Goal 1: Information Resources

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)

Acquiring and processing new materials

The Collection budget for 2007 was $14,530,817.  While this represented a 1.4% increase from the 2006 budget, in real dollar terms it did not meet the rising costs of scholarly publications.  This was offset by the continuing buoyancy of the Australian dollar.  Expenditure on electronic resources increased while expenditure on printed resources dropped.  The changes in spending patterns are shown in the following table:

This expenditure translated into the placement of 53,011 printed book orders in 2007 compared with 55,360 in 2006.  Also in 2007, 50,157 non-serial items were added to the collection compared with 65,033 in 2006.  A number of important collections of e-books were purchased during 2007 bringing the number of titles of e-books to 245,687, representing an increase of 0.8%.  E-book collections included the Royal Society Collection (700 titles), Elsevier e-books (4,000 titles) and additional Springer e-books packages, making a total of 11 subject collections.  A more detailed listing of key new resources is included in Appendix 6.

The trend from print to electronic is highlighted by a 9.7% increase in the acquisition of electronic serials, to a total of 74,977 titles.  In 2007, 320 print serials were cancelled. 

Donations

Several valuable donations were received during 2007, including $14,000 from Sandy Michell through the Friends of the Library. 

Dr John Emmerson, President of the Friends of the Library and executor of a trust fund from the estate of Theodore Alexander Scheps, in memory of Ida Scheps, once again arranged a donation of $4000.  In 2007 two significant purchases for the Rare Books Collection were made using this donation:

Erasmus, Desiderius, d.  1536.  Witt against wisdom, or, A panegyrick upon folly / penn'd in Latin by Desiderius Erasmus; render'd into English.  Publisher: Oxford: Printed by L. Lichfield, printer to the University, for Anthony Stephens, 1683.

La Perouse, Jean-Francois de Galaup, Comte de, 1741-1788.  A voyage round the world in the years 1785, 1786, 1787 and 1788 / by J.F.G. de La Perouse; edited by L.A. Milet-Mureau; translated from the French.  2nd ed.  Publisher: London : Printed for J. Johnson, 1799.  3 vols.

The Asian Studies collection received fifteen boxes of books, serials and pamphlets from the Inside Indonesia magazine office (the office is closing down due to the magazine going online). The materials cover areas such as Indonesian human rights, environmental and development issues.

Ten boxes of books were also donated by the Korea Foundation

Provide access to resources through the catalogue

New bibliographic records for several categories of material were added to the catalogue during 2007.  These included 45,252 monograph records, and 4,813 non-book records and 62,916 electronic resources records. These records facilitate access to e-books and aggregated serial collections.

Projects undertaken during 2007 to improve the coverage and accuracy of the catalogue included replacement of over 16,000 brief records with full records and the systematic correction of over 20,000 other records.

Provide resource discovery tools to enable access to electronic resources including journals, books, articles and web sites

The Library continued to participate in the Australian Academic and Research Library Network (AARLIN).  At Monash the AARLIN portal is used to provide the Multisearch access to information resources in all formats, wherever they are located, through deep linking to the full text of resources and searching across databases.

The need for improved access to searching across multiple databases was identified through a user survey and improvements were implemented to facilitate access to library databases using Multisearch.  The software was updated to provide a better user interface.  It now provides a more immediate display of “Full Text” links as well as cleaner and easier to read results.  The naming of the “SFX” button was changed to “Check for Full Text” to help users.  The subject categories for use with databases were customised to match the subject requirements of our users. These customised search pages are linked to customised web pages to enable simultaneous searching of key resources in a number of subject areas, including sociology and criminology.

E-books page

The Library has a large number of e-books. To improve visibility and access to these a web page was established to link to the major e-book packages to which the Library subscribes.  This page provides links to over 70 e-book packages, as well as a search page providing access to well over 300,000 e-books.

Improved access to new title lists

The new titles page was updated to provide improved searching and linking to new titles in the library catalogue. The page enables users to search for new items, which can be limited to a particular faculty or resource type such as electronic resources. The results can be reformatted to display in order of call number, location, author or title, and new items can be searched for the previous four weeks.

Using an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed, a weekly list of new titles added to the catalogue is sent to users RSS-enabled readers or to email clients.  The main advantage of this is that once a user has subscribed to the service new titles are automatically pushed out to their RSS.

Podcasting popular with students

In 2007 MP3 audio lectures via podcasting and direct downloads were introduced.  Of the 795 units available in Monash University Lectures Online (MULO), 89% offered MP3 via podcasting and direct downloads as well as audio streaming.  These two options were extremely popular with 599,270 MP3 files delivered via podcasting.  From January to June 681,526 MP3 direct downloads occurred.  Users much preferred the option of downloading and listening to the lectures off line, as shown by a 39% decrease in the use of audio streaming from 750,624 audio streams in 2006 to 458,689 in 2007.

SMS service expanded

The Library has offered a service for users who place items on hold to receive mobile telephone Simple Messaging System (SMS) notifications when those items are available for pickup.

In 2007 the SMS system was expanded to include courtesy notices for items due to be returned, items which were overdue and for which fines were owing.  Over 2,209 users registered for the SMS service and 23,025 SMS messages were sent throughout the year.

Provide physical access to print collections held in branch libraries

Long Term storage strategy

The Library has a long term storage strategy which provides a framework for storing the physical collections for the University’s Australian libraries. 

The Library bought 500 linear metres of high density shelving space at the Cooperative Action by Victorian Academic Libraries (CAVAL) Archive and Research Materials (CARM) store at the end of 2007.  Monash now has a total of 3,060 linear metres of offsite storage at the CARM store.  Guidelines for moving materials to the Offsite Store are in place and 78,403 items were moved to the store by the end of 2007, which is an increase of 169% from 2006.  In part this was due to a major review and weeding of the Sir Louis Matheson Library undergraduate collection completed towards the end of the year.  Items at the Offsite Store are available on request through the library catalogue.

