Goal 6: Partnership Services

In 2005 the library worked to align with the university's defining themes of innovation, engagement, internationalisation and global development to support the wider Monash community and improve services through cooperative arrangements.

Supporting Monash students and staff in Monash affiliated hospitals and other teaching and research locations

The library continued to acquire books and print journals to support Monash students at teaching hospitals throughout Victoria.  The range of electronic resources, especially e-books to support medicine and nursing students, was expanded allowing access for all Monash students regardless of where they are located.

Providing more resources and expertise for teaching hospitals

Providing quality library services to the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences staff and students is one of the more complicated challenges for the library, due to the scattered locations and ever increasing number of hospitals involved in the faculty’s teaching program, and the expansion of courses offered that require clinical placements. Currently the library supplies funding for resources and/or staffing for library services in all of the faculty’s major teaching hospitals, including:

• The Alfred Hospital
• Monash Medical Centre
• Box Hill Hospital
• Latrobe Regional Hospital.

Since 2004 Monash University Library also supports teaching hospitals in Gippsland, Bendigo and Mildura. The total number of titles purchased for hospitals in 2005 was 2,906, a 50% increase over 2004. Monash students and staff in hospitals can also access electronic resources to support their teaching and learning.

Off-campus library services to third and fourth year medical students at country hospitals will be offered as a permanent service from 2006 after trial periods in 2004-05.

In 2005 the library initiated a proposal for a consultant to be engaged by the faculty to review and make recommendations on providing library services for Monash University Malaysia Medical School, including placement hospitals and clinics.

To facilitate the coordination of library services provided by the hospital libraries to Monash University staff and students, the Director, Client Services-Science Health Engineering, convenes the Hospital Librarians Committee, which meets three times a year. 

Library staff from the faculty team for Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences regularly present information literacy tutorials for Monash University staff and students located in the hospitals, and represent the university on hospital library committees such as:

• The Southern Health Library Network Committee
• The Ian Potter Advisory Committee
• The Ian Potter Management Committee.

Supporting overseas campuses and partnerships

Building new Library and Learning Commons in Malaysia and South Africa

Designs for the new Library and Learning Commons in both South Africa and Malaysia were completed in late 2005, with building due to commence in March 2006 on both campuses. An integrated IT and library service will be offered in both learning commons, with South Africa also including learning and language support.  The new libraries mirror the library in Australia to provide familiarity with services and layout for those students moving between campuses.

Supporting Malaysia and South Africa

Whenever possible, Monash campuses in Malaysia and South Africa were included in new and renewed licences for access to electronic resources.  This enables Monash students and staff at overseas campuses to access these resources through the internet.

The library catalogue for Monash South Africa (MSA) runs on the Voyager library system as a separate database located on library servers at the Clayton campus.  It does not include catalogue records for electronic resources licensed on their behalf by Monash University Library.  To improve access to electronic journals in South Africa a set of e-journal web pages for MSA was developed.  The information for these pages is derived from the Australian catalogue and updated weekly.  Records are coded to ensure that only resources licensed for MSA are included, and links are kept current by library staff in Australia.

The Monash University Library undertook a comprehensive review of MSA in April 2005 and has provided MSA with assistance and expertise in a number of other areas including benchmarking practices, training analysis for staff, ordering of books and risk management.  Setting up service level agreements with faculties and a client survey are among upcoming projects identified as requiring support.

Participating in a range of other collaborative endeavours to further Monash goals

Continuing participation in AARLIN Consortium

Monash University Library committed to a continued participation in the Australian Academic Research Libraries Information Network (AARLIN) consortium of 12 Australian academic libraries for a further three years.  By sharing the costs of acquiring skilled staff and maintaining and operating the technology infrastructure, each member institution is able to offer leading edge research services in the most cost effective and resource efficient manner. Committed service levels ensure a consistently high standard of technical support. 

Supporting international students on campus

In 2005 the library continued to provide specially tailored classes and support to the 1,665 students enrolled in the various courses offered by Monash International. A total of 809 of these were students at Monash College, and the remaining 856 were enrolled in bridging programs run by Monash University English Language Centre (MUELC).

Staff from the library's External Client Services unit gave 82 information literacy classes over the year using Monash International facilities, and trained the teachers of the various courses in nine training sessions. This program commenced in 2004 in recognition of the needs of Monash International students for specialised library skills classes and has continued to prove successful in 2005. The use of Monash International facilities has taken pressure off training rooms at the Matheson Library and both teachers and students have greatly appreciated having classes tailored specifically to the students’ language ability and coursework.

Providing external client services

The library offers a fee-based information and document delivery service to business, industry and government. The area also handles a growing alumni base, individual and corporate library memberships and delivers all library teaching programs for Monash International.

Entertaining overseas and interstate visitors

In 2005, the library recorded 122 official interstate and overseas visitors including government ministers, ambassadors and university academics and researchers from many countries including Korea, Japan, Thailand, New Zealand, China, Malaysia, the USA, Italy and the United Kingdom.  Purposes of visits ranged from those seeking information on the ARROW project, online services and information literacy to discussions on the ePress and scholarly communication and tours of library facilities and specific collections. The University of Boston, King’s College London, Hokkai Gakuen University (China),  Freie Universitat (Berlin), Hokkai Gakuen University and Mahidol University (Thailand) were among the academic institutions represented by visitors during the year.

Melbourne-Monash protocol

The library continues to contribute to Monash’s relationship with the University of Melbourne under the Melbourne-Monash protocol. Both universities share the expertise of Asian Studies library staff and Asian Studies development, and staff have direct access to inter-library loans.

Founding member of CAVAL

Monash University is a founding member of CAVAL which provides a range of services to universities including collaborative storage and reciprocal borrowing. Ian Wilson, the library’s Director Corporate Services, was elected as a Board member on 14 November 2005, following a decision to spill all positions and create a smaller Board.

Supporting alumni access to Monash resources

The library provided 498 annual library memberships to Monash alumni in 2005, including 144 renewals and 354 new members.

Monash continued to strengthen its position as a leader amongst Australian universities in the provision of electronic resources to alumni. In September 2005 the library added the Gale suite of databases to its range available to alumni members. This range now includes ProQuest, Austlit (a database of Australian literature) and Expanded Academic ASAP, amongst other databases, and offers access to a large number of full text journals.

Providing online access to Monash Business Review

In 2005 Monash University ePress provided over 4,000 postgraduate Business and Economics alumni with complimentary online access to the Monash Business Review journal published by the ePress. The ePress provides this service under the terms of its agreement with the faculty for publication of the journal.

A delegation of staff from Australia visit the South African campus