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Research data services are increasingly offered by academic libraries. As a result, librarians may need to upskill to provide data services and build capacity. This study measures the current level of data services skills of academic librarians and explores preferred methods of continuing education. An online survey was circulated asking respondents to self-assess data skills in four categories. The results capture a baseline of self-assessed data skills and show statistical significance between the percentage of time a librarian provides data services and higher levels of technical skill sets. The findings support the hiring of data librarians in academic libraries offering data services and providing training for librarians who provide any level of data services.

Across the sector, universities are transforming the student experience by reconceptualising the ways in which they partner with students. The academic library is at the heart of the university experience and libraries have a long history of collaboration and engaging with their communities. As such academic libraries are the perfect next frontier within which to embed the 'students-as-partners' approach. This paper proposes a broadening of partnership with students to improve the governance, operations and design of the academic library. Taking La Trobe University Library as a case study, the authors explore a series of examples in action across six domains: space transformation, library governance, service excellence, research, resource design and collection renewal. Within these domains the paper provides insights into how the relationship between the academic library and its community might be shifted to foster critical student/staff partnerships.

This article presents a substantive grounded theory that shows how senior library leaders can achieve the library's strategic alignment with the university. The theory suggests that increasing uncertainty causes the library's leadership to consider how the library's strategic contributions can support the university's core priorities while also promoting the library's value and impact. The library's senior leaders must be creative thinkers who are also focused upon their stakeholders. Value-adding strategies include refreshing core library functions and supporting university strategies such as engagement, teaching and learning, and research. The library's strategic planning involves basing the library strategic plan on the university plan, allowing time for it to be implemented, and informing the university of the library's progress. This research is the first to explore the processes senior library leaders can undertake to strategically align the library with the university, while also demonstrating its value and impact to university executive administrators.

Strategic communication is not solely the remit of library managers and directors, but is the product of internal culture and engagement with the organization's brand. Libraries need to communicate strategically, in order to demonstrate to individuals across the organization that their message is on point, and that they understand, are committed to, and actively support the university's goals. Much of this work happens via the myriad of interactions library staff at all levels have with students and staff (and indeed community members) of all kinds. When the attitude and behavior of library staff does not truly reflect the library's and the university's branding or goals, this undermines more explicit measures of value. It is important for the leadership of academic libraries to understand and influence how every library staff member views his or her role in the organization, so that their communication is reflective of a confidence in themselves and their profession, and a solid understanding of their institution and the higher education landscape. In large-scale organizational change, both intellectual and emotional buy-in to the organization can wane. We seek to show how a people-centered change process, rather than adversely affecting staff buy-in, could instead increase buy-in to the organizational change.

Changes and innovations in higher education learning and teaching acted as a catalyst for rethinking the way in which service was delivered to library clients at Australian Catholic University. The Single Service Point was piloted at one campus library in 2014 to develop a best practice approach to service delivery. The merging of cultures within the library environment was achieved through committed leadership, with staff agreeing on shared values and goals and applying the university mission. All staff were responsible for seeking solutions to challenges and becoming autonomous in their professional development and training. Overall, in a Single Service Point model, service efficiency, excellence, and quality increased through staff teamwork, contribution, and collaboration.

University libraries worldwide are reconceptualising the ways in which they support the research agenda in their respective institutions. This paper is based on a survey completed by member libraries of the Queensland University Libraries Office of Cooperation (QULOC), the findings of which may be informative for other university libraries. After briefly examining major emerging trends in research support, the paper discusses the results of the survey specifically focussing on support for researchers and the research agenda in their institutions. All responding libraries offer a high level of research support, however, eResearch support, in general, and research data management support, in particular, have the highest variance among the libraries, and signal possible areas for growth. Areas for follow-up, benchmarking and development are suggested. (Contains 2 figures and 1 table.)

This article explores a number of current issues and challenges in sustainability, both of and in academic libraries of the future, using as a case study the new library opened at Macquarie University, Sydney in 2011. Issues covered include sustainable design and operation of library buildings, sustainability in relation to library collections, and the reframing of library organisational design and service provision for the future.

