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Number 250: June 2005

Digital amnesia seminar

Over 150 participants from Australian states and territories and New Zealand attended this seminar, held by the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) and sponsored by the National Library of Australia and the National Archives of Australia on Thursday 21 April 2005.

The event was organised to discuss and identify issues relating to digital government publications and was requested by the Peak Bodies Forum - a meeting of representatives of peak library organisations which identified significant issues facing the Australian library sector and developed a national plan of action. The digital amnesia forum was conducted to further ALIA's objective of ensuring free flow of information for Australians.

Roxanne Missingham's summary of key issues and presentations is now on the ALIA website, together with three papers presented on the day, and an article on the seminar which appeared in The Australian newspaper.

Federated searching

The URLs (University and Research Libraries) Group organised a demonstration of federated searching on 4 May at ADFA Library.

Kate Bunker (from Australian Catholic University) and Christopher Dawkins (from ADFA) gave some insights into how they have introduced Metalib into their libraries. MetaLib is the Ex Libris portal designed for the federated searching mission - the Ex Libris publicity says that with it, users

'enjoy easy access to libraries' e-collections, obtain appropriate services just when needed, and personalize their environment for more effective and productive research. The MetaLib portal enables institutions to make optimal use of their e-collection and provide their users with a comprehensive, friendly and supportive scholarly environment'.

And for librarians

'Meta-Lib provides tools for managing today's hybrid information resources under one umbrella, be they local or remote, freely available or licensed'.

ACU introduced MetaLib a couple of years ago; ADFA more recently. Both libraries are using a recent upgrade of MetaLib.

Kate and Christopher gave online demonstrations of what Metalib does, and how it has been customised for their libraries. They also discussed its strengths, weaknesses, how they train patrons and what users think of it.

ALIA/AGLIN information sharing session no 2, 11 May 2005

Forum on library education

Karna O'Dea, DEWR

This information sharing session drew a very good crowd of about 50-60 librarians and library technicians from all sectors of the profession. All of us present have a stake in the future of our profession and the graduates who emerge from various library schools. The session had three speakers, from Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT), from Charles Stuart University (CSU) and from University of Canberra (UC). The first two speakers come from currently-operating library schools, the third from one closing down.

Andrew Shiells, program co-ordinator, library and information studies, CIT, outlined the current library technicians course available from the CIT, ranging from a certificate to advanced diploma, and covered the variety of means to attain these qualifications from the flexible learning centre to the workplace practicals. He urged library managers to consider placing CIT students so that they can gain practical work experience to bolster their academic studies.

Andrew's presentation [245kb ppt] and a CIT course brochure [92kb doc] have been posted on the AGLIN website.

Dr Stuart Ferguson, director, centre for information studies and senior lecturer, school of information studies, CSU covered the course range of librarianship subjects offered to distance students from undergraduate level to a masters degree. What interested most of us was CSU's innovative partnering with local education providers in such far flung places as Hong Kong to the Northern Territory so students got a taste of face to face tutorials and lectures along with the online courses.

Stuart's summary of his remarks appears below.

Dr Peter Clayton from UC gave an informative and entertaining session on the background to the demise of Canberra' local library school, which caused some of us much sadness and regret at the closure of our local alma mater.

Peter's summary of his remarks appears below.

After the formal talks, all three speakers were subject to a bout of rigorous questioning from the librarians present on their education offerings and the quality of the graduates emerging from the CIT and CSU. This opened up a discussion on succession planning in librarianship and how library managers must be innovative and consider enticing a wide range of people to work in libraries.

Dr Peter Clayton pointed out that librarianship did not attract many young adults especially young men. Library schools did get a good cross section of mature aged students and these career changers were often the ones keen to make librarianship their second career. The closure of the UC library school and the University of Tasmania library school much earlier reflects a trend of consolidation in the provision of library education has happened. Several audience members commented that there was a need to forge much closer links between CIT and CSU so students from CIT can move into the professional stream if they want to.

