Monash University Library is committed to support a major goal
of the University to increase the quantity and quality of its research
output, strengthen its research training program and the links
with other organizations both national and international.
Organising and Publicising Electronic Resources
As the Library continues to acquire expensive electronic databases
and resource collections, it is vital that users are aware of their
availability, understand their scope and content and know how to
access and use them effectively.
Work continued on development of a library channel of the my.monash
Portal, which will provide easy to use, standardised access to
information content across a range of databases. The EZproxy software
installed in August simplified database access in particular for
off campus users.
Access to Electronic Resources
A major document The Print and Electronic Serials Working Party
Report [unlinked 01/04/2008] was produced. The recommendations,
concerning the extent to which parallel print and electronic subscriptions
should be maintained, were endorsed, with some modification, by
the General Library Committee.
Further development of the library catalogue for access to electronic
full text resources relevant to University teaching, learning and
research continued in close cooperation with the Library's System
Support Unit and with user services staff. Sets of links added
to the catalogue included: major journal suites ECO (OCLC FirstSearch
Electronic Collections Online), Blackwell Science, Cambridge University
Press, IEEE/IEE Electronic Library, and the Elsevier ScienceDirect
titles. Other significant additions were the ACM Digital Library
titles, selected National Academy Press titles, records for a number
of databases like Informit, FirstSearch, certain Law databases,
plus web sites, government publications and major online reference
works.
A number of policies and procedures in the cataloguing of electronic
resources were reviewed. The use of PURLs on the National Library's
PURL server will continue for maintenance of links to resources
identified by generic Purls. Procedures in Voyager were developed
with Library Systems Support staff which will allow automated maintenance
of unique URLs for journal titles when these are available. Such
single click URLs, linking directly to the resources, are preferred
particularly for the faculty and discipline based electronic journal
lists which can be generated, with minimal manual intervention,
on the basis of local descriptors added to the catalogue records
http://www.lib.monash.edu.au/thesaurus/edesc.html [unlinked 01/04/2008].
The cataloguing process for electronic resources was improved
by the implementation of the Electronic Resource Cataloguing Request
form [unlinked 01/04/2008] on the web which also handles requests
for metadata on Library web pages.
A final report was produced on participation in the OCLC CORC
[unlinked 01/04/2008] (Cooperative Online Resource Catalogue) Project
mentioned in the 1999 Annual Report. Since having been trained
in the creation of records and pathfinders staff have created a
number of pathfinders in the CORC database.
Library Digitisation Centre
In March, a new Remuneration Agreement for educational copying
was negotiated between the AVCC (Australian Vice Chancellors Committee)
and CAL (Copyright Agency Limited). This Agreement included digital
copying for the first time. University administration accepted
a recommendation by the Library that Monash should adopt a centralised
digitisation policy and that the Library and CeLTS should be given
joint responsibility for its implementation. The central scanning
centre commenced operations in the Matheson Library in early October.
By the end of the year almost 900 items had been scanned and digitised,
mostly from the Reserve collections in the Matheson, Hargrave-Andrew
and Berwick Libraries. Requests from academic staff were also processed.
As an extension of adding records for digitised reserve items
in Voyager catalogue, Student Reading staff in the Matheson Library
took on the task of adding links in Voyager for required
reading articles already held as part of full text databases or
as electronic full text serials.
Postgraduate Support
For the first time the University ran an orientation day specifically
for postgraduate students and the Library was a major contributor
to this session. Efforts were made to target information literacy
in support of research, in particular the needs of postgraduates.
The Reference and Information Literacy Subcommittee conducted a
full audit of the current postgraduate information literacy programs.
A specific website for postgraduates was
set up. A meeting of all faculty team members was held with Professor
Max King, Director of the Monash Research Graduate School, to discuss
targeted training and support in information literacy for postgraduate
students. Library staff have since contributed to several of the
School's exPERT seminars.
Matheson Library staff, in conjunction with Monash Postgraduate
Association members, developed 16 targeted training sessions for
postgraduates. These consisted of introductory sessions, Virtual
Research, Keeping Up-to-Date, Introduction to EndNote, and Exploring
the World of Library Catalogues. In addition, two joint sessions
involving other faculty team members were offered. Business and
Economics subject librarians liaised with the new MBA Manager to
ensure access to appropriate information sources. All commencing
postgraduate Pharmacy students were introduced by the Pharmacy
College Librarian to the facilities and resources available in
their area of speciality. |