Since 2008, Victoria University (VU) Library has employed 20 or more Student Assistants annually who work on a casual basis for up to 12 hours per week during terms/semesters to staff the Library in Study Hall mode (where there is self-service access to PCs and collections and limited staff assistance). This initiative appears to have been highly successful in both meeting student demand for greater access to the Library and provision of benefits to the students employed. Within VU Library and Learning Commons spaces, student employees, working in a variety of programs, now account for up to 25% of personnel. Drawing from data and feedback from student employees and their supervisors, the authors reflect on the impact on the organisation of this initiative. In particular, implementation issues have included the cycle of recruitment, induction and turnover; and integration of student employees into the main business and culture of the organisation. The authors also discuss the student employment programs as part of a broader reorganisation of the library spaces. (Contains 1 table.)

Libraries have limited budgets and Collection Development Librarians can be faced with difficult decisions in the spending of their allocated funds. This paper discusses how the Tasmanian Polytechnic Launceston Campus Library discovered a gap in their collection and addressed this situation without funding. The Library wished to purchase fiction in languages other than English, but did not have a budget to purchase recreational resources and thus a project was begun to develop such a collection from donations and grants. A literature review indicates the relevance of developing a foreign language collection in an academic context. A short background on the Polytechnic library is provided, followed by the project itself, describing the process and an evaluation of its success. (Contains 7 tables.)

The aim of this research was to investigate current issues faced by public library staff in rural South Australia and to examine some of the reasons why people choose to work in rural libraries. The study took a mixed methods approach, combining interviews and questionnaires to gain a fuller understanding of the issues and experiences of rural librarians. The findings show that rural library staff in South Australia are a dedicated group of individuals who are motivated by personal interactions with their communities. Constraints imposed by distance, travelling times and geographic isolation concerned many staff--especially the difficulty of finding professional development opportunities, with travel to Adelaide for workshops the most commonly stated barrier.

The President of ALIA writes about expectations for the Public Libraries Summit, and provides an account of what took place on the day of the meeting, and what has taken place since. In funding terms, the most likely areas of productive engagement with the federal government are considered to be: children, early learning and a literate Australia; encouraging the digital economy and digital citizenship; social inclusion and community partnerships; and services related to health and ageing.

Despite the stereotype of libraries as peaceful retreats, unacceptable behaviour is a reality that desk staff have to deal with. This paper outlines the results of two surveys conducted at Charles Darwin University Library to investigate the extent to which this is a problem in Australian academic libraries. The first survey went to CAUL (Council of Australian University Librarians) and the results made available via the CAUL website. As this survey was completed only by management, a second survey was conducted with front desk staff and via the Lending and Document Delivery Group of the Queensland University Libraries Office of Cooperation (QULOC). (Contains 36 notes.)

This paper is a practical and personal perspective on the challenges faced by special collections in an increasingly digital environment, and the strategies employed to promote their unique resources to the academic and wider communities, including the value of promoting heritage through reconstructing collections and the place of expertise in the provision of a high level of service to users. Special collections within research institutions provide enduring value.

The cultural heritage of library collections and individual items is of importance and interest outside the profession of librarianship. This paper gives an introduction to the concept of "movable heritage" from the heritage professional's perspective and provides suggestions as to how this concept can be applied to libraries. Identifying what is of cultural heritage significance and how a collection/item is significant is the key to making management decisions which balance the conservation of a library's heritage items with the other pressures in library management.

There is a general perception that as librarians, we know what constitutes and defines a rare book, that our heritage book collections are well-documented and their future survival is planned for and secure. This discussion paper asks whether our definitions of heritage material might be too narrow and whether they reflect the reality across all library sectors. While planning for our digital future is a priority at both state and national levels, there is less evidence that the heritage value of many of our book collections has been properly identified, let alone managed. Current practices, policy approaches and the influence of the academy are explored and suggestions for how we could identify and manage this important cultural heritage are put forward. (Contains 13 footnotes.)

Since 2005 the State Library of New South Wales has provided staff with an opportunity to research aspects of the Library's services and collections through the State Librarian's Staff Fellowship Program. In January 2008, Maggie Patton commenced a project to rediscover and document the development of the rare printed collections at the State Library. This article provides an introduction to these collections, their provenance, and the challenges the acquisition and management of such collections present to their custodians. (Contains 1 footnote.)

