Tasmanian Launch of Libraries Australia

Library news:

From the University Librarian

Tasmanian Launch of Libraries Australia

On 7 September the Cradle Coast Campus hosted the Tasmanian launch of Libraries Australia. Professor Michael Bennett, School of History and Classics spoke of the value of books and libraries over the centuries. His delightful and interesting speech is available from the Library website. The launch was attended by Tony Boston, Assistant Director-General Resource Sharing, National Library of Australia and about sixty guests.

Linda Luther, University Librarian

Tony Boston, National Library of Australia

Professor Michael Bennett

Libraries Australia provides access to over 40 million items held in over 800 libraries across Australia. 600,000 of these are digital items available in full-text. The database also provides access to pictures, music, theses and much more.

Libraries Australia is a significant national asset. Australia is one of the few countries in the world to provide a single access point to the holdings of its libraries. In support of the launch of the service in Tasmania, the University Library has updated its holdings and will continue to maintain them as new items are added to the collection. This provides access for all Australians to the rich and unique items in our collection, including the Royal Society of Tasmania collection.

Access to Libraries Australia is available through the University of Tasmania Library website, or direct at www.librariesaustralia.nla.gov.au.

For more information, go to Libraries Australia in our Electronic Services news section.

Linda Luther
University Librarian

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Adult Education Tasmania 2006 Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Learner of the Year Award

Congratulations to Thomas Riley who was a finalist in the Adult Education Tasmania 2006 Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Learner of the Year Award. A certificate for being a finalist was granted to Thomas as part of Adult Learners Week in September.

Thomas Riley

Thomas held a trainee position in the Morris Miller Library 2005-2006 as part of the UTAS Aboriginal Employment Strategy. He was nominated by his colleagues in the Morris Miller Library, who have appreciated the opportunity to work with him and were impressed with the outstanding progress he made throughout the year.  Thomas continues work in casual relief positions for the University Library and part-time in the Aboriginal Education Resource Centre.

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Library Survey 2006

Your feedback is very important to enable the Library to continuously improve our services. We have once again commissioned the Rodski Behavioural Research Group to conduct the UTas Library Survey for 2006.

All UTas Staff and Students have been asked to help us by completing this online survey.  As an incentive a $100.00 cash prize will be awarded to three lucky participants. The survey was held between Monday 11th September and Friday 6th October. All completed surveys are submitted directly to the Rodski Behavioural Research Group with all information and responses remain totally confidential.

This survey will be used by the Library to benchmark our services against other University Libraries and to inform our strategic planning process. 

For more details see our web page on how we respond to your feedback: http://www.utas.edu.au/library/about/surveys.html

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Opening Hours – Exam Period

There will be extended opening hours in the Launceston, Law, Morris Miller and Science libraries during the exam period. Please check the following link for opening hours during this time:

http://www.utas.edu.au/library/about/openhours.html

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Elluminate Live!

Launceston Campus Library recently participated in the trial of the Elluminate Live! eLearning environment by running a successful EndNote demonstration for Bachelor of Adult and Vocational Education students. The moderators of the session were in the Library, while the students were in their own homes – some as far away as Queensland.

Some of the features of Elluminate Live! include real time communication between participants, a shared interactive whiteboard, and the ability to share applications such as Word and EndNote. This makes it a very exciting tool for adding live interaction to distance learning.

The EndNote demonstration allowed a good exploration of the Elluminate Live! environment, as it required communication between the moderator and the participants and frequent switching between the Word and EndNote applications.

Elluminate Live! is an excellent tool for distance teaching, making it simple to demonstrate a complex application to distance students.

http://www.elluminate.com/academic_edition.jsp

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News from Sections

Clinical Library

Staff Changes

Ian Barton, Clinical Librarian, returned from leave on Monday 18 September. Debbie Wright, who acted in Ian’s position in his absence, would like to thank the staff and students who welcomed her and helped her to learn about the Clinical Library.

Phone: 03 6226 4812 or x4813
E-mail: Clin.Reference@utas.edu.au

Collection Management Unit (CMU)

New staff and Pod development in CMU
As part of the progress towards re-structure of the CMU work environment, two significant events have occurred in CMU over the last month.   In mid August the workplace environment underwent a physical change with staff re-configuring their desks and workplace areas into the proposed new Pods (teams)

We have, since then, welcomed two new members of staff, namely Juliet Beale and Amanda Steen, who have joined us as CMU team Co-ordinators.

