Results of the Australian National Bibliographic Database Coverage Survey

Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL)

RESULTS OF THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATABASE COVERAGE SURVEY – JANUARY 2009

Introduction

Libraries Australia recently conducted a survey of Australian libraries to determine the currency and coverage of library holdings on the Australian National Bibliographic Database (ANBD) and to discover important gaps in coverage. The previous ANBD Coverage survey was conducted in 1999-2000 by the Australian Library Collections Task Force (ALCTF).

This paper provides a summary of the responses of CAUL member libraries.

Objectives

The survey aimed to identify:

• The extent to which the collections of Australian libraries are recorded in the ANBD;
• The types of material most likely / unlikely to be recorded on the ANBD;
• The existence of formed or special format collections of published or unpublished materials which are not recorded on the ANBD;
• Patterns of contribution / non-contribution to the ANBD amongst particular library types; and
• Key factors affecting ANBD contribution.

The results of the survey will be used by Libraries Australia to develop strategies to improve overall coverage of the ANBD and in particular to contact libraries with important special collections to attempt to facilitate addition of records for these collections to the ANBD.

Methodology

A draft of the survey questionnaire was discussed at the March 2008 meeting of the Libraries Australia Advisory Committee and a number of changes were made. The questionnaire was then piloted by the National Library. During July and early August a further pilot was conducted with four libraries: University of Tasmania, University of Queensland, Deakin University, and the State Library of Western Australia. Feedback from the pilot sites was incorporated into the questionnaire.

The survey was publicised via the librariesaustralia-l list. Libraries input their responses using an online web form using the SurveyMonkey service <

The survey questionnaire is provided as Attachment 4.

The survey was launched on 21 August and was originally scheduled to close on 19 September. However, in an attempt to improve the response rate from CAUL and NSLA libraries, the formal period for response was extended until 10 October. Libraries Australia contacted all CAUL and NSLA members who had not responded by the original closing date to encourage them to respond.

Libraries Australia also contacted all libraries that provided incomplete responses and encouraged them to at least complete those questions relating to the number of items (titles) and the percentage of their collection that is not recorded in the ANBD.

The survey form continued to be available until 30 January 2009. The last response from a CAUL member library was received on 12 December.

Results

As at 12 December 2008, a total of 217 valid responses were received from all library sectors however this total includes 13 responses where only contact information was provided.

A total of 31 responses were received from CAUL member libraries (NB. McLennan Library of the Melbourne Business School provided a separate response from the University of Melbourne) representing 14.3% of the total responses. See Attachment 1 for the names of CAUL member libraries that responded to the survey.

This paper includes a summary of the responses to most survey questions.

Question 2: Please select your State or Territory

Question 6. Is your library a Libraries Australia member?

Response
Percent / Response
Count
Yes / 100% / 31
No / 0% / 0

Question 8. How does your organisation contribute to the ANBD?

14 universities indicated that they use more than one method to contribute to the ANBD.

“Other” responses were:

• Not contributing at present, planning to use record import service; and
• In process of setting RIS to occur.

Question 9. Would your organisation prefer to contribute to the ANBD in some other way?

Response
Percent / Response
Count
Yes / 16% / 5
No / 78% / 24
Skipped question / 6% / 2

“Yes” responses were:

• Interested in investigating services through vendors;
• We are considering using the cataloguing client for selected tasks. We have not reached any conclusions at this stage;
• SRU;
• OAI-PMH; and
• We would like to have a direct link between our LMS Horizon and the ANBD (like Voyage has) which would automatically update holdings in the ANBD. However, we are on Horizon which is no longer to be developed so this is not likely.

Question 10. Does your organisation plan to make an ongoing contribution of records for new material to the ANBD? If not please tell us your key reasons for not contributing to the ANBD?

Response
Percent / Response
Count
Yes / 94% / 29
No / 3% / 1
Some / 3% / 1

“No” response was:

• Currently QJCU contributes holdings only. We use the Record Import Service to delete holdings from the ANBD. We decided against using the Cataloguing Client to contribute bibliographic records for a number of reasons: there is a cost involved for the annual software licence fee and a requirement to install the product and train staff to use it; the HORIZON cataloguing module has excellent functionality; and the percentage of original cataloguing required has been greatly reduced as more records become available from external databases such as OCLC WorldCat. To our knowledge adding bibliographic records via the web cataloguing form available via Libraries Australia search only allows for input of minimal level cataloguing and records downloaded into the local system would need to be re-catalogued. We would like to contribute cataloguing for material published in North Queensland (as these records may be unique and we consider the cost/effort involved in contributing them to the ANBD justified) and plan to investigate using RIS to achieve this in 2009.

