Libraries Australia Advisory Committee paper

LAAC/2016/1/07

EVALUATION OF THE LIBRARIES AUSTRALIA FORUM 2015

PURPOSE 1 To evaluate the success of the Libraries Australia Forum, held at the State Library of

Victoria on Thursday 1 December 2015. The theme was ‘Unique to Ubiquitous: Library Resources in a Linked Data World’.

PRESENTATIONS 2 The opening address and welcome was given by the Director General of the National

Library of Australia, Ms Anne-Marie Schwirtlich, while Mr Geoff Strempel, Associate Director, Public Library Services, State Library of South Australia and Chair, Libraries Australia Advisory Committee, made the closing address. Keynote speakers at the Forum were:

• Lorcan Dempsey, VP Research and Chief Strategist, OCLC, “The facilitated collection: collections and collecting in a network environment”.

• Jenny McDonald, Manager, Collaborative Services and Kaye Foran, Customer Support Consultant (Te Puna), National Library of New Zealand, The Department of Internal Affairs Te Tari Taiwhenua, “The Fellowship of the NUC (Our Precious)”.

• David Whitehair, OCLC, and John Butera, Swinburne University of Technology, “Using WorldShare Collection Manager to manage E-Collections”.

• Dennis Massie, Program Officer, OCLC, “Camera obscura: a pinhole approach to understanding ILL costs and trends”.

Libraries Australia 2015 Forum speakers (L to R), Dennis Massie, Ebe Kartus, Kaye Foran, Jennie McDonald, Marie-Louise Ayres, John Butera, Basil Dewhurst, Karen Smith-Yoshimura, Kevin Bradley, Ingrid Mason, Peter Neish, David Whitehair, Lorcan Dempsey.

3 A panel made up of Karen Smith-Yoshimura, Senior Program Officer, OCLC, Ebe Kartus, Australian representative on the Joint Steering Committee for the Development of RDA and Peter Neish, Research Data Curator, The University of Melbourne, and chaired by Ingrid Mason, eResearch Analyst, Intersect Australia, provided different perspectives on the topic “Experiments in linked open data”. This was one of the highlights of the Forum,

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with considerable conversation being generated in the auditorium, and also via the Forum Twitter feed.

4 The presentations from National Library staff were:

• Dr Marie-Louise Ayres, Assistant Director General, National Collections Access, “Unique to Ubiquitous, Local to Hosted, National to Transnational: What's Happening in the World of National Bibliographies ... and what does this mean for Libraries Australia”.

• Kevin Bradley, Senior Curator, Pictures and Manuscripts, National Library of Australia, “Digitisation, Documentation and Large Collections of Pictures: the NSLA Report and a First Application (so far)”.

• Basil Dewhurst, Project Manager, Directories Replacement Project, National Library of Australia, “Re-directs: The Australian Libraries Gateway and the Australian Interlibrary Resources Sharing Directory”.

5 Presentations and recordings from the Forum are now available at http://www.nla.gov.au/librariesaustralia/news-events/forum/2015-forum/2015-forum-program/.

ATTENDANCE 6 There were 183 attendees for the Forum this year, compared to 142 in 2014. This included

seven National Library staff.

7 The Forum was promoted via the regular channels – messages to the Libraries Australia and Libraries Australia Document Delivery mailing lists, at State User Group Meetings and on the Libraries Australia website. This Forum was also promoted in Libraries Australia’s Twitter, the Library’s Facebook page, the AGLIN newsletter and in ALIA Weekly.

ANALYSIS OF REGISTRATIONS BY STATE 8 Eighty-four percent of registrations were from

three states/territories: Australian Capital

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Figure 1: Attendance 1999-2015

FIGURE 2: FORUM ATTENDANCE

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Territory (13%), New South Wales (9%) and Victoria (62%). Continuing the trend from previous years, the majority of attendees were again from the state in which the Forum was held. Six percent of attendees were international. This is shown at Figure 2 above.

ANALYSIS OF FORUM FEEDBACK 9 Attendees were asked to complete an online evaluation survey following the Forum. This

report summarises the evaluation survey. In total, 50 responses were collected from attendees, which equates to a 27 percent return rate. As no hard copy evaluation forms were returned at the 2014 Forum, only online responses were sought in 2015. Formal evaluation responses are summarised in the remainder of this report.

