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Support teaching, learning and research by making course and research materials readily available for undergraduate and postgraduate students and staff.
Provide loans services from any branch of Monash University Library
Borrowing from the collection
A Loans and Document Delivery policy was developed and agreed in 2007.
New security system for DVD/CD resources
A new security system was purchased late in 2007 for DVDs in all branches. The system enables improved student access to these collections. It also has significant advantages for staff in reducing manual handling risks and turnaround time required when processing DVDs.
Loans statistics
| Branch library |
2007 total loans |
Change from 2006 |
Change% |
| Berwick |
31,311 |
-704 |
-2.20% |
| Caulfield |
259,319 |
+12,947 |
+5.26% |
| Gippsland |
57,139 |
-3,894 |
-6.38% |
| Hargrave-Andrew |
142,060 |
-7,173 |
-4.81% |
| Law |
48,484 |
+1,047 |
+2.21% |
| Sir Louis Matheson |
388,904 |
-23,809 |
-5.77% |
| Peninsula |
63,063 |
-1,861 |
-2.87% |
| Pharmacy |
17,011 |
-3,819 |
-18.33% |
Overall, loans dropped slightly by 2.6%, from 1,035,593 in 2006 to 1,008,626 in 2007. Loans at the Pharmacy Library were reduced by the disruption caused by building activity at the Parkville Campus and the change to an open reserve system. Caulfield Library experienced an increase in loans this year, reversing the decline experienced in 2006.
Items borrowed and then renewed declined by 7.04% from 652,607 in 2006 to 606,655 in 2007. The combined effect of this was a 4.32% decrease in loans and renewals.
Self check terminals were installed at Gippsland, Law and Peninsula branch libraries in December 2007 and will be operational in all branches in 2008.
Borrowing from collections at other campuses
Requesting items from the collection through the library catalogue, regardless of the item’s branch location, continues to be a popular service. In 2007, users requested 153,433 items be sent to another branch library. This is an increase of 4,489, or 3%, in 2007. Of these, 94,720 were charged to a patron’s record and many more were browsed in the libraries. Overall, 244,623 hold requests were placed, an increase of 5,626 items, or 2.35%.
A review seeking improvements to this popular service was held and in 2008 items to be picked up will be kept on shelf for seven days (increased from five days), while users will no longer be able to place holds on items from their home library.
Provide reserve collections and electronic reading lists
The temporary relocation of the Pharmacy Library provided an opportunity to trial Open Reserve. Users could find and retrieve items and use them in or out of the library for the loan period. The open reserve system provides much better access for users. However use is not recoded in loan statistics, as discussed previously. The success of the trial means that it will continue in the refurbished Pharmacy Library. The Gippsland Library is developing an Open Reserve to be implemented at the beginning of 2008, thereby extending the flexibility of services offered on this campus.
In 2007 44,990 items were borrowed from the hard copy reserve collections compared with 47,630 in 2006, representing a 5.54% decrease in loans. A change in the recording of the statistics in 2007 reveals that a further 32,788 items that are permanently located in the reserve collections, mainly in the Music and Multimedia collection at the Sir Louis Matheson library, were also borrowed in 2007.
Demand for electronic reading lists remains strong. In 2007, reading lists were created for 1,036 units, compared to 1,052 units in 2006.
Readings and Reserve Services review
A review commenced in late 2006 to develop a service model and related policies and practices and to investigate technological improvements to manage current and potential demand for the readings and reserve service.
A service model has been defined and a service statement prepared that outlines:
- what the Library expects of the service
- what the service offers to both academics and students; and
- what the Library expects from academics and students using the service.
Policy issues have been clarified and operational procedures put in place to manage cross campus lists, transferring material between branches, creating bibliographic records, digitisation, and ensuring Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) compliance. New practices to standardise data entry and better facilitate collection of statistics have also been defined.
Although the use of electronic copies is steadily increasing, there remains a significant amount of hard copy in the readings and reserve collection. Streamlining selection and ordering processes has been initiated to ensure that hard copy material arrives in a coordinated way and on time. Definitions for prescribed and recommended texts and supplementary readings have been agreed and a new formula for ordering multiple copies based on these has been developed.
A review of software options for managing readings and reserve collections is underway. A small number of commercial and open source products were selected and further evaluation of these will continue in 2008.
Facilitate access to other libraries' collections
Through the Co-operative Action by Victorian Academic Libraries (CAVAL) Reciprocal Borrowing Program staff and students from Monash University borrowed 25,248 items from 28 other Victorian academic libraries. Monash University Library lent 39,758 items to 2,474 staff and students from the same libraries.
Monash University Library is also a member of the University Libraries Australia national borrowing scheme, which enables Monash staff and students to borrow from all Australian university libraries. Monash lent 3,910 items to staff and students from other Universities who had registered through this reciprocal borrowing arrangement in 2007. 1,437 of these items were renewed. At the time of printing data on the number of loans by Monash staff and students from other Universities was not available from Universities Australia.
Obtain materials from other libraries for postgraduate students and staff
Increased support to build library research collections reduces the need to acquire material from other libraries. However, as research is increasing at Monash University, the demand for information resources to be delivered from other libraries and information suppliers remains significant. The trend is for a higher percentage of requests to be ‘difficult to locate’, as the more readily available items are held by Monash University and other Australian library collections.
In 2007, staffing for Document Delivery decreased. Requests received from Monash staff and students totalled 24,982 in 2007 and 13,260 requested items were processed and delivered to Monash staff and students, while 8,686 items were supplied to other libraries.
Fill rates for Document Delivery increased from 79.2% in 2006 to 90% in 2007. Turnaround times for articles requested through Document Delivery decreased from 6.1 calendar days in 2006 to 4.3 calendar days in 2007.
Document Delivery collaborated in the purchase of approximately 400 research monographs not held in Australian libraries. The Document Delivery team streamlined the process of requesting articles from the Canadian Institute of Scientific and Technical Information and began purchasing electronic copies of articles directly from publisher websites to decrease delivery delays. A web based form was created for other libraries to request loans and copies from the Monash University Library collections.
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