Discussions commenced with CAVAL about the possibility of Monash acquiring a significant amount of storage space in the planned new CARM2 facility. 

Promote and preserve the University's intellectual output

ARROW

Monash University continued to lead the federally funded ARROW project (Australian Research Repositories Online to the World), which supports the development of best practice institutional repositories. The ARROW community now comprises 16 institutions nationally.  During 2007 repository capability grew considerably, particularly with the influx of government funding to ensure that institutions could use repositories to support the RQF.  The ARROW project managed a number of special initiatives, including a national metadata group and a project to explore the deployment of persistent identifiers in repositories.

Monash ARROW Repository

ARROW continued to provide support for the Research Quality Framework (RQF) in 2007.  The Library’s ARROW team, with assistance from other Library staff and in co-operation with Faculty and University staff, supported the RQF by locating copies of 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 university’s Research Masters system.  When the 2007 RQF was cancelled by the Federal Government, in December 2007, 99% of the nominated research outputs had been collected, for a total of 3694 publications.

Other major activity for ARROW in 2007 included:

• 500 retrospectively scanned PhD theses were added to the repository.
• The Donald Cochrane Library's collection of economics working papers were scanned.
• Since April 2003, Nereus Consortium has been developing innovative information services to connect existing essential research resources and to unlock new content from economics faculties in Europe and beyond.  Nereus is integrating access to the economics resources of key libraries, academic publications and other online resources.  The ARROW repository was prepared to harvest Faculty of Business and Economics Working Paper records to contribute to Nereus.  Test data has been harvested from the Monash ARROW repository and sent to Nereus for validation.  Records will be loaded from ARROW to Nereus during 2008.
• Sample music recordings from the Australian Archive of Jewish Music and the first crystallography dataset were added.  This 35Gb crystallography dataset is permanently linked to an article in Science magazine.  Adding data underlying research publications will be a priority for ARROW during the next phase of its development.
• Monash University Linguistics Papers were added to the Open Access Journal Collection.
• Extensive work was undertaken in the later part of the year to prepare for the planned upgrade to the next major release of the VITAL software in early 2008. 
• The ARROW team also assisted the Institute of Transport Studies to establish the Social Research in Transport Clearing House on behalf of the Victorian State Government.  The SORT Clearing House aims to increase awareness of social issues in transport by making it easier to access research in this area.  It is a two year trial project.

Monash University ePress

In 2007 the ePress published twelve journal issues and three books, or 294 articles and chapters. This brings the total number of books and journal issues published since its foundation in 2004 to 45, or 813 articles and chapters.

In 2007, a major achievement for the ePress was the publication of the Telecommunications Journal of Australia (TJA).  The TJA is the journal of the Telecommunications Society of Australia and has been published in print by the Society for over 75 years.  One of the earliest issues carries a letter from Alexander Graham Bell.  It covers technical, economic, social and legal aspects of the rapidly expanding communications industry.  The Society has approximately 1,500 members, who receive the journal with membership.

The ePress published three new books in 2007:

• The Spirit of Secular Art, by Robert Nelson
• No Way to Go, edited by Graham Currie, Janet Stanley and John Stanley
• Learning Discourses, edited by Helen Marriott, Tim Moore, and Robyn Spence-Brown

In 2007, five new titles were commissioned for publication in 2008: Australians in Italy, Australians in Britain, Orb and Sceptre, Seize the Day and Information Technology at Monash University, 1960 to 1990.

Key achievements in 2007 included:

• A significant rise in usage for ePress journals History Australia, Australian Review of Applied Linguistics and The Bible and Critical Theory. In the case of History Australia, full-text accesses of the journal rose 53% from 2006 to 2007 (2,836 to 4,343).
• A significant increase in membership numbers for The Australian Historical Association on whose behalf the ePress publishes the journal History Australia.  In 2007 membership rose 27% from 2006.
• A 25% growth in ePress sales revenue, from $62,774 in 2006 to $83,843 in 2007.  Projected sales revenue for 2008 is for a further 27% increase.

Postgraduate History Prize

In 2007 the ePress secured funding for a new postgraduate history prize from the Australian Copyright Agency Limited (CAL), for the Australian Historical Association (AHA).  The AHA/CAL Postgraduate History Prize of $4,000 is for an unpublished article-length work of historical research in any area of historical enquiry, produced by a postgraduate student enrolled in an Australian university in the year of the prize.  This prize will help foster historical research and writing amongst Australian postgraduates.  The winning entry will be published in the AHA journal History Australia.  CAL funding is providing initial funding for three years plus a small amount for administration of the prize by the AHA.  The prize will be publicised by the ePress, the AHA and the Monash School of Historical Studies.

Improve the utility of the University's information management processes.

Data management

The Library plays a role in a number of projects contributing to better data and information management across the University.  These include the local implementations of the ARROW, ARCHER (Australian Research Enabling Environment) and DART (Dataset Acquisition, Accessibility and Annotation e-Research Technology) projects and the establishment of the LaRDS (Large Research Data Store) service. 

The Library contributed significantly towards efforts to support research data management during 2007.  This included leadership of the development of the draft Data Management Plan and pilot testing with selected researchers.  The Library organised, and several library staff made presentations at, a research data management seminar for faculty researchers and research managers.  The seminar highlighted issues that must be considered in the collection, management and preservation of research data.

The ARCHER and ARROW projects are investigating tools, requirements and management of data and datasets related to published material.  The ARCHER project is analysing e Research data and information management needs and requirements and is adapting the generic DART middleware/software tools to suit each research area.

Monash University ePress launched a new postgraduate history prize in 2007