Key points:

• Survey responses were received from just over one quarter of attendees, so it is more difficult to draw meaningful conclusions from responses.

• For future Forums, the Twitter feed may paint a useful adjunct picture to the formal evaluation feedback. In 2015, hundreds of tweets were posted on the day, from the official Libraries Australia feed, presenters and delegates. Tweets can be viewed at https://storify.com/LibrariesAust/libraries-australia-forum-2015.

• There is clear interest in follow-up sessions about linked open data.

RESPONDENT DEMOGRAPHICS

10 All 50 survey respondents identified their library sector and work area in their responses, and these demographics are as shown in Figure 3.

OVERALL FORUM 11 Thirty-nine of 48 respondents to the

evaluation rated the Forum overall as Above Average or Excellent. Seven respondents rated the Forum as Average, and two respondents gave a Below Average in response to this question. No Poor ratings were registered.

Some comments:

• Enjoyed the forum thoroughly. Welcome sitting in to listen, and where appropriate participating, in any national collection infrastructure discussions like this.

• Presenters were very interesting, visually exciting and personable. I thought the panel session was a stand out - nice to see people being passionate.

• It's so hard to tell what you'll get from the brochure, for any conference, but I must admit we automatically agreed to go to this one as they're usually good and it was local. I thought the international speakers were easier to follow than the locals, though I don't hold that against them/developing new talent and all (I just left those sessions little the wiser).

FIGURE 3: RESPONDENT DEMOGRAPHICS

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FORUM CONTENT 12 Thirty-eight of forty-eight respondents rated the content as Above Average or Excellent.

Nine rated the content as Average, and one respondent rated the content Poor.

Some comments:

• This was the best LA forum I have attended. I really enjoyed the session on linked data.

• It would be beneficial if attendees could make enquiries regarding very specific LA issues - for example cataloguing on the Client, uploading holdings etc. Public discussion would be interesting.

• It was very good this year! Keep up the good work!

QUALITY OF PRESENTATIONS 13 Thirty-nine of 48 respondents rated the quality of presentations as either Above Average

or Excellent. Nine rated the quality as Average, and none of respondents considered the presentations to be Below Average or Poor.

Some comments:

• The linked data panel and Dennis Massie's presentation were highlights. • The panel session assumed that everyone was on the same page about Linked Data:

some examples right up front would have been very helpful to newcomers like me.

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Figure 4: Overall Forum 2010-2015 (by percentage)

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• This forum is always useful - it is good to hear ways people are using LA to improve their workflows

PANEL SESSIONS 14 Thirty-eight of 48 respondents rated the Linked Open Data panel session as Above Average

or Excellent, seven as Average, and three as Below Average. No Poor ratings were received.

Some comments:

• I thought the panel session was a stand out - nice to see people being passionate. • #laf2015 excellent panel on linked data w/ Ebe Kartus

and @peterneish @1n9r1d @Kareny • Hooray for the panel of metadata nerds - keeping data open #laf2015 • The title suggested it was going to be about Linked Data and I felt that it really

lacked the core focus on linked data. I thought there would have least of been one presentation around BIBFRAME or the semantic web.

• The panel session assumed that everyone was on the same page about Linked Data: some examples right up front would have been very helpful to newcomers like me.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR DISCUSSION 15 Twenty-four of 48 respondents rated the opportunities for discussion as Above Average or

Excellent. Twenty-two rated these opportunities as Average, and two of respondents rated the opportunities for discussion as Poor.

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Figure 6: Presentation Quality 2010-2015 (by percentage)

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Figure 7: Panel Session 2015

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Some comments:

• You encouraged networking but didn't support it - people tended to catch up with old friends - perhaps you could have a coloured name tag or designated spot of carpet for singles to go to meet up with others willing to talk/meet new people.

FACTORS AROUND ATTENDING THE FORUM 16 Twenty-six of 48 respondents identified that Quality of program content was a Very

Important factor around attending the Forum. Fourteen rated Location as Very Important, ten respondents rated Cost as Very Important, while only three respondents rated Duration as Very Important.

Some comments:

• Program content related to my area of interest is very important. • Timing of the Forum. October is way easier - December very busy for staff concluding

University sectors financial year.