This paper reports on a questionnaire survey of 16 national libraries designed to clarify how national libraries attempt to justify their web archiving activities. Results indicate they envisage that a) the benefits brought about by their initiatives are greater than the overall costs, b) the costs imposed on libraries are greater than the costs imposed on stakeholders, and c) all of them are making efforts to respond to legal risks in various ways (e.g. legislation, contracting and opt-out policies) although there are trade-off relations in terms of costs for negotiation, scope of access and size and scope of the web archive. The paper discusses whether a basic logic for justification of their web archiving is valid from the perspective of balancing cost-benefit. Further, it highlights the potential, underlying premises of the logic that motivates the intervention of national libraries as public sector organizations. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)

Library and Information Services (LIS) providers are vulnerable in the current war for talent. They need to work collaboratively to develop accurate workforce data so they can retain and recruit the right people. In South Australia, the issue has a level of urgency above other States as the demographic is skewed to older workers. Organisations need to develop smart workforce strategies to retain and recruit employees. They should be cautious about any quick fix approach. Sustainable workforce development is not achievable by making decisions on anecdotal data. Libraries need to make sure their data on workforce demand and supply is accurate and robust. It is critical that accountability for workforce planning is readily accepted by senior leadership. (Contains 1 table.)

This article reports on selected results of a comprehensive survey of children's reading in England, carried out online in 2005 by the National Centre for Research in Children's Literature at Roehampton University. With 4182 responses from children living in England aged from 4 to 16 years, the survey is a follow-up to a similar study completed in 1996. The article concentrates on those issues included in the survey which are of particular interest to children's librarians, specifically questions relating to borrowing books, choosing books, reading recommendations, book reviews, school libraries and classroom book corners. (Contains 20 tables and 5 figures.)

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess costs in the National and University Library of Croatia for processing Croatian web resources and the maintenance and development of the service, and to analyse the present organisation and workflow of their processing, and to propose improvements. Design/methodology/approach: The assessment period was two months, during which the members of staff involved minutely monitored their tasks. The results were compared to the same exercise reported by the National Library of Australia and processing costs of cataloguing Croatian print publications. Findings: The bottom-up analysis of processing web resources shows that a balanced description of tasks and their distribution over staff members was established, and that the present workflow meets the requirements of efficient processing of web resources. As a general finding, approximately the same time was spent on archiving new items, as on the control and maintenance of the already archived ones due to the change of web resource properties, URL instability and the changes of technology. The comparative analysis showed: less time is spent on identification and selection and publishers' contacts on the part of the Croatian National Library compared to the Australian one; almost twice as much time was spent on gathering, quality assurance, and archiving instances in the Australian case than in the Croatian one; practically the same time was spent on cataloguing in both cases; and compared to cataloguing of print publications, significantly less time was spent on the print ones. Originality/value: The paper is one of the two published articles on the in depth analysis of the workflow and processing costs of managing and selectively archiving legal deposit copies of web resources in a national library. Its potential value is in drawing attention of library managers of those institutions that deal with selective web archiving to assess costs and services in view of the legal obligations of libraries for preserving national cultural web heritage and meeting present and future users' needs. (Contains 10 figures and 8 tables.)

The authors recount experiences of the variety of problems and issues involved in providing access to electronic journals in a large academic library. The paper excludes concerns emanating from decisions to subscribe to aggregations such as those produced by vendors like EBSCO, but concentrates on scholarly journals ordered individually, or as part of a scholarly or scientific society package. Despite the number of years that publishers have been offering electronic journals, pricing policies are still fluid, and the problems of access encountered in the late 1990s still cause frustrating delays in provision of access to our academic staff and students. Questions on whether or not to use a subscription agent to assist in solving these problems are raised. There are no hard and fast rules, and no easy answers.

The need to develop new OPACs that meet the needs of users better is becoming well acknowledged. How libraries can transform their OPACs to modern web friendly formats is not yet clear. This paper describes the State Library of Tasmania's experience in developing a new OPAC by exporting bibliographic data to a software package outside the ILMS. Issues involved with the provision of a user-oriented, browsable, or facet-driven interface are described, the two most important ones for libraries being how to change cataloguing processes so as to deliver the required data and search functionality, and how to share evaluative and usage data about our resources. (Contains 19 notes and 4 figures.)

In 1956-57 John Metcalfe was seconded from the Public Library of New South Wales to the University of Sydney to report on the needs of the University Library. This is a forgotten chapter in that Library's history, and a hitherto unexamined aspect of Metcalfe's career. Metcalfe was apparently manoeuvering to leave the Public Library, and expected to become the next university librarian, but his motives remain unclear. (Contains 22 notes.)

