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Ensure the selection, acquisition, creation,
cataloguing, storage and preservation of scholarly information is
in line with the needs and requirements of the university
community.
Provide prompt, seamless, reliable and
easy-to-use access to high quality scholarly information,
regardless of the location of the information or the user.
Evaluate, select, acquire and license
new materials (both print and electronic)
Selecting new materials
The selection of new resources for inclusion
in the collection is guided by the
Collection Development Policy.
The policy was significantly revised and refined in 2006 as part of
the Library’s commitment to continuously adapt to new and changing
demands in support of teaching and research.
A wide range of print and electronic resources
were reviewed or trialled for potential acquisition including new
databases, e-journals and e-book packages. Electronic resources
were frequently selected to supplement print holdings identified as
being in high demand and to meet the needs of particular clients in
dispersed locations who have limited access to the printed text,
such as medicine and nursing students in clinical placements. Back
runs of serials were acquired in electronic format from a number of
major publishers including Wiley, Blackwell and Nature Publishing.
Acquiring and processing new materials
The budget for the acquisition and licensing
of information resources was $16.1 million. Of this, 44.2% was
spent on electronic resources, 19.7% on subscriptions to print
journals and 36.1% on printed books, audio-visual materials, and
microform sets. This continues a pattern of continued growth in
expenditure on electronic resources. The number of print journal
subscriptions continues to decrease as more titles become available
electronically, with a total of 8,491 at the end of 2005 which was
a reduction of 288 titles from the previous year.
Growing demand for books to support teaching
The collection of printed monographs continued
to grow, with 55,360 orders placed and 65,033 non-serial items
added to the collection. The target of 95% of order requests placed
by the end of the year was exceeded, with 95.3% placed.
The Library greatly expanded its collection of
electronic books in 2006, adding collections from CRC Press (2,500
titles), Springer (2,330 titles), Ebook Library (700 titles) and
MyiLibrary (200 titles), as well as adding hundreds more from
Wiley, Lippincott, Netlibrary, Knovel, Gale, Elsevier and others.
Receiving donated materials
The Library received a donation from Mark and
Caroline Durre, the great-grandchildren of General Sir John Monash.
The donation comprised a collection of volumes from Sir John’s
library and some Judaica printed by his grandfather, B L Monasch,
in Krotoschin. This adds to the Library’s collection of Sir John
Monash’s books and books printed by B L Monasch, already held in
Rare Books. The gift also included albums of photographs and
postcards from trips abroad before World War I, stereoscopic views
of military subjects in Melbourne in the same period, and a
‘tollis’, a Jewish prayer shawl, which will be housed with the
Monash Family material in the Monash University Archives.
The Asian Studies Research Collection received
several donations during 2006. Several boxes of material were
received from the Korea Foundation and books and journals from the
National Library of Korea. The Japan Foundation donated material
for inclusion in the Melbourne Centre for Japanese Language
Education Collection housed in the Library. The Japanese Society of
Melbourne also donated items for the collection.
Associate Professor Bob Rice, from the Faculty
of Business and Economics, donated some recent periodicals and
newspapers from Aceh together with other Indonesian textbooks and
serials.
The Library also received a collection of
Jewish titles from Deakin University.
Streamlining supply of books
Further streamlining of some ordering
processes has resulted in improvements to the range and timeliness
of acquisitions for the collection, including:
- Blanket order plans for new Australian books were
created to cover the Berwick, Caulfield, Gippsland, and Peninsula
Libraries, adding to the pre-existing plans for the Hargrave-Andrew
and Sir Louis Matheson Libraries. A greater range of new Australian
titles is now becoming available in the library collections much
more quickly.
- If a book requested through Document Delivery is not
held anywhere in Australia, it is now purchased for the Library
collection. Overseas loans are only pursued when an item is not
available for purchase. It is frequently quicker and cheaper to
purchase a book than to borrow it from an overseas library. This
improvement has resulted in a much speedier service for Library
patrons, and helps to enhance the Monash University Library
collection.