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Figure 7: Opportunities for Discussion 2010-2015 (by percentage)

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Figure 8: Factors around attending the Forum 2015 (by percentage)

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LIBRARIES AUSTRALIA STAFF INTERACTIONS 17 For the first time this year, survey respondents were asked to report how many Libraries

Australia staff they spoke to during the course of the day. There were seven Libraries Australia staff in attendance. Thirteen out of 42 respondents spoke to three or more members of Libraries Australia staff, six respondents spoke to two staff, and nine spoke to one staff member. This question will continue to be asked in future forum evaluations as it may provide one useful measure of member engagement with Libraries Australia.

RELATED EVENTS 18 In conjunction with the Forum, the Libraries Australia Advisory Committee meeting was

held on 30 November. Other related events included the OCLC Research Partners meeting and the OCLC Asia Pacific Regional Council Meeting.

RECOMMENDATION(S) 1. The Libraries Australia Advisory Committee notes the report.

Contact: Monika Szunejko

monika.szunejko@nla.gov.au

02 6262 1215

13/04/2016

Libraries Australia Advisory Committee paper

LAAC/2016/1/08

LIBRARIES AUSTRALIA STATUS REPORT NOVEMBER 2015-MARCH 2016

PURPOSE 1 This report provides highlights of Libraries Australia activities over the five months since

the last briefing was provided at the Libraries Australia Advisory Committee meeting.

ACHIEVEMENTS AND MILESTONES

2 The major achievements during this period have been:

• The refresh of holdings of Alma libraries in the ANBD has continued with two more libraries completed. Another 834,083 bibliographic records with attached holdings have been processed on the ANBD.

• There are now 1,931,367 RDA records on the ABND as of March 2016.

LIBRARIES AUSTRALIA STAFFING AND CAPABILITY

3 Over this period two permanent appointments have been made: EL1 Assistant Director Data Services - Heather Walsh (from within the Library); EL1 Assistant Director Data Strategy - Amanda Magnussen. As a result of these appointments the Libraries Australia Branch is now fully staffed.

4 From 1 February the Libraries Australia service has a refreshed organisational structure to facilitate improved service delivery and planning for the future of the national service. The Member Services team continues to support the 1,200 subscribing libraries, and the Data Services team works with libraries building the Australian National Bibliographic Database. A newly formed Data Sharing Strategy position will focus on the future of the national union catalogue and prepare for a renewed data strategy for Libraries Australia. Initial attention of the data sharing strategy is on environmental scans to review and describe the current suite of services offered by Libraries Australia, to document the contractual and business context of the service, and to map and observe comparable national union catalogues. This environmental scan will establish a knowledge base for forward planning and contract renegotiation, and benchmark against similar services in other jurisdictions.

DATA SHARING STRATEGY • Data Sharing Strategy commenced operation on 1 February, with an initial work program of

three projects identified for the remainder of 2015-16.

o Review of Libraries Australia services documentation Libraries Australia offers a rich array of services, but these are not currently well described, and their value to members is not well articulated. The primary focus of this project is to review the Libraries Australia User Agreements and Memoranda of Understanding and associated documentation, and to streamline and harmonise the various agreements. This will lead to a fuller understanding of the scope of services that are offered to Libraries Australia members, and in turn, allow better articulation of service scope and value to, and for, members. Initial project documentation was prepared and approved during February, with work to be completed by 30 June 2016.

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o Document the Libraries Australia contractual and business context The Library works with various external partners in delivering the suite of Libraries Australia services. There are various contracts and agreements in place with these partners, but no unified map of providers, services and contract expiries exists. This project is documenting the contracts associated with the Libraries Australia services, with work being completed by 30 June 2016. This will assist in understanding the nature, scope, and benefits of each contract, and facilitate forward planning for contract renegotiation.

o Map selected national union catalogue environments

This project is documenting comparable national union catalogues in selected international jurisdictions, and identifying service providers and platforms where possible. This is intended as a supporting document for the Library, which will be updated over time as situations change. The document will be used as a resource to monitor the international environment and understand how the Australian national union catalogue and national resource sharing services benchmark against similar services in other jurisdictions.

AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATABASE

5 Activities to increase the currency and coverage of the Australian National Bibliographic Database (ANBD) involve the ingest of data from new sources, encouraging Libraries Australia members to contribute their data, as well as improving mechanisms for data loading and matching from existing sources.

6 In this period two more Alma sites have completed a global holdings refresh. The latest Alma site has agreed to be the test site for the publishing of e-resource holdings from Alma to Libraries Australia, creating a pathway for e-resource holdings to be contributed to the ANBD.

7 The Data Services team conducts a range of activities to improve the data quality on the national bibliographic database: authority control, enriching bibliographic data and adding analytic records to the national bibliographic database. Each of these enhances data re-use and exchange for members and the broader metadata network as data wends its way to Trove, WorldCat, and beyond.

8 OCLC’s CBS Relate software links headings (names, subjects and uniform titles) in bibliographic records in the ANBD to authority records. Use of the Relate software significantly improves the quality of bibliographic records by replacing non-preferred headings with the preferred form. Implemented in 2012, since then it has been configured to run each night, processing recently added or changed records. Between November 2015 and March 2016 it has linked 2,445,198 headings in 1,307,047 bibliographic records.

9 The CBS Job Management tool (CJM) has continued to offer significant processing benefits in support of data quality improvement activities. From November 2015 through to March 2016, CJM was used to delete 2,255,629 holdings statements. During this period CJM expedited 1,711,767 bibliographic record changes on the ANBD and corrected problematic coding in 7,467 holding statements.

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10 A process has been established for removing duplicate Library of Congress headings (MARC 650) from records. In October 2015 this software completed a pass through the database and removed 344,960 duplicate headings from 186,275 bibliographic records. Since then it has been run each night on new or updated records, and up to the end of March has removed 598,079 duplicate headings from 596,731 bibliographic items. The Duplicate Detection and Removal (DDR) process also runs across the database each night and the ANBD team continues to monitor the effectiveness of this process. In the period November 2015 to March 2016 it has removed 62,371 duplicate records. Based on the figures for the same period last year the number of duplicates is lower, but tracking on the financial year there will be more duplicates removed than in 2014/15.

COLLECTION ANALYSIS SERVICES 11 Leveraging the data held within the ANBD, the Library provides a variety of data services

to members of Libraries Australia. The Library has developed a Collection Analysis Service that incorporates the functions of the Products Service and new analysis services for member libraries. This service addresses the needs of member libraries for contextual and comparative acquisitions reports, unique holdings reports and in-depth analysis of collections.

12 Ongoing, the Library provides Monthly Acquisitions Reports to National and State Libraries of Australia (NSLA). These reports are based on criteria specified by each of the libraries. They are used to identify newly published items for acquisition, either via Legal Deposit or purchase. Each NSLA library receives a number of Reports fitting different criteria, e.g. Electronic versus print copy, monograph versus serials, etc. There were a total of 188 NSLA acquisition reports generated between November 2015 and March 2016, containing 308,674 bibliographic records. Additionally there was one report each provided to Serials in Australian Libraries (SIAL - RMIT publishing) containing 884,813 bibliographic records and the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) as part of the Library’s ongoing participation in international data enrichment programs, containing 1,033,923 authority records.

13 Over the period four Collection Analysis Reports comprising unique holdings identification were provided to: Australian Academy of Science, NSLA, Griffith University Library and Australian Institute of Marine Science. This work included 120 file runs with 14,446,451 records. The NSLA report supported the NSLA Legal Deposit Project Group to identify the uniqueness of the NSLA legal deposit library collections. The report also highlighted the top publishers of legal deposit publications in each state, the format of publications and the number of items published in each state or territory and held by a NSLA library.

RDA (RESOURCE DESCRIPTION AND ACCESS) IMPLEMENTATION 14 The number of RDA records on the Australian National Bibliographic Database has

experienced significant growth in the last year. As of March 2016, there were 1,931,367 RDA records on the ANBD. This is a 171% growth in the last 12 months.

