Monash University Library has recently joined the JSTOR program. Currently there is only one other Australian participant, the Australian National University. World wide membership of JSTOR now includes 419 US sites and 53 international institutions.

JSTOR, or Journal Storage, was conceived as an answer to the problems of storing large backfiles of core journals and making them easily available to the scholarly community for research. The basic idea was to convert these backfiles to electronic format, creating a guaranteed archive from the first issue of each title to a "moving wall" of between two to five years from the current issue. For example, The American Journal of International Law is available from volume 1 (1907) to volume 89 (1995). Volume 90 (1996) will be added at the end of this year.

Individual titles may be browsed issue by issue, or the fulltext of the whole journal may be searched. Searches can also be performed over the entire JSTOR database.

Phase one of the project involves 117 journals from 67 publishers. At the moment 87 of these titles are available. The subject areas covered by the journals include African-American studies, anthropology, Asian studies, ecology, economics, education, finance, history, literature, mathematics, philosophy, political science, population studies, sociology and statistics.

Records for each title can be found in the Library’s new Voyager catalogue. Selecting the highlighted URL link in the record will lead directly to the title in the JSTOR database. To browse a list of the titles currently available, use one of the keyword search options such as "Guided Search". Simply enter the term jstor as your search term.

Access to the collection is controlled by IP address. On-campus, this means you should be able to connect to the journal without entering a password. If you want to use this service remotely, for example from home, you may need to authenticate yourself as a Monash staff member or student. More information about access can be found at: http://www.lib.monash.edu.au/jstor/
Further details about JSTOR, it’s background and aims, can be found at: http://www.jstor.org/

The Virtual Librarian is a new Monash University Library web site, designed to give students the information seeking skills needed to excel now and in the future. LTOP identifies information literacy as one of the key life long learning skills to be fostered in Monash’s graduates, and this site is part of the university library’s contribution towards that goal.

The Virtual Librarian does not replace the library’s face-to-face teaching; instead it seeks to offer similar learning opportunities to those users unable to attend classes. The Virtual Librarian also offers reinforcement, and self-paced revision on what is taught. More importantly, through its structured tutorials, it can provide an entire information literacy program, something that is not possible in the limited time available in classes.

The site has been designed after extensive investigation of both user needs and current theories on web-based instructional programs. It is also sensitive to the needs of remote users who may be hampered by slow connections or older equipment. Its overall design and structure is highly flexible, as the library wanted a site that would support teaching initiatives in every discipline. Tutorials can be tailored to an individual academic’s requirements. In fact, for this site to reach its full potential we want to develop it in consultation with academic staff. We have already been working with several course coordinators to design programs to suit their particular needs, and we invite other teaching staff who would like to become involved to contact either their subject librarian, or the Project Officer, David Groenewegen. (extn: 51593, email: david.groenewegen@lib.monash.edu.au).
The Virtual Librarian can be viewed at: http//www.lib.monash.edu.au/vl/

The view from a library manager

Many others also worked hard to ensure that Voyager was launched successfully. These included staff of the Computer Centre who acquired the new hardware platforms for the new system; and staff of Endeavor who guided the implementation process, trained key staff and provided technical advice and support throughout the whole period. Then there were the library staff members themselves, almost all of whom became involved in one or more of the many tasks associated with the new system. These tasks included developing the specifications for the PALS to Voyager database migration and reviewing the data after it had been loaded; developing a Monash-specific interface and help screens; installing over 150 PCs to replace existing PALS terminals; installing new network connections; training library staff in how to operate the system; developing guides explaining the new system to users etc etc.

The job is by no means finished. The first stage saw only the cataloguing, circulation and on-line catalogue modules installed. Additional modules, acquisitions and serials, will be added shortly. Meanwhile there are on-going database clean-up jobs. Inevitably, when two million records are migrated from one system to another, there will be some data that won’t fit, some records that will be corrupted and some information that will be lost and will need to be re-entered. Teams of staff are working on these records at the moment. Overall our experience with Voyager has been good and user response has been very favourable. There will be a further period of hard work to get the remainder of the system in place but, buoyed by this positive feedback, the attitude of the library staff is to "get on with it and finish the job". That’s great news for the University and most gratifying for library management.

The view from the Technical Services

For the first time since the days of the card catalogue, the library offers an authority framework. That is, a referral structure for names and subject headings to lead the user from non-standard forms of a heading to the correct or related headings. More powerful search features in the public catalogue mean that all the data that is input by the cataloguers can be used to retrieve items.

Cataloguers have responded well to the advanced features available to them, and are currently applying themselves to achieving a smooth working interface between Voyager and Kinetica, the new software system of the Australian national bibliographic database.

... and what’s next