Resources cataloguing, information and
access through the Library catalogue and website
Major update of cataloguing procedures
Cataloguers in the Information Resources
Division (IRD) undertook a major update and revision of cataloguing
procedures for the Library. All procedures were checked, updated if
necessary, and standardised into one format. Responsibility for,
and timing of, future checking of procedures was assigned to
particular IRD teams. This has placed cataloguers in a good
position to implement rule revisions to do with integrating
resources and website cataloguing as these occur in the cataloguing
profession.
Selected statistics
Cataloguers added 50,237 new bibliographic
records to the catalogue.
Projects undertaken to improve the coverage
and accuracy of the catalogue in 2006 included:
- Over 10,000 sub-standard records were replaced by
full records
- Over 2,000 errors in records were corrected
systematically.
Simplifying catalogue access for e-journals
The Library continued to source catalogue
records for major electronic journal collections from the external
record provider Serials Solutions. Records now come in a new format
that makes them easier to locate, stays more up-to-date and allows
greatly improved displays of records and holdings in the catalogue.
The record loading process has been significantly improved, with
provision of files updating current information rather than
completely replacing the file in each load. It is planned to move
to more frequent updates in 2007. Automated procedures are in place
for timely access to these files.
Digital theses project
Retrospective digitisation of theses
The Library is working on a project to
retrospectively digitise selected Monash theses and make them
available via the Monash Australian Research Repository Online to
the World (ARROW) repository. To that end, the e-cataloguing staff
processed a file of retrospective doctoral theses from 2000-2005 to
create catalogue records for further processing and batch input by
ARROW staff.
New digital theses
The Library’s eTheses standards group reviewed
current theses standards, and recommended changes that further
improve resource discovery.
The new Faceted Application of Subject
Terminology (FAST) vocabulary was investigated in order to simplify
subject cataloguing practices and facilitate machine processing and
translation to other metadata schemas. It was agreed to negotiate
an agreement with Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) to use the
FAST vocabulary, with implementation in 2007.
A theses workflow group has also been set up
to develop a workflow for digital submission of theses. This starts
with record submission in ARROW and then moves to an integration of
print and digital theses cataloguing in the Information Resources
Division. Record standards will comply with ADT (Australasian
Digital Theses project), National Library of Australia’s ARROW
discovery harvesting guide and international standards such as
NDLTD (Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations).
Provision of resource discovery tools
to enable access to electronic resources including journals, books,
articles and websites
Access to Lectures Online through podcasting*
In semester 2,
2006, Lectures Online successfully trialled podcasting and MP3*
downloading as alternative methods of presentation for recorded
lectures. The trial covered five subjects selected from the
faculties of Medicine Nursing and Health Sciences, Science, Law and
Information Technology. The University’s Educational Technology
Committee subsequently endorsed a proposal to offer MP3 downloading
and podcasting of all recorded lectures for 2007, with provision
for lecturers to opt-out by requesting that recordings only be done
in Real Audio Streaming format. Lectures Online streamed 750,624 requests
in 2006,
a 20% increase on 2005 figures.
SMS*
In September a
new service was trialled to deliver SMS alerts directly to a user’s
mobile phone, informing them of items available for pickup and
providing reminders of overdue loans and fines. Over 1,085 users
registered for the service, with over 100 text messages sent each
day. The service was reviewed in December, with 97% of survey
respondents satisfied with the service. As a result of the review,
the SMS service notifying users of items available for collection
will continue in 2007.
RSS/Blogs/ Wiki project*
The potential use
of new technologies such as RSS feeds, wikis and blogs to improve
communication and information dissemination to library staff and
users was investigated and a number of new initiatives were
implemented based on discussions with stakeholders, the Library’s
technical framework and practices of other academic libraries. Work
was started on the automatic creation of new resources lists from
the library catalogue which will be made available to library users
on the web site or sent automatically as an RSS feed in 2007. A
number of information sessions were run at the branches to raise
awareness and provide an opportunity for staff to learn about
potential applications. The use of a blog for the dissemination of
content relevant to information literacy was also investigated.
