Report on SCHOLARLY READING IN THE DIGITAL AGE: PRESENTATION BY PROFESSOR CAROL TENOPIR,

SCHOLARLY READING IN THE DIGITAL AGE: PRESENTATION 

BY PROFESSOR CAROL TENOPIR, CHANCELLOR'S PROFESSOR, SCHOOL OF INFORMATION SCIENCES, UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE. 

This was a fascinating presentation – Carol’s research spans decades and the comparative data collected over time provides, thanks to carol’s thoughtful analysis, many great insights into reading, publishing and the role of libraries.

Thanks to Charles Sturt University, the University of New South Wales, Australian National University and John Metcalfe Memorial Foundation for bringing Carol to Australia and supporting the research.

A short summary follows.

Canberra AGLIN/ALIA/SLA Draft Joint library program 2013

MONTH	EVENT
Friday 12 April  12:30 – 1:30 pm	Professor Carol Tenopir, Venue: Headley Bull Theatre no.1, The Australian National University
May Information Awareness Month 20-26 May  21 May Friday 31 May, 4.30-5.30pm	Library and Information Week ACT Library technician breakfast Celebrate Library technician day with breakfast at the Pork Barrel Cafe at Kingston A talk and tour of the  ANU’s National Computational Infrastructure with Professor Lindsay Botten National Computational Infrastructure Building (143), Cnr Garran and Ward Roads, ANU Campus
Thursday July 4, 2013, 7.00pm	Winter dinner Venue: Scholar restaurant, Woolleys Street Dickson
July 3, 2013	E-books issues round table discussion Venue: Gunghalin Library
July 30, 2013	AGLIN Forum  Connecting Value Venue
September 4 2013 12:30-pm Sept 10, Tuesday 2013 5:30pm Friday Sept 20  2013 full day seminar	Post IFLA roundup (Aileen Weir)  – National Library Ferguson room  ALIA ACT National Advisory Council  National Library Ferguson room  Libraries and Social Media –  National Library conference room
October 30 – 1 November 2013	ALIA National Library & Information Technicians conference Venue: National Library
November 2013	Future skills for the library profession – discussion and presentations Venue: National Library
December 4, 2013 dta	End of year celebration Venue: National Arboretum Copyright workshop

ALIA's response to the Big Data Strategy issues paper

The Australian Library and Information Association strongly applauds the move by the Government to provide access to its many data sets, while understanding and respecting data security and privacy issues.

The data held by Commonwealth Government agencies is enormously important to Australians and access will provide significant benefits to citizen engagement and responsiveness. Greater use of data can contribute to national productivity, development of innovative services, education, research and other social benefits. In many ways the government is custodian of data that belongs to Australians, and should consider data management policy in this light.

Maximum benefit from increased availability of data can only be achieved if the data (government and other, such as that held by universities) is aggregated and made available with significant computer resources for data manipulation and analysis. We encourage you to consider architectures and access in light of the need for interoperability and aggregation.

Read more at ALIA's response to the Big Data Strategy issues paper

Australian Government big data strategy issues paper 2013

The Australian Government CIO, Glen Archer, released the Big data strategy issues paper in March.  You can find the launch post and link to the paper at http://agimo.gov.au/2013/03/15/released-big-data-strategy-issues-paper/

ALIA has been a strong advocate of public access to information and welcomes consideration by the commonwealth government of big data issues including access, privacy and security.

The Commonwealth Government owns data that is extremely important for citizens, specific communities, research industry, education and delivery of government services. While there has been significant discussion across some agencies and within agencies there has not be a holistic approach to issues around big data and its management, particularly access.  The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has produced and excellent set or principles and this paper takes on the challenges set by the principles.

We encourage you to read the paper – ALIA will post a response to the paper shortly.

Roxanne Missingham

University Librarian (Chief Scholarly Information Services)

The Australian National University

Tribute to Dorothy Harris

We are sad to advise that our ex-colleague, professional associate and  friend Dorothy Harris died at Canberra Hospital on 31^st December 2012 after a short illness.  She will be especially missed by her husband Tony Ralli and her daughter Leslie Thompson to whom we express our deepest sympathy

Dorothy Harris moved to ACT from Perth, where she had already had a long and successful library career, in 1990. She rapidly began to have an impact on Government libraries, first at the O’Connell Education Centre (part of the ACT Education Authority) and later as head of the national Defence Library and Information Service. In her career in school and government libraries, Dorothy demonstrated considerable vision and effective management skills, assisting in the development of quality library services and managing significant change.  At the Department of Defence she steered the national defence library service towards a new, more integrated structure and service base.

As ALIA ACT President in 1998 she successfully achieved the merger of ALIA and ACLIS in our region. She was active as a member of many ALIA divisions. She also strongly encouraged links with the ASLA (ACT) branch feeling government and school libraries had much to learn from and to teach each other. She was for many years the Copyright Expert for the Federal Libraries Information Network. Copyright and the challenges of changing technologies presented by copyright were always of particular interest to Dorothy.. She and Tony received jointly the ALIA ACT award in 2001 for their dedication and contribution to the library and information profession. She greatly valued ALIA as a source of professional support, (and) networking and of professional development,  particularly for more junior staff members whom she actively encouraged to participate fully.

