One year in….

The Re-imagining Libraries projects have been underway for just over a year now, and it’s been a busy and productive one!  Many staff from the NSLA libraries have contributed their time, experience and effort, and some of the milestones they've achieved this year are:

 • a NSLA Position Statement on Wireless Services;
• Copyright status facility in Libraries Australia
• a research and framework report on Community Created Content;
• agreed principles for NSLA libraries to move more of our collections online through description and cataloguing;
• online materials to assist with selecting, creating and describing digital content; and
• the launch of Trove by the National Library of Australia, a new discovery experience focused on Australia and Australians.

The major focus of this year's work has been investigative, and has included assessment of where NSLA libraries currently sit on the path to re-imagining their services. To manage this work across 2009, the staff in NSLA libraries participated in about 50 Project Group meetings, while 3 project teams have gathered together to establish forward paths for their projects.

Well done to the project managers and the project groups for their industrious work this year! Check their work via our website.

Collaborative Collections – ways forward

 In order to work collaboratively in collection development, NSLA libraries need a clear understanding of the work to be undertaken and the gains to be won. A meeting of the Project Group to move Collaborative Collections forward was held at the State Library of New South Wales in mid November, and was attended by representatives from 8 NSLA libraries. Lead by project managers, Noelle Nelson from the State Library of New South Wales and Anna Raunik from the State Library of Queensland, the group advanced their vision through:

• Agreement on a set of National Collaborative Collection Principles that will guide all actions;
• Review and agreement to Draft Terms of Reference for the NSLA Consortium;
• Identification of the requirements for developing a costed model of a National Set of eResources; and
• Agreement on criteria for reviewing serials with a clear action plan to manage serial collection nationally.

The work undertaken at the meeting will be refined over December and January, to be presented to the NSLA members in March 2010. The opportunity for the project group to meet has illuminated the path forward for Collaborative Collections, and established a keen shared team dynamic to undertake the large workload ahead.  For more information, please contact Noelle Nelson or Anna Raunik.

Principles of Delivery

At the NSLA meeting in November Vicky Carlyon from the State Library of Western Australia, Project Manager of Project 4 Delivery, presented a set of principles to underpin lending policies for NSLA libraries. The set of principles included:

• We are aiming to open collections, both physical and electronic, and enable greater access to the rich resources of the National, State and Territory libraries by making materials available through document delivery.
• We are bound by copyright, licensing and other considerations that govern access to certain materials.
• We support the creation and dissemination of surrogates whenever originals cannot be made available within the constraints of copyright, licensing and other considerations.

NSLA members fully endorsed the lending principles, which will be made available shortly on the Delivery project webpage. Contact Vicky Carlyon if you would like to know more.

Tools of Collaboration

With ten libraries over two countries working hard to collaboratively deliver on the Re-imagining Libraries strategic plan, it’s been very necessary for staff to quickly embrace effective ways to work within the projects.  Staff have welcomed web tools to assist with the work.

Doodle polls are a quick means to check project members’ availability for scheduling meetings, while Google calendars allow people to share their schedules easily. Each project has established a wiki (on Google Sites or PBWiki) to share information and research, which can be further enhanced by Google Docs which enables a group to all work on the one document. SlideShare allows easy sharing of powerpoint presentations and pdfs that may be too large to share via email, and one project has welcomed del.icio.us to share tags nationally on information relevant to their project.

The next step for the project groups is webconferencing, which the Re-imagining Libraries Program Office has started to roll out. Webconferences offer an effective means to both reduce the costs of expensive telephone conferences and actively engage staff through shared whiteboards, sharing applications and supporting chat boxes. The digital environment is providing a path for us as we are working to provide clearer paths to information and content for our users.

Meet Noelle Nelson

 I started working at the State Library of NSW just over a year ago. I was attracted to the Library by its client-focused strategic direction, and the opportunity to be part of a new Executive team under the leadership of Regina Sutton. Twelve months in, a lot has happened and there is much more to achieve!

NSW is my third State. I grew up in Melbourne and started work as a secondary school English teacher in communities across Victoria, from Geelong to Omeo. A move to SA with my Adelaide-born husband led to involvement in the arts, a short stint in a textile artists’ cooperative, renovating a miner’s cottage, as well as continuing teaching.  I had been dissuaded from librarianship by friends – including a fellow librarian – who thought that the role of librarian was not creative or interesting enough!

After one long, contemplative walk on the beach I finally succumbed to the lure of libraries. Since completing my library studies in 1990, I have found that the profession has well and truly drawn upon all my creative resources and a great deal more. I have had various roles as Director, Community Information Strategies Australia; Lead Agencies Funding & Governance Manager, Arts SA (where I was the key liaison person for the State Library of SA and Public Libraries Automated Information Network (PLAIN) and provided advice on library funding and policy); and Manager Library & Cultural Development, Newcastle City Council.

At Newcastle my passion for the arts and libraries came together and I enjoyed working on a new library building at Wallsend; the Newcastle Cultural Collections database, digitisation of the picture collection and the rich resource of rare books, maps, manuscripts, newspapers, pictures, photographs and ephemera as well as the Lovett Gallery exhibition space.

Project 7 will also draw on the creativity of its group members, as we look at various ways to collaborate to build stronger collections onsite and online. We are working towards the collaborative identification and acquisition of relevant resources, to build efficiencies and eliminate duplication where feasible, and to investigate a last copy retention scheme. This project calls upon our ingenuity and will benefit users for years to come!