ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 64 | August 2003
Kinetica: Australia’s Knowledge Infrastructure Assured by Agreement with IBM
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The National Library has announced the extension of its agreement with IBM Australia and IBM Global Services Australia for a further two years, to provide computer support to Kinetica.
Kinetica, a national online service provided by the Library, is a key component of Australia’s knowledge infrastructure. For the past 22 years the service has enabled Australian libraries to share their resources, providing access to over 35 million items held across the Australian library network.
As Jan Fullerton, Director-General of the National Library commented, ‘The National Library and IBM have had a very successful partnership since 1998, when the initial contract was awarded, delivering innovative solutions to assist libraries to add information about their collections and to support the work of Australian libraries.’
Christine Bartlett, General Manager, Consulting Services, IBM Global Services Australia, concurred that ‘Knowledge sharing and preserving our history is fundamental to future generations of Australia. With today’s announcement we are able to continue supporting the National Library in providing this important service.’
Approximately six million searches per year are successfully undertaken on the Kinetica service, including the union catalogue of Australian library holdings (National Bibliographic Database), as well as an increasing range of international databases such as Te Puna (the catalogue of New Zealand libraries), and the union catalogues of American, British and German libraries.
July 2003 saw a major milestone for Kinetica, with online resources reaching over 340 000 in number—including government reports, electronic journals and online publications collected for PANDORA, Australia’s Internet archive. Other resources available through Kinetica include maps, manuscripts, pictures, audiovisual material, theses, books, newspapers and journals.
Major developments for Kinetica in 2003 were the addition of the Deutsche Bibliothek Database (a union catalogue of the records of the National Library of Germany, with approximately 6.5 million items); extension of an agreement with Online Computer Library Center Inc. (OCLC), to provide access to its international WorldCat database of over 45 million items; and software enhancements to enable better display of information on holdings.
Kinetica will continue to develop initiatives in 2004, based on the recommendations of an Expert Advisory Committee which is consulting with librarians throughout Australia.
For further information, contact:
Roxanne Missingham
Assistant Director-General
Resource Sharing
National Library of Australia
Tel: (02) 6262 1143
Email: rmissingham@nla.gov.au
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