This second part of an analysis of scientific and technical information (STI) services in Australia considers their development in the context of discipline formation in information management. The case studies used are the STI services from Part I. A case study protocol is used to consider the extent to which the development of the services may be described in terms of information management domains. Specific reference is made to Australian Agriculture and Natural Resources Online (AANRO), the Australian Medical Index (AMI), Australian Nuclear Science & Technology Information (ANSTI), Australian Transport Index (ATRI), AusGeoRef and its forerunner AESIS, and the Australian engineering database (ENGINE). [For Part I, see EJ992087.] (Contains 40 notes.)

Findings from informetric research represent an important background resource to add to the mix of information useful for resolving difficult and ongoing problems in specific library environments or information service settings. This paper provides examples of informetric research that can be useful input to decision-making in the field of library management and information service provision. This overview takes four of the challenges that Michael Buckland outlined for library research as a way of guiding the discussion of ways that informetric work can be used to inform library decision-making.1 References are made to relevant informetric work undertaken or conducted in Australia, by Australian researchers, or with Australian data. Informetrics includes both quantitative and qualitative methods, which when used in combination can provide a rounded set of findings that has great validity for management, policy and service applications. Quantitative methodologies are generally based on bibliometric techniques, such as mining and analysis of data from various bibliographic and textual databases. Qualitative methods include survey, case study and historical approaches. Used in combination, each set of findings adds richness and other perspectives to an analysis. (Contains 4 figures and 46 notes.)

Drawing on recent experience and observation in New South Wales, this paper describes issues facing authorities, planners and librarians who are working on public library building projects. The author emphasises the need for all involved to focus not just on traditional good design principles, but also on user needs, consulting the community, assessing space and siting requirements and costs. This paper is based on part of a presentation by the author and Kathleen Bresnahan, assistant state librarian, Public Library Services, State Library of New South Wales, to the International Federation of Library Associations Metropolitan Libraries Section Conference, "Library as a fusion space--possibilities and opportunities" Singapore, 26 September-1 October 2004. (Contains 5 endnotes.)

This analysis of the transformation of the Charles Sturt University Regional Archives from a library special collection to a multi-function regional repository highlights the importance of stakeholder interests in determining institutional configurations and collection development priorities. It also demonstrates the critical importance of academic patronage, and explores how collection managers have mediated the differing expectations of academic and community users. (Contains 41 endnotes.)

In 2002, the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST), Higher Education Information Infrastructure Advisory Committee commissioned the National Library of Australia to analyse the uniqueness and overlap of Australian university library collections, comparing library collections in each state, using the National Bibliographic Database (NBD) available through the Kinetica Service. The study revealed that at a state level, university library collections have a high level of uniqueness. Further investigation of the trends identified by the study would be beneficial and would assist decision-making on future co-ordination of access to more diverse information resources for the Australian university community. (Contains 11 tables and 30 endnotes.)

The rationale for using Activity-Based Costing (ABC) in a library is to allocate indirect costs to products and services based on the factors that most influence them. This paper discusses the benefits of ABC to library managers and explains the steps involved in implementing ABC in the user services area of an Australian academic library. (Author/AEF)

Identifies issues involved with the convergence and/or integration of library, computing, and information technology services in Australian universities. Investigates the impacts of integration of services on university libraries and their clients and recommends strategies for the successful management of convergence and integration involving established reference and information services teams. (Contains 65 references.) (Author/LRW)

Explains activity-based costing (ABC), discusses the benefits of ABC to library managers, and describes the steps involved in implementing ABC in an Australian academic library. Discusses the budgeting process in universities, and considers benefits to the library. (Author/LRW)

Examines implications of the introduction of Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) to Victoria (Australia) public libraries and the revision or abandonment of previously dominant ideals of public administration. Topics include the role of government; public services as a competitive market environment; economic rationalism; and the threat to the professionalism of librarianship. (Author/LRW)

Academic library managers need a multimethod, objective, valid tool for measuring service quality. Examines three research studies in the measurement of service quality in Australian and New Zealand academic libraries: the Hernon and Altman Study; Hernon and Calvert Study; and the University of Waikato (Hamilton, New Zealand) Survey, a two-stage gap analysis. (PEN)