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End of March 2016 End of March 2015

Number of Bibliographic record on the ANBDs

28,929,321 26,559,471

Number of records of RDA standard on the ANBD

1,931,367 1,033,000

% RDA records in the ANBD 6.68% 3.89%

Top contributors of RDA records to the ANBD

Library Number of bibliographic records contributed

Library of Congress 591,650

WorldShare Management Libraries 360,921

British National Bibliography 178,716

National Library of Australia 103,237

State Library of Western Australia 54,465

Flinders University 43,909

CAVAL 42,032

State Library of Victoria 31,472

Zenith Management Services 24,559

ALS Library Services 20,420

State Library of New South Wales 18,838

State Library of Queensland 10,973

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15 The top 12 contributors of records contribute 76% of all RDA records to the database. The top three overseas contributors provide 58.5% of all RDA records to the ANBD. The top nine Australian contributors are mostly NSLA libraries and library management services.

16 Authority records in the RDA standard, too, are experiencing growth. As at March 2016:

Number of RDA authority records

% of records on the ANBD that are RDA

Number of authority records on the ANBD

65,824 3.55% 1,854,116

Top contributors of authority records to the ANBD

Library Number of authority records contributed

National Library of Australia 37,040

Library of Congress 12,471

Libraries Australia Data Services 5,448

State Library of Tasmania 1,013

17 The top four contributors of RDA authority records to the ANBD contribute 85% of the records. The National Library of Australia is the major contributor of RDA authority records.

LIBRARIES AUSTRALIA DOCUMENT DELIVERY 18 The National Library of Australia successfully transitioned from a locally installed to a

hosted environment for the VDX system for Libraries Australia Document Delivery (LADD) service on 13 October 2015, and following a 30 day Validation Phase, the VDX transition project was officially signed off on 24 November 2015.

19 On Monday 25 January, the University of South Australia became the first LADD Gateway location to go live with ExLibris’ Alma ILL system. Prior to testing with the library, extensive vendor-to-vendor testing between Alma ILL (ExLibris) and VDX (OCLC) was performed to ensure interoperability between the two systems. Libraries Australia worked closely with ExLibris, OCLC and the member library to test locally between Libraries Australia Document Delivery (LADD) and the ISO ILL site. This work is an extension of the vendor partnerships established to realise the synchronisation of data between Alma and the Australian National Bibliographic Database (ANBD).

20 As Australian libraries are adopting the Alma library system there has been a noticeable trend for Alma libraries to integrate their document delivery systems within their library system. Alma libraries are seeking to move from their separate ILL systems (such as VDX, Aleph, and Relais) to Alma ILL. A schedule for ISO ILL interoperability testing with the LADD gateway for other Alma ILL sites has been established.

LIBRARIES AUSTRALIA MEMBERSHIPS 21 During the period November 2015 through to March 2016, four new members subscribed to

Libraries Australia: three school libraries and one educational institute.

22 Thirteen organisations cancelled their subscription to Libraries Australia: seven government special libraries, one non-government special library, one university library, two overseas libraries, one corporate library and one individual member.

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ENGAGING MEMBERS 23 The major outreach activity in this period was the 2015 Libraries Australia Forum held at

the State Library of Victoria on 1 December 2015. The theme was ‘Unique to ubiquitous: libraries resources in a linked data world’. There were 180 attendees at the Forum, the highest number in recent years – most likely because the event was held adjacent to the OCLC Research Partners meeting and the OCLC Asia Pacific Regional Council meeting.

24 Highlights of the Forum included presentations from the National Library of New Zealand on ‘The Fellowship of the NUC (our precious)’, and a lively panel session ‘Experiments in Linked Data’ that engaged the audiences online and within the auditorium via Twitter.

25 There was an increase of 328 followers to Libraries Australia on Twitter over the period, with a following of 2,787 in March 2016. This compared to 2,019 for the same period last year. Tweets for the period earned 67.4K impressions with the most popular tweets surrounding the Libraries Australia Forum. There were 45 tweets with 24,700 impressions and in a small measure of success, the Forum’s hashtag, #laf2015, was trending in Australia1.

RECOMMENDATION 1. The Libraries Australia Advisory Committee notes the report.

Contact: Monika Szunejko

Director, Libraries Australia

monika.szunejko@nla.gov.au

02 62621215

15/04/2016 1 Impressions – number of times users saw the tweet on Twitter. Engagements – total number of times a user has interacted with a Tweet. This includes all clicks anywhere on the Tweet, retweets, replies, follows and favourites.