proACTive

Number 243: April 2004

The future of scholarly book publishing: challenges and opportunities

Colin Steele
Humanities Research Centre, Old Canberra House, ANU

Friday 2 April, 3:00pm

The world of scholarly publishing is changing dramatically. Multinational publishers are now creating a small number of extremely large conglomerates whose main aim is financial return to shareholders. Trends that began in science publishing are now being increasingly reflected in the social sciences and the humanities.

A focus on serial publishing and its costs has led to a decline in monograph purchasing by libraries globally while at the same time there has been significant pressures on traditional university presses, many of which are in decline.

The new digital publishing environment, however, offers new opportunities. New E-Presses have emerged such as California eScholarship, Columbia's E-Gutenberg and Cornell's Internet First University Press, as well as the ANU's newly created E-Press. Commercial developments such as Oxford Scholarship Online provide insights into future academic monograph publishing trends. The global development of institutional repositories also offers new opportunities for the dissemination of institutional research in new ways.

Many researchers are either unaware of these developments or are cautious as to their place within traditional incentive systems. Major initiatives by international funding bodies to discuss new reward and citation systems will be outlined, as will be the pros and cons of the Open Access publishing movement.

Australian Government Agencies Publications access seminar: challenges and developments

What brings over a hundred librarians, web managers, web publishers and metadata experts together in Canberra on a sunny Friday morning? A seminar on access to Australian Government publications, of course!

On Friday 19 March, over 100 people gathered in the theatre at the National Library to attend a seminar on Australian government publications sponsored by the NLA, the National Archives of Australia and the National Office for the Information Economy. The event proved stimulating and provided an opportunity to look at how metadata can be used to enable better access to government publications.

Roxanne Missingham, Margaret Kennedy, Margaret Phillips and Ian Dunn, NLA, outlined the changes in government publishing, results of a project to improve access to Australian government publications, through increasing the coverage of electronic publications in the National Bibliographic Database, and other services, such as recent australian publications, library catalogues and portals.

Adrian Cunningham, the acting assistant director-general, Government Recordkeeping, National Archives of Australia, discussed the standard for describing government information - AGLS (Australian Government Locater Service) and current developments and challenges.

Tom Stoddart, team leader, Library and Information Services, National Occupational Health and Safety Commission (NOHSC) gave an overview of the implementation of a content management system and noted many lessons learnt from the project, including developments required to improve discoverability, capture metadata and utilise the Australian OHS Thesaurus and Structural improvements.

Petra Himbert, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, described the evolution of the department's web services and implementation of the web content management system. Roslyn Hay, web manager, Department of Health and Ageing, described the allocation of metadata for both the department's website and for an innovative health information access service - Health Insite.

Colin Thomas, National Office for the Information Economy, talked about the closure of the Commonwealth Government Bookshops in 2003 and the Australian Government Publications Register, available at http://www.publications.gov.au .

Presentations from the seminar and a full report will be available shortly.

Roxanne Missingham

The Tocumwal archive

What do you know about Tocumwal houses - low-cost prefabricated structures brought down from a US air base and re-assembled in O'Connor in the very early days of Canberra?

The ACT Heritage Library has been collecting material on this fascinating development and the equally fascinating people who lived there, and is putting on an exhibition based on the Tocumwal Archive, 1-7 April.

At 11:00am on Saturday 3 April, Mary Hutchison will talk about the archive and ways people can research or add to it, at the ACT Heritage Library, in the Woden Library, corner of Corinna and Furzer Streets, Phillip. A great opportunity to gain a fresh insight into a little-known piece of the history of our lovely city.

Library futures in the digital environment

Wednesday 7 April, at 12:30pm in the MacDonald Room, R G Menzies Building, ANU

This seminar will focus on the role and futures of higher education libraries in the digital environment. It will look at organisational structures that encompass the management of digital initiatives ranging from e-Learning through to research. Particular emphasis will be placed on the software developments such as D-Space in institutional repository settings, with reflections on teaching and learning management systems, for example at CARET at Cambridge University.

Digital portal developments, such as at the University of Amsterdam, will be outlined, with reflections on AARLIN and similar developments in Australia. Reference will also be made to the implications of the OCLC Environmental Scan for libraries based on the powerpoint presentation recently given by Lorcan Dempsey to the G08 Head Librarians in Melbourne.

Networking techs

On Wednesday 10 March, a few sociable techs got together at the Waldorf on London for the first get-together of the year. It was good to see a couple of new faces and a lively discussion followed on a variety of topics. One tech shared with the group a recent ILL request she had from New Zealand for an 1875 (no, that's not a typo: I mean '18' and not '19'!) journal article. When it was retrieved in its bound condition it was noted that the pages hadn't been cut so out came the handy tech tool - the boner. Related articles proved to be an interesting read also.

Keep a eye out for future similar gatherings - no one knows where future discussions will lead!

Beth Clary
Convenor, ACT Technicians

CIT Alumni and Friends (CITAF)

CITAF aims to establish contact and stay in touch with former CIT and ACT TAFE students, teachers and staff. When you complete your study at CIT, you will automatically become a CITAF member. As a member you will receive information on new CIT courses, invitations to participate in CIT social and professional development events, and opportunities for networking with former students. Past students who are interested are asked to contact Shirley Hardjadinata, ph 02 6207 4346 alumni@cit.act.edu.au.nospam (please remove '.nospam' from address), to receive an application form. Membership is free!

Beth Clary
Convenor, ACT Technicians

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