Several library managers spoke for the rest of us when they said that employers such as Canberra's academic libraries and public library system must also forge closer links with the library schools to encourage new blood into the profession and to provide practical work experience and pathways into paid library employment. All in all, it was a thought provoking information sharing session and made us all realise that all sectors of the profession have a stake in ensuring that current and potential library students have access to good quality library education if we wish to secure the future of our profession.

Note that since this workshop the University of New South Wales has announced the closure of its library degree.

Library education at Charles Sturt University

Dr Stuart Ferguson's summary of his presentation

LIM programs at CSU

PhD - currently about twenty students, mostly in LIM.

M.App.Sc. (by research) - ceased.

M.App.Sc. (by coursework):

M.App.Sc. (Library & Information Management); (some credit for LTs).
M.App.Sc. (Teacher Librarianship).
M.Ed. (Teacher Librarianship).

Grad.Dips embedded ('nested') in masters program.

Grad.Dip. one year in full-time equivalence.
Masters component (stage 2) a further half year in full-time equivalence.

Grad.Cert. - not recognised by ALIA for professional membership.

bridge into masters
'taster' for those unsure
professional development (not just 'librarians')
specialisations in library science/information management; teacher librarianship (some concern that it doesn't become a 'standard'); information literacy; AV archiving (with ScreenSound)

BA (Library & Information Science)

changing to B.App.Sc. (Library & Information Management)
credit for LTs (one year in full-time equivalence)

New programs:

professional doctorate (mid-year)
Master of Information Architecture (2006)

Curriculum

focus on traditional LIM (popular with students who don't want too much IT/Systems)
in BA revision, greater focus on bibliographic organisation and research evaluation; some revision IT; client service also flagged
little information science, although minor addition in that area
non-library destination of substantial numbers of students catered for by introduction of some generic core units such as Information Seeking and Describing and Analysing Information Resources; traditional bibliographic organisation no longer in PG core but available as elective
dropping of IT in Libraries in MAS(LIM), stage 1, but new subject Online Information Environment, with focus on application of IT in information work
more focus on digital
IT electives (in a School that is half IT)
current revision of MAS(LIM) stage 2 and foci in Research (new subjects); Management and IT

Modes

distance learning: from print to print and online; some use of CD-ROM and online only; subject forums (currently in-house but to change); online environment and delivery of IT-related subjects and groupwork
online tutorial: tutorials and sometimes extra lectures with special partnerships (see HKU, below); independent offshore students

Partnerships

Hong Kong University the most successful; tutorials; study schools; most subjects marked at CSU (few Grad.Dip. subjects marked at HKU and moderated at CSU); joint award
University of Mauritius: BA; Mauritius award; study schools
Charles Darwin: BA, CDU award; LIM subjects studied by distance with CSU; some tutorial support; did involve study schools and similar to arrangement with Mauritius; current arrangement CSU's provision of learning resources, with tutoring and marking done locally
some provision of CSU learning resources, as with CDU (e.g., UWV in past); other model where a partner provides CSU with resources (see AV archiving)

Staff at CSU

CSU has 15-16 academic staff (including two fractional positions), serving a student body of 1400-1500 part-time students. Not covered in talk: new appointment in field of digital libraries; some interest amongst existing staff in digital preservation.

Contacts:

(please remove '.nospam' from addresses)
Research: rossharvey@csu.edu.au.nospam
LIM (postgraduate): sferguson@csu.edu.au.nospam
LIM (undergraduate): rsanders@csu.edu.au.nospam
Teacher Librarianship: kdillon@csu.edu.au.nospam; jmcgregor@csu.edu.au.nospam
Information Architecture: phider@csu.edu.au.nospam
Offshore Programs: jmills@csu.edu.au.nospam

Death of a library school

Presentation to ALIA/AGLIN meeting on Library Education, 11 May 2005, Peter Clayton, University of Canberra

What we know

There are too many library schools in Australia, most too small.
Overall student numbers are declining.
Result is lack of optional units, including areas such as special librarianship, legal resources -units routinely included in library courses overseas.
Universities are under unrelenting financial pressure.
University of Tasmania school was too small and closed.
School leavers don't want to be librarians.
University of Canberra and ALIA tried promotional campaign without success.
University of South Australia closed its undergraduate program.
University of Canberra first closed its undergraduate program, now its graduate program - financial reasons, based on low student numbers, were the only ones the university advanced.