Question 11. Does your organisation regularly update your holdings on the ANBD to reflect items that have been moved or removed from your collection? If not please tell us your key reasons for not maintaining your ANBD holdings.

Response
Percent / Response
Count
Yes / 81% / 25
No / 13% / 4
Some / 6% / 2

“No” and “Some” responses included:

• Have not yet finalized process on Voyager and have not updated holdings since implementation of Voyager;
• Plan to regularly update holdings in the future;
• Technical difficulties in extracting relevant holdings data, including ejournal holdings stored in a series of mySQL files. We are currently working on a mechanism to update both offline and online holdings;
• Lack of resources to remove ANBD holdings; and
• Problems with record matching resulting in large error files plus a few months without a Cataloguing Librarian have resulted in a backlog of uploading. This will be addressed now that the vacant position is filled. Some amendments are made directly through the Cataloguing Client.

Questions 12 & 13: Approximately how many items (titles) in your library collection are not recorded in the ANBD? What percentage of your total library collection is not recorded in the ANBD?

Table 1: No. of items and percentage of total collection not recorded in the ANBD

No. items not in the ANBD / Percentage of total library collection not in ANBD
Academy Library, University of NSW@ADFA / 20,000 / 6%
Australian National University Library / 450,000 / 25%
Bond University Library / 3,000 / 2%
Central Queensland University Library / 10,000 / 5%
Deakin University / 147,303 / 13%
Flinders University Library / 6,000 / 1%
James Cook University, Eddie Koiki Mabo Library / 144,610 / 36%
La Trobe University Library / 150,000 / 13%
Macquarie University Library / 500 / 1%
McLennan Library / 750 / 2%
Monash University Library / 210,000 / 10%
Murdoch University Library / 70,000 / 10%
QUT Library / 49,987 / 8%
RMIT University Library / 60,000 / 50%
Swinburne University of Technology Library / 200,000 / 50%
University of Adelaide Library / 96,000 / 3%
University of Ballarat, E.J. Barker Library / 35,000 / 13%
University of Canberra Library / 67,500 / 4%
University of Melbourne Library / No data / No data
University of New England, Dixson Library / 107,000 / 15%
University of New South Wales Library / 50,000 / 5%
University of Newcastle Library / 10,000 / 5%
University of Queensland Library / 500,000 / 30%
University of South Australia Library / 80,000 / 10%
No. items not in the ANBD / Percentage of total library collection not in ANBD
University of Sydney / 2,311,000 / 30%
University of Tasmania, Morris Miller Library / 82,454 / 14%
University of Technology Sydney / 105,000 / 12%
University of Western Australia Library / 414,000 / 31%
University of Western Sydney Library / 1,900 / 20%
University of Wollongong, University Library / 34,500 / 6%
Victoria University / 203,281 / 37%
Total / 5,514,790 / Avg. 16%

Question 14: What types of material in your collection are not recorded in the ANBD? Please indicate the approximate number of items for both Australian and Overseas.

The top three material types that recorded the largest number of items not recorded in the ANBD were Online (e.g. Web sites, e-journals, databases) (approx. 3,302,389), Monographs (approx. 1,482,452) and Journals (approx. 202,455). See Attachment 2 for details.

Question 15: If your organisation hasn't contributed records for this material to the ANBD can you indicate the key reasons why? Please indicate if there are different reasons for specific types of materials (eg. digital resources)

Key reasons given why material has not been contributed to the ANBD include:

• Staffing, resourcing and prioritisation of library wide activities/projects;
• Majority are old records that don't meet cataloguing standards, some are uncatalogued titles, and some are interim records and others are titles not digitised yet;
• Some copyrighted materials are held in the Library which can only be used by library staff and students and so these are also not on the ANBD;
• License restrictions for online resources;
• Insufficient cataloguing or MARC coding to permit full record upload, due to NBD system restrictions;
• Electronic journals and other digital resources - because of the difficulty in providing direct access to these resources on Libraries Australia and Education Curriculum Laboratory resources - are not available for loan;
• Licence restrictions on digital resources prevent Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery and a lack of resources to maintain links on LA;
• No automated process for adding records for e-journals; and
• Materials are not available for interlibrary loan.

See Attachment 3 for individual responses.

Question 17. Do records exist for this material in card catalogues, other manual records or in your local library management system?

