Natoinal Library of Australia - Gateways

Resource Sharing at the Crossroads: National Resource Sharing Working Group and Policy Committee Final Meeting

The National Resource Sharing Working Group (NRSWG) and National Resource Sharing Policy Committee (NRPC) were established by the National Library to support the development of a national interlending infrastructure following wide-ranging consultation and discussions. After five years, the groups reviewed their achievements at a final meeting on 30 July and considered issues which should be addressed for future developments in resource sharing.

During the period the groups have been active, there have been profound changes in interlending. There has been a significant increase in electronic resources available at the desktop, a small increase in automation of interlending and a significant step in implementation of ISO ILL in Kinetica Document Delivery. This has enabled libraries to use their own systems for automating their workflows, with an extension to end users.

The group has led on many issues which have improved the efficiency of interlending in Australia. Improvements include the Australian ILRS Code (launched in 2001), its wide promotion and acceptance; a national interlending benchmarking study; and training programs, conferences and seminars to discuss a variety of models for improved access to resources for end users. The final meeting included discussions based on specific papers that addressed the achievements of the group, key issues and trends, the ARCLAP (Australian Research Libraries Collection Analysis Project) study, the work of the Australian Library Collections Task Force and perspectives from all library sectors.

For the first time, public and TAFE libraries were represented at a meeting of the NRSWG. It is clear that public libraries are increasingly moving to supply resources from beyond their local networks and are looking forward to participating in discussions on resource sharing. They provide a very strong link with end users. The TAFE sector is moving to packaged electronic resources to support curricula and is likely to want to play a small role in resource sharing initiatives.

Considerable discussion occurred on the ARCLAP study, which showed significant unique collections and the loss of collections through closure of libraries. While there are mechanisms for offering collections to other libraries, it appears that these are not well known or publicised. The need for all collections to be listed in the NBD was identified, an issue seen as within the scope of the National Library.

Some of the key issues identified for future action were:

In summary, the major themes were the need for increased resource discovery (through the NBD), acquisition of collections (particularly with library closures), capability building (training and manuals), information on performance and an urgent need to review the ILRS Code to improve the speed of delivery and intelligibility of service levels.

Papers from the meeting and a summary of discussion can be found at <www.nla.gov.au/initiatives/nrswg/finalforum.html>.
—Roxanne Missingham, Assistant Director-General, Resource Sharing

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