Amanda Steen

Juliet Beale

The new team structure is as follows:

- Law and Business
- Arts
- Health Sciences and Education
- Science, Engineering and Technology

Health and Education pod

Law and Business pod

Considerable training and re-training is being undertaken within the Unit as all staff work towards acquiring a working knowledge of all the tasks commensurate with their HEO levels.  We're aiming at eliminating any "point sensitivity" so that the absence of any staff member will still allow for all tasks to continue (albeit at a possibly reduced rate)

In conjunction with the above multi-skilling activity, there are recognised "specialist" tasks which will be undertaken by specific staff members but on a rotating basis.  This will mean that those tasks which require consistent attention will have an "owner" for a specific time period whilst other generic tasks will be shared at all times.

We have lots of fine tuning and process analysis to do in the next months, and we anticipate some refinement of the process as we move forward.  I am confident that, in a few months time, staff will have settled in to the new structure.

Graeme Rayner
Collection Management Librarian
Phone: 6226 2231
Email: Graeme.Rayner@utas.edu.au

Cradle Coast Campus

Cathy Hartigan has begun employment with UTas at the Cradle Coast Campus. She will be teaching for CALT and UPP and also teaching library skills and overseeing the Resource collection at Burnie. She has skills and experience in both teaching and library work, and her expertise will be greatly appreciated. She comes to us after several years at St. Brendan Shaw School in Devonport and before that she worked as a teacher-librarian and college librarian in Melbourne.

We welcome Cathy to the University team.

Susan Bell, Alison Johnston, Lana Wall, Cathy Hartigan and Ian Bollard

Cathy can be contacted on:
Phone: (03) 6430 4957
Email: Cathy.Hartigan@utas.edu.au

Document Delivery

Improving Document Delivery: Update on VDX – our new DD/ILL management system

‘Behind the scenes’ work continues with our new VDX software. The configuration of the VDX server has now been completed. The installation and customisation of the software will begin shortly, and should take about two (2) weeks.

The next phase is the training and testing on the preconfigured system by the ITR project staff (technical side) and the Library staff (user side). The testing will take about a month. It is important to be confident that each component of the ILL transaction cycle is working correctly. We hope to go ‘live’ with the new system about mid-November.

There will be plenty of publicity about VDX before we launch it to our UTAS clients. We shall conduct some introductory sessions as well as providing a VDX user guide. There will be messages on our Library website, and we are investigating an online tutorial as well.

The new system will be easy to use, and as mentioned in an earlier Library News many other academic libraries are already using VDX.

Hobart Phone: 03 6226 2230
E-mail docdel.hbt@lib.utas.edu.au

Launceston Phone: 03 6324 3571
E-mail docdel.ltn@lib.utas.edu.au

Launceston Library

Flexible Library Services

Kylie Mallett

Kylie Mallett has returned to work after twelve months maternity leave after the birth of her son Thomas. She will be working on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays and on the other days the area will be staffed by Jill Wells. Maryanne Gustus has done a sterling job while Kylie has been on leave, and deserves our thanks. Thank you Maryanne and welcome back Kylie.

Telephone: (03) 6324 3534
Facsimile: (03) 6324 3362
E-mail : Flexible@lib.utas.edu.au

Law Library

Staff News
The Law Library is hosting an industry placement for TAFE student Elizabeth Hutchinson. Elizabeth is undertaking a Diploma of Library/Information Services and will be working with us two days per week (Wednesday and Thursday) until the 9th November 2006.

Journal and New Title Display
New journals and books are placed on display on a weekly basis. Over the past months we have ordered a large number of new books for the Law Library to update our collection. Browsing the display is a great way to keep up to date with new material.

Science Library

Staff News
We are pleased to announce that Helen Jackson will continue to act in the position of Library Officer until October 2007 as Kay Hughes continues her role as acting Circulation Officer, Morris Miller Library. Gabrielle Kneebone will also be continuing in her position for the next 12 months.

Phone: 03 6226 2441
E-mail: Science.Reference@utas.edu.au

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New Electronic Services

Arts

Film & Television Literature Index

EBSCO have given the Library complimentary access to their new Film & Television Literature Index (FTLI) until May 2007. Film & Television Literature Index is a comprehensive bibliographic database with subject coverage including film and television theory, preservation and restoration, writing, production, cinematography, technical aspects, and reviews. FTLI is an indexing database but will link to fulltext held in any of our current fulltext EBSCO databases such as ANZ Reference Centre or Business Source Premier.

