Natoinal Library of Australia - Gateways

Kinetica Annual Users’ Meeting 2004
Introducing the New Kinetica

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Warwick Cathro, Assistant Director-General Innovation addresses the Kinetica Annual Users Meeting 2004
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This 2004 Kinetica Annual Users’ Meeting was held in Canberra at the National Library on Friday 13 August, with almost 200 delegates arriving from all states and territories and from New Zealand. The major focus of the meeting was on the Kinetica Redevelopment Project.

The new search screens for the service replacing KineticaWeb, to be launched in December 2004, were demonstrated by Susan Collier of the National Library. The new service with its emphasis on both ‘find’ and ‘get’ will enable libraries with a subscription to search the National Bibliographic Database, international databases such as RLG and Te Puna, free services such as PictureAustralia and subscription services such as APAFT. Support for International Protocol (IP) authentication will also be available for libraries who wish to use the service.

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Tom Elliott, Chair of the 2004 Kinetica
Annual Users Meeting

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Those who attended the meeting were excited about the increased functionality and speed that the new service offers. The presentation is available on the Kinetica website at: www.nla.gov.au/kinetica/aum/aum04/kssdemo.ppt. Feedback received from the meeting was very positive, with 94% of respondents rating the meeting overall as above average or excellent and 96% rating the meeting content above average or excellent.

The National Bibliographic Database (NBD) now has almost 38 million holdings, 14.2 million bibliographic records and 574 000 electronic resources. In 2003–2004, there were 6 593 974 Kinetica searches, close to half-a-million more than in the previous period.

Other major milestones for Kinetica included:

  • increasing coverage of the NBD
  • significant work through the Quality Improvement Plan on a major campaign to address data quality issues for the NBD and the Kinetica CJK database
  • work with the visual arts libraries: the acquisition of SCIPIO as a database for Kinetica searches; the provision of training and the introduction of guidelines for special art resources such as catalogues and collections of material about artists. See the article on SCIPIO in this edition of Gateways;
  • ongoing activities with state public library groups to assist them to use Kinetica in a cost effective manner through consortia licences, and also to help them become more efficient by adopting new cataloguing workflows.
  • the addition of the Singapore National Union Catalogue as a target database in KineticaWeb
  • improved coverage of online government publications through the Commonwealth Government Metadata Project
  • the launch of the Kinetica Cataloguing Standards Guide in February, to completely replace the old ABN Cataloguing Manual
  • The implementation of a new version of software with improved functionality for Kinetica Document Delivery in December 2003, leading to increased use by libraries local systems that are ISO ILL compliant.
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    Tony Boston, Director of the Kinetica Redevelopment Project
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    Delegates at the Kinetica Annual Users Meeting 2004
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The Australian Music Centre won this year’s Kinetica Innovation Award, for its use of new technology to significantly improve access to its very special collection by sharing resource descriptions through the NBD and Music Australia. See the article on the Innovation Award in this edition of Gateways.

The minutes of the meeting will be made available shortly and will be advertised on the Kinetica website and via Kinetica-l. Many thanks to all those who attended for their contributions on the day. We look forward to seeing you all again next year.
—David Ong, Kinetica Customer Services

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