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First ACT Interlending Workshop

The Manager of the National Library’s Document Delivery Service, Margarita Moreno, addresses the ACT Interlending Workshop on 25 July

The National Library hosted a very successful inaugural ACT interlending workshop on 25 July. The workshop was an initiative of the Australia Capital Territory Kinetica Users’ Group Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery Subcommittee.

One hundred and eleven practitioners from the ACT region and further afield attended the workshop. There was a variety of presentations throughout the day starting with an explanation of how the Kinetica Document Delivery System now links to Libraries Australia through some exciting new features. A late session entitled ‘KDD tips, tricks and troubleshooting’ presented some alternatives for KDD users.

An interesting session after lunch shed light on some of the murky waters of copyright. Every day, interlibrary loan officers make decisions about supplying copies—in the old traditional way on paper, or by the newer method of electronic to electronic delivery. Exclamations of appreciation were heard from participants as information from this session was filed away for future use.

Health ACT ran through the history and services of GratisNet, a wonderful system started in 1982 to link health-related libraries. The H.V. Evatt Library from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, gave a taste of its way of dealing with interlibrary loans. Two Canberra education libraries, from the Australian Catholic University and the Australian Defence Force Academy Library (ADFA), a campus of the University of New South Wales, told of their interlibrary loan experiences.

There were sessions on finding elusive material from an Internet site featuring catalogues of the world, on simple Google searches, and on articles found in full text databases. Experiences were shared about the use of commercial document suppliers such as Infotrieve, British Library, CISTI and Subito.

To keep pace with the times, it has become necessary to provide direct assistance to end users with services such as the National Library’s Copies Direct or desktop delivery, as described by an ADFA representative. Comment was also sought on the coming changes to the Interlibrary Loan Resource Sharing (ILRS) code.

Natasha Simons, a recipient of the Kenneth Binns Travelling Fellowship, gave us a lively talk on her experiences in Canada. Her summing up really told us how much she enjoyed the experience: ‘ Canada was awesome! Wow those moose are really big!’

Evaluation feedback showed that the workshop format and content were relevant to most participants and the consensus was that it would be very useful to have another workshop in a couple of years. The presentations and program can be found at: www.nla.gov.au/initiatives/meetings/ilddw/

Sharyn O’Donnell,

Document Supply Service,
National Library of Australia