Goal 3: Excellence in service

Strategic cost management

As part of the university's strategic cost management project the library has completed seven service statements that describe the range of current services provided to faculties. The seven statements listed below include key performance indicators and measures:

• Information resources: access and delivery
• Information resources: collection management
• Information services
• Physical environment
• Flexible library services
• Document delivery services
• Partnerships

The content of the service statements was agreed upon with representatives of each of the ten faculties. During 2003, the library will monitor and report to the faculties at yet to be determined intervals on each of the statements and measures. The statements are the basis for negotiations of service levels to take place with individual faculties from 2004, when the university's budget will be devolved directly to the faculties for the first time. After this occurs, payment for library services will be decided directly between the faculties and the library. Payment will be based on costs determined from the activity based costing exercise in 2001.

Quality review

The library has set up a Quality Management Group to ensure ongoing monitoring and implementation of quality activities. Members of the group include all directors. The group will oversee the library quality self-review in early 2003 and will prepare a report identifying strengths and opportunities for improvement. The structure and process for the review have been determined. The terms of reference cover:

• Organisational structure, management, quality assurance and improvement
• resources
• Core services: library resources; library services; physical infrastructure
• Professional and community activities

All staff will have the opportunity to provide input to their director. The review will cover the total of library operations and will be done at a high level. A web page provides details of the review program, which will also include a visit by an external panel once the self review is completed.

Lending services

In response to student requests, the library implemented more generous renewal arrangements in 2002. Monash staff and students are now able to renew individual items for periods of up to six months. Not surprisingly, the number of renewals doubled from 239,212 in 2001 to 464,262 in 2002. Students were pleased that they could renew books without penalty and without the need to visit a library in person. Items on loan continue to rise with an increase of five per cent in 2002, despite the loss for statistical purposes of items lent to Monash patrons at the Ian Potter Library at the Alfred Hospital.

As all sites increase the amount of student reading material available electronically, the physical size of reserve book and photocopy collections diminishes. Reserve items borrowed from the collection in 2002 fell by 29.67 per cent, reflecting both the smaller collections and the increasing number of subjects that the library supports electronically.

Document delivery

Monash staff and postgraduate students submitted 44,432 requests in 2002 compared to 43,213 requests in 2001. A total of 37,296 items, or 84 per cent of all requests were successfully supplied.

Commercial document providers increased charges during 2002. The costs of obtaining items not held within Australia has, in some cases, doubled. A decision was taken to reduce the use of certain commercial services whilst the library looks for alternatives.

In 2002, 85 per cent of all requests were made using the web request form, compared to 56 per cent of all requests in 1998. It is anticipated that a similar shift will be seen in document supply. In 2002, 25 per cent of articles were sent electronically to users who had registered for web delivery.

In support of the library's readings and reserve service the Document Delivery Service supplied 915 articles to the Digitisation Centre for scanning as entries in the library's electronic reading lists. This service has been extended to obtain articles to support student reading at Monash Malaysia and Monash South Africa.

'Regional Electronic Access and Delivery of Serials' project (READS)

Monash University Library, La Trobe University Library and the University of Melbourne Library provided the READS service jointly. The service has been running since October 1999 and has provided valuable information from a number of journals in the areas of chemistry and physics. Despite its success over the years, the system has had very low use this year, and commercial tables of contents and full text journal providers have overtaken most of the functionality of the service. The three universities made a decision jointly in October to discontinue the READS service after 31 December 2002.

Services for people with disabilities

The adaptive technology room in the Law Library, jointly funded by the library, Faculty of Law and Student and Staff Services' Disability Liaison Unit was launched in May. Hardware and software changes including an upgrade to 'Jaws' and 'Dragon Naturally Speaking', improved the level of technology available to students and staff. Planning has started for the construction of an adaptive technology room at the Berwick campus, following advice from student administration of student need. Approximately 100 students are registered across the library system for access to disability services.

Special collections

Rare Books
2002 saw the highest ever number of loans from the rare books collection with a total of 5413 loaned items, compared to 5056 in 2001.

The library made significant inroads into cataloguing items purchased for the rare books collection.

The section continues to add to its significant collections of travel books, early Australian comics and nineteenth century children's literature. Donations permitted the purchase of four seventeenth and eighteenth century books for the Swift collection.

Amongst scholars to visit the rare books collection in 2002, Claude Rowson from the USA visited to consult the Swift collection. Other visitors included Professor Moreau, the Vice Chancellor of the Sorbonne, librarians from Vietnam and Norway, and a number of Australian authors, including Peter Lyssiotis, Michael Jorgenson, Mary Newsome, Vane Lindesay, John Loder and Mimi Colligan.

Asian Studies Research Library
In 2002 Dr Aline Scott-Maxwell was appointed as Senior Asian Studies Librarian. Dr Scott-Maxwell works one day per week as Indonesian Studies Library Consultant for the Melbourne University Library. This joint appointment furthers the successful collaboration between the two university libraries under the Melbourne-Monash Protocol.

Government officials from three Chinese provinces, Tianjin, Mian Zhu City and Sichuan visited during 2002. In addition, senior academic administrators from Pusan National University, the University Teknologi Malaysia and the Hochiminh City Teacher Training University were shown collections and services provided by the specialist librarians in the Asian Studies Research Library.

Subject specialists continued to improve access to collections with either the full or partial cataloguing of a rare collection of Malaysian monographs in Jawi script and a large collection of Indonesian government publications. Postgraduate students from a number of interstate and overseas universities visited throughout the year.

Music and Multimedia
2002 saw continuing growth of all non-book collections including video, CDs, computer games, kits and accompanying materials. An expanding DVD collection prompted the acquisition of new multimedia PCs with DVD drives for individual viewing. Music and multimedia facilities at the Matheson Library were upgraded to include a fourth group study room providing access for audio, video and DVD equipment. A new staff area was also created.

Significant donations to the section include a collection of Thai popular music sound recordings from the ABC and the Esther Rofe music manuscript collection. Special visitors included the campus librarian for Monash South Africa Library.