Dorothy was always forward looking, grasping the challenges of changing technologies and service priorities. She had a strong management ethic which enabled her to successfully drive change.   She also displayed a great capacity to analyse client need, to maximize the libraries response and even anticipate needs they had not yet identified. Dorothy was very astute about making sure her libraries were visible and were offering innovative and relevant services. She greatly valued initiative and flexibility in her colleagues especially urging junior staff to be adventurous and expand their horizons.

We thank Dorothy for her energetic contribution to the growth and development of library and information services in a computerized world.  We also acknowledge her efforts to raise the image of the information professional in our region and beyond.

Libby Coates

Measuring & Improving Library Value Conference, Sydney, November 2012

Many of you attended the Valuing  libraries symposium here in Canberra in May 2012 and found the sessions interesting and useful. This symposium was lead by Roxanne Missingham who now heads the  Australian National University Libraries network. Roxanne recently went to  a conference on Measuring and improving library value, held in Sydney on 27 and 28 November 2012, this conference pulled together some fascinating presentations on challenges for libraries, particularly academic libraries, to be relevant and demonstrate value in the twenty first century.

Roxanne presented an interesting paper

  
Measuring & evaluating return on investment :



Roxanne has written up her impressions of the conference which should be of interest to all of us justifying why our libraries exist and what value we bring to our parent agency

Peter Rathjen, Vice-Chancellor, University of Tasmania opened the conference with a range of provocative thoughts on universities, information, libraries and relevance.  He noted the importance of trends in research – particularly the strengthening of cross disciplinary in the last decade. Provocatively he suggested that if we thought about what are the great libraries there are none in Australia.


Significant concepts explored were:·         prestige·         Collections including wider community access·         Space·         KNOWLEDGE
Libraries were encouraged to evaluate their contribution against these aspects.
The environment is characterised by changing resources. There has been an evolution from books and scholarly journals to a demand for organisational contribution and knowledge skills. He noted that changing behaviour of researchers meant they were no longer using libraries physically as part of their research mission
He saw a renaissance for libraries in their roles of supporting e repositories and contributing to access for the community including access to research outputs through repositories
Mapping the Library he proposed an evaluation as follows:

key assets	Research	Teaching
Prestige	++	+
Space	-	+++
Collections	+++	(+)
Workforce	++	+++

He suggested that disciplinary differences may be significant.
In moving to a world full of data intensive equipment, data and information will be the key assets for research programs. There will need to be an investment at a new scale. The nation will require national approaches, broad access protocols, and physical access.  We all will need to think internationally.  Universities will have value in maintaining data that is not available internationally; the world will come to you because of these strengths. This will be a key aspect in attracting funding.

At the University of Tasmania a program to collect data across the island through broadband to achieve value and insights to give new answers has been developed, It requires very significant funding to achieve systems to set up data collection, manage and develop analytic reports.
Key issues for academic libraries include:·         measuring·         bibliometrics and usage.·         segmentation is the key  disciplinary level research vs. teaching·         a voice for the broad research community.·         Knowledge insights
There is a strong need to connect to senior management including Vice Chancellors and Research offices (including on issues such as infrastructure, bibliometrics, ranking strategies, IT Data management).


To discover more check out Roxanne's blog entry on the conference

http://roxannemissingham.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/measuring-improving-library-value.html

Karna O'Dea

Active ALIA Convenor

Where is the Grey literature- it’s a grey grey world

On 10^th October a community from across the nation will come together to look at the issue of grey literature under the theme of enhancing the transparency and accessibility of informally published research and information.  I encourage you to attend to discuss the demise of government publications and the effect of this on transparency of government policy and decision making, amongst other issues.

There will be many presentations on a range of grey literature issues.

  My presentation will focus on government publications.

So what is happening with government publishing? A few key points:

·         Government publications have reduced by approximately 50% in the past decade

·         90% of government publications are online, around 10% are not (Australian National Audit Office on online availability of government documents tabled in the Parliament)

·         Analysing the online publications of an agency produced in 2001 reveals that approximately a third are “digital dust”

·         Dynamic data, which used to be published permanently in print, is now overwritten and historic material is no longer available

·         Finding publications is onerous and exhausting.

·         Rights management is complex and confusing for anyone seeking to reuse materials. The gamut of Creative commons licences and Crown Copyright are used – we do not yet have truly open access.

All in all there is much to discuss and seek change in to delivery on the government’s promise of open and transparent policy and decision making. Do come along for a challenging and stimulating conversation!

http://eidos.org.au/v2/documents/grey_lit/GreyLiterature_NCS_2012_Brochure.pdf

Roxanne Missingham
ANU