Lecture: University of Sydney Library (1995) (original) (raw)

Souping up the engine: Making the most of the catalogue at The University of Auckland Library

The Electronic Library, 2008

It is widely recognised that libraries need to transform the way they present their collections to users. As library catalogues are still the main discovery tool for libraries' resources, they need to change too. What can we do while we wait for the transformations possible with FRBR and RDA? This paper outlines The University of Auckland Library's efforts to improve access to their resources. Particular attention will be given to exploring the opportunities offered by modern technology. The paper will describe how different computer programs can be used to improve the quality of existing bibliographic data in the library catalogue, thus improving access to it. It will also look at strategies that can be employed for faster and more efficient creation of bibliographic data, including the automatic creation of data for both electronic and print resources. Emphasis will also be given to initiatives aimed at providing access to material that was not traditionally described in the catalogue, as well as creating gateways to specific parts of existing collections. The paper will conclude with some speculations on the future of the library catalogue in an FRBR/RDA/Google/Amazon.com world. Recently, the value and future of libraries have been questioned and libraries have been pushed to reconsider their priorities. Libraries have been seen to be in competition with the Internet, and library catalogues in competition with search engines, such as Google, and Google sometimes comes out ahead. Libraries have lost their privileged position as the sole source of information for scholars and the general public. Users like tools like Google Scholar, they like tagging, giving their opinions, but most of all, they like to find what they are looking for quickly, almost immediately, and without hard thinking about what complicated searches they might have to perform to get the information they need. In that light, cataloguing and classification are themselves regarded as replaceable by keyword searching, relevance ranking, and user-referral mechanisms. (1) In reality, the Internet and Google are not perfect either. Search engines can find only what they can crawl. They still cannot crawl everything that is on the Internet, and in addition to that, not all relevant literature in on the Internet yet. Google ranking is far more sophisticated than that of library catalogues, but often, when one searches for something, Google returns thousands of irrelevant hits. (2) The role of academic libraries is to support learning and teaching, and in that environment, library catalogues are still the main source for information on libraries' own resources. Academic libraries buy material with the specific intent of providing students and teachers with relevant literature. They also have important unique collections such as theses. With this in mind, at the University of Auckland Library a lot of work has been done on improving access to the Library's collections. Focus has been on improving utilization of the Voyager Library catalogue-by ensuring quality data for optimal access to collections already on Voyager and by making a number of existing collections more prominent by adding them to Voyager. This paper will describe several projects that took advantage of new technology in a cataloguing environment to create bibliographic data more quickly and efficiently. It will also talk about data quality as the retrieval of the information directly depends upon it. Technological advances and cataloguing Until recently, Integrated Library Systems (ILS) were considered high technology. They enabled much faster cataloguing, good display of data and great searching opportunities. Unfortunately, they have not changed much since initially developed and the statement is no longer true. ILSs are not matching with expectations of either library patrons or librarians. Library systems are big and complex and replacing or improving them is not an easy task. System vendors still have not developed more sophisticated systems, and libraries, no matter how big they are, do not have the time or money to invest in developing systems themselves. To overcome the disadvantages of ILS cataloguing modules, computer specialists often write programs to augment them. For Voyager, the system the University of Auckland Library uses, Gary Strawn has created The Cataloguer's Toolkit, a set of programs which make cataloguing and managing existing data much easier. (3) Other programs like MarcEdit, Marc Report, and Marc Wizard are standalone software packages that can be used independently of the ILS and can facilitate automated creation of data and database maintenance. MarcEdit is a free MARC editing tool, developed in 2000 by Terry Reese, in response to a database clean-up project on the Oregon State University's electronic catalogue. It runs on Windows 95, Windows 98, Window ME, NT 4+, 2000, and XP. On NT systems (this includes Windows NT, 2000, XP) one has to have administrative permissions to install it. It requires 10.5 MB (setup) and 5 MB (application) of disk space. It has been continuously developed.

Access and use of digitised special collections at Midlands State University Library

2018

Abstracts have been used by academic libraries as access tools. These are brief summaries of the most crucial and important parts of an article or a document. Abstracts have been assigned by academic libraries online and within different search engines and websites to enable researchers to have a preview of the research paper or the article before they read or go through the whole document (Cooke, 2001). Abstracts as access tools help users to deduce whether the whole document is relevant to his or her research. Abstracts help users to identify information that pertains specifically to their researches or interests. Apart from integrating abstracts to popular internet search engines, academic libraries have used abstracting services such as CAB Abstracts (Liyana, Shuib and Abdullah, 2010).s have been used by academic libraries as access tools. These are brief summaries of the most crucial and important parts of an article or a document. Abstracts have been assigned by academic libra...

Storage of Legacy Print Collections: The Views of Australasian University Librarians

Collection Management, 2012

This paper reports on the results of a qualitative survey conducted with seven managers of university libraries from Australia and New Zealand. The purpose of the survey was to explore both library responses to, and librarians' attitudes towards, issues related to the long-term storage and management of legacy print collections. There is a focus on issues related to future planning for print storage, including the prospects for collaborative storage; the balance between on-site and off-site storage; the impact of mass-digitisation programs; and the desirability of collaboration outside the university library sector.

SHARING THE COLLECTIVE WEALTH OF AUSTRALIAN RESEARCH LIBRARIES: AN OVERLAP STUDY

2010

This paper reports the results of recent research examining the holdings of Australian research library collections recorded in OCLC's WorldCat database using the OCLC WorldCat Collection Analysis software. The objectives of the research are: 1. To better understand the distribution of printed monographs amongst Australian research collections in order to assess the potential for enhanced collaboration in aspects of collection

Australian Digital Libraries: An Overview

2008

The aim of this paper is to examine current trends in the development of digital libraries (DL), with particular reference to Australia. This paper is the result of primitive study based on the visits made to university libraries in Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne. The objective of this paper is to analyze the various aspects of Knowledge Organisation System (KOS) in Digital Libraries (DL) and its services. This study analyses the different projects towards the development of DL and its features in Australian universities.

DIGITAL LIBRARY DEVELOPMENT IN AUSTRALIA

This paper will present results of a survey that was conducted during the winter and spring of 2014. The participants are librarians that have a digital library or institutional repository within the institution they serve. The questionnaire asks both qualitative and quantitative questions regarding the following: • About what kind documents are in the collection? • How is the library staff marketing the collection? • Who is the target market or audience? • What kind of information sharing is happening with the university? • Basic demographic information The survey was mediated by Survey Monkey and the participants was sent the link via email. Digital library development in Australia began with a government initiative in the early 2000s. Mary Anne Kennan and Danny A. Kingsley (2009) had looked at the state of institutional repositories as of September 2008. The authors found varying universities at different states of repositories (Kennan & Kingsley, 2009). Some of the universities ...

Coping with the Changes in Scholarly Communication at the University of Queensland Library

Australian Academic & Research Libraries, 1999

Put quite simply, there are more scholars alive today than ever before. They publish more. They do so in both print and electronic means, through formal publishers and through informal means on the Web. It is questionable whether scholars are reading more or less than they did before, but they can certainly obtain what they want to read more easily. They can, from their desk-tops, access library catalogues throughout the world, communicate directly with like-minded colleagues (or perfect strangers) almost instantaneously, and read material located remotely. Their invisible colleges are still invisible--just linked by email and discussion groups. The `publish or perish' scenario continues and some scholars write what nobody wishes to read and others want to read what nobody wishes to write. How do large research libraries support scholarly communication as we approach the new millennium? This paper describes some of the strategies used at the University of Queensland Library.