Access is via our database pages until May 2007:

http://www.utas.edu.au/library/info/dbase/dbases2.html#f

Economics

SourceOECD

The Library is excited to announce we now have online access to all SourceOECD books, periodicals and statistics titles, including the Main Economic Indicators title that we have formerly held in print.

Access SourceOECD publications from the databases webpage:

http://www.utas.edu.au/library/info/dbase/dbases4.html#s

Health Sciences

New England Journal of Medicine

The Library now has site licence access to NEJM at its own site. This subscription includes the most recent 6 months of content that we were previously unable to access. Full text access is available from 1993-present and abstracts are available from 1975-1992.

Access is via the Library Catalogue or EJournal web page:

http://www.utas.edu.au/library/info/ej/index.html

TRIP

The TRIP database of evidence-based medicine is now freely available on the web.

TRIP (Turning Research into Practice) offers healthcare professionals a list of online resources useful for evidence-based practice, with internet links to free information resources. The database includes 29 000 links to items in nearly 70 sources that are updated and expanded monthly.

TRIP organises the links in its database into clinical areas and offers a TRIP Blog where updates and search tips can be shared. TRIP also includes a MyTRIP area which allows users to register and receive regular clinical updates from the site.

http://www.utas.edu.au/library/info/dbase/dbases4.html#t

Law

AustLII – 217 databases from all Australasian jurisdictions

There are many new additions to the AustLII website. These include:

• Australasian Intellectual Property Law Library

• Digital Technology Law Journal 1999 +

• Elder Law Review 2002 +

• The Economic and Labour Relations Review 2006 +

• Murdoch University Electronic Journal of Law 1993 +

• Australian Privacy Case Summaries 2004 +

• Commonwealth Numbered Regulations Explanatory Statements 2005+

• Broadcasting Standards Authority of New Zealand Decisions 1995 +

• Customs Appeal Authority of New Zealand Decisions 2004 +

• Taxation Review Authority of New Zealand Decisions 2006 +

• Waikato Law Review 1994 +

• High Court of New Zealand Decisions 2005 +

CaseSearch (LexisNexis Australia)

CaseSearch Case Citator is a comprehensive case citator and annotator covering more than 600 law reports including reported English, selected Irish, Scottish, Commonwealth and European cases with parallel citations dating back to 1502.

http://www.utas.edu.au/library/info/dbase/dbases2.html#c

Dispute Settlement Commentary Service (DSC) available via WorldTradeLaw.net

The Dispute Settlement Commentary (DSC) service is a comprehensive legal research tool for WTO Panel and Appellate Body Reports and WTO Arbitrations. The features include:

• Summary/analysis of new reports/arbitrations within 1-3 weeks after their circulation

• Summary/analysis of all past reports/arbitrations back to the establishment of the WTO

• Up to date keyword index, and updates of commentaries for past reports/arbitrations to reflect new developments in WTO jurisprudence

• Database of WTO dispute settlement tables and statistics

http://www.utas.edu.au/library/info/dbase/dbases2.html#d

Lawbook Databases

There have recently been changes to the Lawbook Database.

The Commonwealth Law Reports and the Federal Court Reports are now available via the Lawbook Database as well as the Westlaw Database. This allows the user to link in from Firstpoint and browse individual issues. Reports are available as PDF downloads, thus ensuring correct page citations are possible.

http://www.utas.edu.au/library/info/dbase/dbases3.html#l

LexisNexis Australia

NSW Law Reports Online, 1971+ and Queensland Reports Online are now available on LexisNexis Australia.

Queensland Reports Online contains:

• Queensland Reports 1980-current (series commenced 1973)

• Queensland Planning and Environmental Law Reports 1982-current (entire series)

• Queensland Crown Lands Law Reports 1961-1973 and selected pre-1960 decisions (series 1859-1973)

• Queensland Land Court Reports 1974-current (entire series).

Access is via LexisNexis Australia:

http://www.utas.edu.au/library/info/dbase/dbases3.html#l

Westlaw Databases

The UK Journals collection has been expanded to include selected Oxford University Press and Tottel publications.

http://www.utas.edu.au/library/info/dbase/dbases4.html#w

Science

GeoBase moves to new platform

At the end of 2006 Elsevier will discontinue hosting GeoBase on the ScienceDirect platform. It will be moved to the Engineering Village platform, also owned by Elsevier. GeoBase is a multidisciplinary database with subject coverage including the Earth sciences, ecology, geomechanics, human geography, and oceanography. Coverage is from 1973 to present and approximately 2000 international journals are indexed.