Response
Percent / Response
Count
Yes / 68% / 21
No / 10% / 3
Some / 22% / 7

12 responses included a description of the scope and/or quality of records that exist for material that has not been contributed to the ANBD.

QUESTION 18: Does any of this material comprise a significant 'formed collection', (ie. a group of materials, published and/or unpublished, on a particular subject or with another characteristic which means that it is logical to keep the items together rather than separate them)? If so, please provide a description of the subject content of the collections, date range(s) of the materials, and approximate number of items.

9 university libraries identified ‘formed collections’ not added to the ANBD. Table 2 describes these ‘formed collections’.

Table 2: Formed collections not added to the ANBD

Bond University Library / Bond Archival Collection (1987 - 2008)
Central Queensland University Library / Central Quueensland historical photographs 5000
James Cook University, Eddie Koiki Mabo Library / No, with the exception of 4 collections of photographs already available via Picture Australia. A significant collection of photographs and oral histories relating to North Queensland will be added to the collection in the near future.
La Trobe University Library / Education Curriculum Laboratory collection - approx. 13000 records for mainly educational materials for school teachers
McLennan Library / We have a print collection of careers material housed as a discrete collection for the exclusive use of MBS students, MBS staff and MBS alumni. It includes job search, interview preparation, and career development literature, as well as specific guides t
University of Adelaide Library / Palm leaf manuscripts (100) Deeds and indentures (500) Theatre programs (10000) Theatre posters and playbills (500) Theatre illustrations, pictures, sketches, prints, plans (500)
University of New England, Dixson Library / Approx 1000 monograph titles are part of the R.S.Neale Collection, a largely historical collection, containing primary and secondary material for research in English social and economic history, particularly since the Industrial Revolution. Special strength
University of Sydney / Items in Conservatorium of Music Library. Some of our music scores and books are in our Rare music collection – scores and manuscripts. This collection of rare music scores/mss is being catalogued slowly as we are able, or as project work. All monographs in our “Rare books” collection have been catalogued and should have been uploaded to ANBD. The LPs have been placed in stack as a collection, and are accessible through a card catalogue.
University of Wollongong Library / Vinyl collection - classical music, up to 1980s, 2500 uncatalogued items, donated to the library.

QUESTION 19: Please name the most important E-resource collections that you have not added to the ANBD? Question 20: Please name the most important microform collections that you have not added to the ANBD?

28 university libraries identified important e-resource collections not added to the ANBD and 4 university libraries identified important microform collections not added to the ANBD. Details are listed in Table 3.

Table 3: E-resource and microform collection not added to the ANBD

E-resource collections / Microform collections
Academy Library, University of NSW@ADFA / No e-resources added other than CD-ROMs / Nil
Australian National University Library / Wiley Interscience, Springerlink, Synergy
Bond University Library / Online subscription databases
Deakin University / We have not systematically added any commercially available collections or our e-readings collection. / Collection level records exist as a minimum for all
Flinders University Library / EBooks / n/a
James Cook University, Eddie Koiki Mabo Library / E-journals and online databases are not added to the ANBD / Not applicable
La Trobe University Library / e-journals with records from Serials Solutions / n/a
E-resource collections / Microform collections
Macquarie University Library / Most, apart from the few that were originally purchased as datasets via Kinetica. / Nil
McLennan Library / Arcadia is the McLennan Library's name for its collection of electronic databases. We currently subscribe to more than 20 databases covering all aspects of management and related disciplines. The types of material made accessible via the databases include
Murdoch University Library / All e journals and e book collections / Irish political and radical newspapers (154 titles) Women advising women Pt. 2
QUT Library / No ejournal collections have been added. / Not applicable
RMIT University Library / No e-resources added to ANBD
Swinburne University of Technology Library / We collect ebooks title by title. We have not added records for any subscription based aggregation for which licence agreements preclude external access - which is most of them: Scopus, Ebsco, Web of Science etc.... / - NA -
University of Adelaide Library / Most e-resource collections are on Libraries Australia. / N/A
University of Ballarat, E.J. Barker Library / EbscoHost, Informit, Sage, WileyInterscience, Emerald, Oxford, BMJ, EBook Library, Safari, / NA
University of Canberra Library / EBSCOhost DB's, Gale/Infotrac DB's, CSA Ilumina, Informit, SOurceOECD / N/A
University of Melbourne Library / All of them.
University of New England, Dixson Library / BioOne CSA Current Contents Emerald Factiva Expanded Academic (Infotrac) HeinOnline JSTOR LexisNexis Legal LWW Journals@Ovid NewsBank ProQuest ScienceDirect SpringerLink Taylor & Francis Web of Knowledge Wiley InterScience
University of New South Wales Library / Journal titles and ebook titles from the large commercial datasets and packages. / None
University of Newcastle Library / ScienceDirect / History of education microfiche - (work in progress)
University of Queensland Library / Early English books online Eighteenth century collections online / Nineteenth Century [Microform]. General collection
University of South Australia Library / Various eBooks collections totalling ca 56000 records - NetLibrary (via OCLC), HeinOnline World Trials collection (1200 titles) SpringerLink (ca 7800 titles which are mostly original or significantly upgraded records), EngNetBase (800)
University of Sydney / EEBO, Making of Modern Law, ScienceDirect
E-resource collections / Microform collections
University of Tasmania, Morris Miller Library / None of our electronic resources have been reported to the ANBD. Our most "significant" eresources include Web Of Science, ProQuest, Scopus, IEEE Explore, SciFinder Scholar and some CSA databases such as Medline.
University of Western Australia Library / All of them / English books 1475 - 1640 Early English books 1641 – 1700
University of Western Sydney Library / These are not 'owned' collections therefore of no major significance. / N/A
University of Wollongong Library / Business Source Premier.
Victoria University / Springer ebooks; Hein legal classics library; Journals in databases (ie; records from Serials Solutions) such as Ebscohost; Ebrary; EBL. / n/a