At least we have been able to 'teach out' all our current students.

Possible solutions

Fewer, bigger schools
- Works in New Zealand
- Much discussed in Australia but institutional priorities / politics seem to preclude
Diversify offerings
- Information literacy?
  - Canberra offered as undergraduate subject (Research Skills): academically very successful, numbers disappointing
- Knowledge Management?
  - Canberra offers as full fee-paying masters by coursework: financially viable but not a' cash cow'
Distance education
- Works in New Zealand
- Works for Charles Sturt, Edith Cowan
- Canberra wasn't allowed to try offering its graduate diploma and coursework masters in all-online mode
  - Some obvious advantages and disadvantages for students
Full fee-paying provides a better return for universities than HECS, and appears to be ( current) government preference
- Pity about the students...

Likely futures

More library schools will close- Canberra this year, UNSW next?
Undergraduate education will diminish (remaining only at Charles Sturt?) in favour of full fee-paying graduate students

There'll be fewer qualified librarians entering the job market. If salaries rise enough, demand for qualifications may increase and some new courses be launched - possibly without ALIA recognition.

Fine for us as individuals, pity about the profession...

ALIA/AGLIN information sharing session no 3, 26 May 2005

ALIA Information Online Encores, Part 1

Cathy Center, IP Australia

A small but dedicated band of information professionals gathered to hear some stimulating presentations from the Online Conference 2005.

David Hawking presented a paper [914kb pdf] on the role of metadata in effective searching.

David's presentation focused on the sort of evidence search engines can use to rank results in a way which maximises value to the searcher. Four sorts of evidence were discussed: text content; explicit metadata; popularity; other people's descriptions (including anchor text). The most interesting and potentially useful of these were popularity and other people's descriptions. Popularity is based on the number of authors who create a link to a resource and the number of searchers who access a resource when it is presented in search results. Other people's descriptions refer to the queries searchers typed before clicking on a link to a resource and the anchor text of links to a resource. David used several examples to show that popularity and anchor text were far more useful than subject/description metadata in producing effective search results. However metadata is useful in scoped searches eg when searching for a particular journal, documents of a particular type or documents in a specified date range.

Why isn't topic metadata more useful? David suggested a number of reasons:

it is difficult to decide when to include a metaterm
the information is almost always already there
great variability in query language is not reflected in topic metadata
poor metadata implementation

In concluding, David suggested that we can improve the searchability of our sites by publishing content worth linking to, avoiding duplication (publishing resources via a single URL) and using simple URLs.

Alison Carter and Simon Best gave a summarised version of 3 papers [2.9mb pps, 1.5mb pps, 196kb pps] presented by FaCS staff covering innovative aspects of the FaCS library service.

Alison and Simon talked about the range of agencies served by the library and their differing cultures and IT environments. This is a challenge but also an opportunity. The library can identify and exploit linkages between agencies and can take advantage of economies of scale and diverse income streams. There is an emphasis on building client relationships and understanding different client cultures. Services are adapted and presented differently to different client groups. Training for clients and marketing are also important. The library sees itself moving from niche marketing of services to McDonalds marketing (dynamic mass marketing).

Simon described a number of specific services including a proactive current awareness service. Clients establish an individual profile which is run against the library database and results are e-mailed to them as new items are added to the database. The process is automated but the results are highly tailored to individual needs.

Alison talked about the service philosophy and knowledge strategies, people strategies and marketing of services. I found the people strategies particularly interesting. These included recruiting for attitude as well as technical skills; encouraging mature-aged workers to return; empowering all staff to make a difference and succession planning. FaCS library has a team charter and regards team development and values alignment as a priority. Alison also described some of the issues involved in managing an inter-generational workforce.

