8 Collaborative Activities
In 1999, the Library undertook a number of collaborative activities
of which the following were significant:
8.1 READS Project
The READS (Regional Electronic Access and Delivery of Serials)
Project was initiated by Monash Library originally as part of the
Melbourne-Monash protocol. However, La Trobe University Library
on the basis of the strength of its collections was subsequently
invited to take part. READS is a resource sharing project designed
to manage access to serials in physics and chemistry, the subscriptions
for which had been decimated by cancellations undertaken in 1998
by all three universities. An indication of the nature of the problem
can be seen from the following statistic. In 1998, the number of
unique journal titles in physics and chemistry subscribed to by
at least one of the three universities was 690. By 1999, 312 of
these had been cancelled. READS makes use of Web-based and e-commerce
technologies to deliver a "virtual" collection of physics
and chemistry serials (held by at least one of the three university
libraries) to academic staff and researchers who no longer have
easy physical access to those serials due to cancellations. The
project has been well received by academic staff and postgraduates,
and will be evaluated before June 2000. If found to be cost effective
and acceptable to academic staff and students as a suitable alternative
to the provision of hard copies of journals held by their home
library, it will be extended to cover other disciplines in science,
technology and medicine.
8.2 VARLAC Consortium
The VARLAC (Victorian Academic and Research Library Acquisitions
Consortium), which includes the State Library of Victoria and six
Victorian University Libraries: La Trobe University, Monash, RMIT,
Swinburne, Ballarat and Deakin, was formed last year also at the
prompting of Monash.
Its principal purpose was to leverage the collective purchasing
power of the consortium members by making a joint commitment to
spend a percentage of their monograph votes with a preferred supplier
for English language materials. Another objective of VARLAC was
to improve efficiencies by selecting a supplier capable of advanced
EDI business transactions with the VARLAC member Library Systems
and also to assess suppliers' capacity to offer a range of ancillary
services to provide books at various levels of shelf readiness
as required by the VARLAC members.
In the response to the VARLAC RFP the successful tenderer for
the initial two-year contract to supply overseas English language
books was YBP (YBP later taken over by Baker and Taylor). YBP has significant
international experience in research library book supply and has
particularly good credentials for consortium services. It is currently
in advanced discussions with the vendor of Monash University's
Voyager Library system to implement the EDIFACT standard for orders,
claims and invoicing transactions in mid 2000.
8.3 Melbourne Asian Research Library Consortium (MARLC)
MARLC, a joint Melbourne-Monash initiative, was launched in April
1999, with the objective of promoting cooperation in the use of
Asian studies resources acquired by the two universities. A number
of products have emerged as a result of this collaboration including:
- MARLC Research Guide to Asian Language Resources - a web-based
guide designed for researchers in Asian studies with the emphasis
on material held by consortium members
- Asia-related theses - a web-based listing of Monash SEA theses
1961-1999 and recent Melbourne University theses on Asia
- Asian studies newspapers - a web-based list of Asian studies
newspapers held at Monash.
The AVEL gateway is a database of quality Australian sources of
engineering and information technology (IT) information on the
Web. The creation of the database is a joint project with a number
of other Australian universities and Engineering institutions which
have jointly funded the project with the help of an Australian
Research Council infrastructure grant. At Monash, subject librarians
in the Hargrave-Andrew Library are selecting resources for inclusion
using the AVEL Resource Selection Criteria and cataloguers in Technical
Services are creating the metadata using the AVEL
Metadata manual which is based on the Dublin Core metadata
set. The metadata editor and search engine is supplied by DSTC
(Distributed Systems Technology Centre), a key partner in the project.
A decision was made to participate in the OCLC CORC Project and
training of a team of cataloguers and subject librarians is scheduled
for early 2000. CORC is a cooperative effort to create a high-quality,
library-selected database of web-based electronic resource descriptions
and develop best practice for managing library access to electronic
resources available over the Web. Metadata will be contributed,
again using the Dublin Core metadata set, for Monash-related sites
with a high Australian content. CORC will be a test bed for the
conversion of Dublin Core to/from MARC for the purposes of export/import
to/from the Library catalogue. CORC participation also offers the
opportunity to experiment with the creation and maintenance of
digital pathfinders for web resources, which has significant potential
value in the context of Library portal development. |