Question 21: Does your organization add records for digital content to the ANBD? Examples of digital content include: web sites, e-journals, sound files, and digitized images.

Response
Percent / Response
Count
Yes / 16% / 5
Some / 20% / 6
No / 58% / 18
No response / 6% / 2

18 university libraries indicated that they do not add records for digital content to the ANBD and the reasons provided are presented in Table 4.

Table 4: Reasons why digital content is not added to the ANBD

Academy Library, University of NSW@ADFA / Only digitise Course reading material (book chapters, print journal articles, not held journal articles)- not available to anyone else other than UNSW@ADFA students/staff.
Bond University Library / Policy has been determined on consideration of benefits of inclusion together with staffing, resourcing, etc.
Deakin University / Would be burdensome for no particular benefit. ( not available to other/distinct record loading, creation process/dynamic nature of title and content) The digital images are created using local fields only
James Cook University, Eddie Koiki Mabo Library / In most instances we are able to source an existing record from either Libraries Australia or Serials Solutions. Resources are already discoverable via other search engines or freely available on the web especially for resources that we don’t own.
La Trobe University Library / It is difficult to provide direct access to these resources through Libraries Australia.
McLennan Library / These records are not catalogued but are used as an in-house resource
RMIT University Library / No reason provided
Swinburne University of Technology Library / No reason provided
University of Ballarat, E.J. Barker Library / We can’t give access to them, so it’s thought better not to add them. The records are generally brought in from vendors and frequently aren't of a quality that can be uploaded, and we don't have the staff to upgrade them. Maintenance of title changes would be too labour intensive
University of Canberra Library / Not available to non-staff/students of UC, not available for ILL, often ephemeral in nature leading to increased staff workload to upload or delete titles
University of Melbourne Library / We do not add e-resources to the library catalogue, instead we use SFX, MetaLib and Digitool to organise and provide access to these materials.
University of New England, Dixson Library / At the outset of cataloguing electronic journals, we believed the restrictions imposed by vendor licenses made inclusion of our holdings on the ANBD of minimal value. Since then, the bulk of our catalogue records for digital resources are brief records which are bulk loaded into our OPAC. We also have a policy of creating separate records for the same journal as/when it appears in different formats and platforms.
University of New South Wales Library / See question 15
University of Newcastle Library / Too time consuming - records for major datasets are available, we would not have the staff time to add holdings to individual title records, and then maintain these holdings
University of Technology Sydney / Licensing restrictions
University of Western Australia Library / Currently the status of most of our journal eholding is too volatile to add to the ANBD.
University of Wollongong Library / Lack of staff resources to maintain links on LA and local catalogue. Digital resources are not available for loan via Document Delivery, primarily because of licence restrictions.
Victoria University / Most digital material is either freely available to all internet users, or has restricted usage governed by licensing conditions. Holdings frequently change in databases - work necessary to maintain ANBD holdings is prohibitive.

Question 23: Does your organisation routinely digitise materials in your collection? Please describe the scope of these activities (eg. criteria for digitisation, date ranges and subject areas) & Question 24: Does your organisation have any special digitisation projects underway or planned? Please describe the scope and timeline of the project(s).