackwell’s Table of Contents Data
A Trans-Tasman Collaboration Results in Further Enrichment to the Kinetica Service

From November 2002, full Blackwell’s Book Services Table of Contents (TOC) data will be made available on Kinetica to all customer libraries. This represents a substantial enhancement for Kinetica’s services to the Australian library community.

Past users of Kinetica and the Australian Bibliographic Network will recall that the former subscription for the provision of TOC data, which had operated with Blackwell’s since July 1994, was cancelled for financial reasons at the end of January 2000.

Kinetica recently formed a consortium with the National Library of New Zealand (NLNZ) to negotiate successfully with Blackwell’s, recognising the value of TOC records in enhancing access to data contained on the National Bibliographic Database (NBD). Underpinned by the pledges gleaned from interested Australian and New Zealand libraries, the National Library of Australia (NLA) was recently able to successfully negotiate a reduced TOC subscription rate with Blackwell’s on behalf of all the participants. The new price resulting from this trans-Tasman collaboration represents a significant saving on what the NLA or the NLNZ could have negotiated if acting independently. This is the second trans-Tasman collaboration to benefit Kinetica users—the national libraries of New Zealand and Australia have a joint agreement with RLG for access to the RLIN catalogue.

Under this new agreement, approximately 40 000 of Blackwell’s TOC records will be added annually to the NBD, via automatic weekly uploads to the NLA gateway. The TOC data will appear in the 505 contents note field of the bibliographic record and will describe the predominantly United States of America and United Kingdom current titles distributed by Blackwell’s. Many records will also contain 520 summary notes fields.

An interesting aspect of the negotiation process was the proportionally higher interest displayed by New Zealand libraries in pledging support towards the TOC subscription than was shown by their Australian counterparts. For the purposes of the final contract, it was agreed that the NLA would contribute 60 per cent of the three-year subscription and the NLNZ would provide 40 per cent (45 per cent in the first year), as New Zealand has a smaller market than Australia. While the broadening of the subscription base protracted the negotiation process, the resultant enrichment of the NBD will be an enduring benefit of this cooperative solution to the TOC funding problem.

The 14 Australian contributing libraries, without whose cooperative outlook and financial commitment the TOC service could not have been purchased for the benefit of the entire Kinetica community, are listed below. It is envisaged that after the expiry of the initial three-year subscription, the consortium will explore a different funding model for the purchase of TOC data, to give all Kinetica libraries an opportunity to contribute to this enhancement to the Kinetica service.

Kinetica customers contributing to the TOC service:

Adelaide University
Australian Defence Force Academy
Brisbane City Council
Deakin University
La Trobe University
Macquarie University
Monash University
State Library of New South Wales
State Library of South Australia
State Library of Victoria
Unilinc Pty Ltd
University of Central Queensland
University of Melbourne
University of South Australia
University of Technology, Sydney
Victoria University of Technology

At the time of writing, the University of Sydney, University of Western Australia, State Library of Western Australia and Yarra Plenty Regional Library Service were also seriously considering contributing to the TOC subscription.
—Bemal Rajapatirana, Cheryl Brickell

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