Roxanne Missingham presented a paper [135kb pdf] on evaluating the public library portal.

Roxanne discussed a partnership between the national library and a diverse group of public libraries to develop a service which enhances access to print and online resources for Australians. The Information Australia project commenced in 2003 and is due to end this month.

Roxanne described the Information Australia portal which brings together a host of information services including the Australian National Bibliographic Database, key Australian journals in full text, Picture Australia, directories and links to other information resources. A single Google-type search is used to search across these resources. While there is a focus on providing immediate access to electronic materials, there is also the ability to request materials through inter-library loan services.

The pilot project was evaluated using three different methodologies. Some of the key findings were:

there was a high level of satisfaction with the service
books and journal articles were the most sought-after resources
content may still be king but the search system is critical to use of the service and in this regard Google is queen
ease of use is important and the federated search was valued
users believe access means 'find' and 'get'
delays and lack of transparency in the inter-library loan process were a problem
generally users were unwilling to pay for inter-library loans

Information Australia has now been replaced by the new Kinetica search interface, Libraries Australia, which incorporates many features of the Information Australia pilot. This is an important step towards true access to print and electronic resources for all Australians. However three major issues remain to be resolved: funding models for community access, resources to provide increased inter-lending in public libraries and authentication issues.

ALIA Information Online Encores Parts 2 and 3 will be presented on 25 August and 19 October. See the ALIA ACT events webpage for details.

News from ACT public libraries

Bookstart for babies - 6750 KITS distributed

Since its introduction in 2003 in the ACT, approximately 6750 bookstart for babies kits have been distributed to help increase childhood literacy.

'From the very first day of life babies learn by looking and listening and this period is very important for the development of language skills,' said Merrilee Pigram, general manager ACT Library and Information Services.

'The bookstart for babies program helps increase childhood literacy by encouraging parents and carers to read to their babies while introducing their babies to the world of literacy and providing a head start towards a lifelong enjoyment of books and reading.

Parents of newborns receive a kit that is provided in a reusable cloth library bag and features a board book; a booklet of rhymes and activities for use with children; a booklet on the benefits of reading to children; information on the services and resources the ACT Public Library provides to parents; and other appropriate publications.

This initiative has been modelled on the UK bookstart program, where research has shown recipients are consistently performing better at school than the control group.'

Ms Pigram said that a December 2004 report by the vice president of Friends of Libraries Australia, Dr Alan Bundy, revealed the ACT to have the most inclusive bookstart program in the country.

For more information regarding the bookstart for babies program telephone the ACT Public Library on ph 6205 9000.

Rhyme time and yoga

During June, rhyme time sessions were held at public libraries to help develop babies' listening and interaction skills. Parents and their babies were able to enjoy stories, rhymes, finger plays, games and songs. In July, parents will be able to attend sessions on yoga for babies, in which parents are taught how to do simple stretches, movements and basic massage techniques to comfort their baby. Programs are suitable for parents with babies aged between four months and 18 months. More information from ACT Public Library on ph 6205 9000.

Canberra authors

ACT Public Library organises regular sessions with Canberra authors.

Recent sessions have featured Rodanthe Lipsett and Dr Andris Tebecis.

Rodanthe Lipsett, is a midwife and author of No one right way: a handbook for parents, which provides advice on the first three months of a baby's life. It is a practical resource full of illustrations, designed to help even the most exhausted parents to easily find the information they need.

Dr Andris Tebecis, is the author of Is the future in our hands? My experiences with Sukyo Mahikari. Dr Tebecis is a neuroscientist who has always questioned how the spirit relates to the mind and body. He has worked as a researcher in Australia, Switzerland, Japan and India and was introduced to the Sukyo Mahikari organisation in 1975.

More information on forthcoming sessions with Canberra authors is available from the ACT Public Library on ph 6205 9000.

Forthcoming local events

Please check the events notices on the ALIA website for up-to-date details.

Changes and new events will also be publicised in the ACTive ALIA e-list.

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