* Technical
terms:
| Blogs |
Weblogs. A web based log containing commentary, with the ability
for interactivity with other users |
| MP3 |
A digital audio encoding format – full
title MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 |
| Podcasting |
A podcast is a digital media file that is distributed over the
Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media
players or personal computers |
| RSS |
Really Simple Syndication. A software device
that allows users to subscribe to an information service and
be notified by email when the page is updated |
| SMS |
Short Message Service. A telecommunications
protocol that allows sending of short text messages to mobile
phones or personal communication devices |
| Wiki |
An interactive web page that allows
contributions from multiple sources/people. Wiki – Hawaiian word meaning ‘quick’. |
MultiSearch survey
The Library took part in a satisfaction survey
coordinated by Australian Academic Research Library Network
(AARLIN) across all of its consortium members. The AARLIN portal,
called MultiSearch at Monash, allows users to search multiple
catalogues and over 650 databases and e-journals simultaneously
with a single search. The survey showed that 75 per cent of AARLIN
portal users surveyed agreed that they would use the portal service
again. Monash endorsed the extension of its contract with the
AARLIN consortium until the end of 2008.
Provision of physical access to print
and other collections held in branch libraries
The library has taken up 130 linear metres of
high density shelving space at the Cooperative Action by Victorian
Academic Libraries (CAVAL) Archive and Research Materials (CARM)
centre on a permanent lease plus an additional 1,250 linear metres
acquired during 2006. Monash now has a total of 2,560 linear metres
of offsite storage.
Reviewing branch collections
A Steering Committee was established in 2006
to review the Matheson Library collections in preparation of the
anticipated refurbishment of this branch. As a result of the
review, thousands of multiple copies of superseded textbooks have
been discarded and over 17,000 older low-use single copies have
been moved to the Library’s storage location at the CAVAL site at
Bundoora to make room for newer and high-use material.
Other branches have also moved last copy items
to Monash’s storage location at the CAVAL site in Bundoora, making
a total of 27,000 volumes moved to this location in 2006. All books
can be requested and borrowed by users through the Library’s
inter-campus loan system.
Promotion and preservation of the
University’s intellectual output
Monash University ARROW Repository and the Monash Research
Quality Framework (RQF)
For most of 2006 the Monash implementation of
the ARROW project was solely focused on supporting the mock
Research Quality Framework (RQF) exercise conducted by Monash
University. The Mock RQF was a complete dry run of the
Department of Education, Science and Training’s proposed new method
of assessing the quality of research outputs. This exercise is
modelled on the UK’s Research Assessment Exercise (RAE).
Significantly, the Australian implementation of the RQF will
require that the participating universities deliver online copies
of selected research outputs to the RQF assessors via repository
software. All faculties of the University were involved in the
exercise. They were required to identify the six best research
outputs for the last five years and organise this information into
research groupings (e.g. stem cell research).
The Library’s ARROW team, with help from other
library staff, supported the Mock RQF exercise by locating copies
of all the selected research outputs and preparing accurate digital
versions for storage in a secure version of the ARROW repository.
Links to the research outputs were provided through the RQF
Information System, which the assessors were able to access
internationally at any time of day. For copyright reasons access
was restricted to staff involved with the Mock RQF project. More
than 7,000 publications were located, digitised and stored. The
exercise is considered a successful test of the ARROW repository
software for an important and demanding information management
task.
Monash University ARROW Repository increases content
Monash University ARROW Repository content was
increased significantly with the addition of the Faculty of
Business and Economics collection of 577 working/discussion papers.
The repository is also used to host the content of two Monash
related journals: the Journal of Australian Taxation and
Practice Reflexions. Content will continue to increase in 2007
with the addition of digitised higher degree by research theses to
an already significant collection of theses and patents. | 