Currently, GeoBase is available on our database pages via both the ScienceDirect and Engineering Village platform.

http://www.utas.edu.au/library/info/dbase/dbases3.html

Royal Society ( London) – archives available back to 1665

The complete archive of the Royal Society journals, including some of the most significant scientific papers ever published since 1665, is to be made freely available electronically for a two month period. The Society's online collection, which until recently extended back only to 1997, now contains every paper published in the Royal Society journals from the first ever peer-reviewed scientific journal, Philosophical Transactions in 1665.

The archive will be freely available online until December 2006 at: http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk

ScienceDirect – advanced web delivery for scientific, technical and medical information

ScienceDirect has been redesigned with changes being made to the screen appearance and navigation.

New product features include:

• Navigation is improved to facilitate seamless browsing through all types of content.

• The new ‘Quick Search’ has been enhanced to accommodate a more focused search. Search article titles, abstracts, keywords, author names, journal and book titles, volume, issue, or page number fields.

• A simplified ‘Browse by Subject’ is now available on the home page.

• Personalization such as setting up of alerts and favourites has been improved.

http://www.utas.edu.au/library/info/dbase/dbases4.html#s

Multidiscipline

Census 2001

A new simplified interface was recently made available for 2001 Census data.

Currently available on the new interface is:

• Quickstats - a simple summary of key Census data relating to persons, families and dwellings.

• Census Tables - obtain Census data in a single table for a specified geographic area.

• Community Profiles - profiles providing key Census characteristics related to persons, families and dwellings, covering most topics on the Census form.

What's to come?

• Quickmaps - thematic Census maps based on larger geographies depicting selected population, ethnicity, family, income, labour force and dwelling characteristics.

• CDATA Online - offering expert clients freedom to select and combine geographic areas from a single Collection District (CD) through to an entire state/territory or Australia.

• Table Builder - for experienced users, design and populate your own tables of Census data via an interactive web interface.

Access Census data via AusStats:
http://www.utas.edu.au/library/info/dbase/dbases1.html

JSTOR

JSTOR the scholarly journal archive JSTOR is pleased to announce that users can now directly export citations into EndNote:

• To save citations, click the Save Citation link listed below each JSTOR item displayed on the Search Results and Table of Contents pages.

• Click the ‘View Saved Citations’ link located at the top and bottom of Search Results and Table of Contents pages

• Select the option ‘Directly export citations into EndNote, Procite, or Reference Manager’

• EndNote will engage and the ‘Select a Reference Library’ window appears

• Select your library and click Open. Exported references will automatically drop into your library.

http://www.utas.edu.au/library/info/dbase/dbases3.html#j

Libraries Australia – find books, journals and much more from libraries anywhere in Australia

User Perspective of Libraries Australia

Libraries Australia has opened a single database of references to books, journals, theses and audiovisual items from libraries around Australia that were once only accessible to librarians. The database consists of 8 million references including 1 million pictures. The search interface is simple in design resembling Google, and provides checkboxes for selecting the type of resource you wish to retrieve. The references list the libraries where the item is held and give links to the respective library catalogue. This is useful for the more mobile researcher to visit the library. Book jacket covers are provided so if you are visiting the library you have a mental image of the text.

If you find a UTAS Library book on Libraries Australia you can request the item from the UTAS catalogue link in Libraries Australia. If you want your own copy of the item, then links are provided to bookshops and Amazon where the item is currently held for online shopping, or to vendors who will try and source the desired item. For users that require more pictorial type materials, then the link to Pictures Australia allows searches for this type of material sourced from a wide range of library, museum and historical collections. The pictures are high quality reproductions that can be saved into other applications. Libraries Australia also lists new Australian publications each month.

You can access Libraries Australia from the Library’s home page under the databases link, or click on the following link: http://librariesaustralia.nla.gov.au/

Scopus – world’s largest abstract and citation database of research literature and quality web sources

A number of improvements have recently been made to the effectiveness of Scopus. These improvements include:

• Searching for source title name variations – different variations of a source title are now grouped into a single title search.

• Perform all the export functions such as print, export and e-mail directly from a single page with the new “Output” button. Users can select documents for output by type, format and quantity.

• Citation Overviews can now be generated directly from a results list. Also increased is the maximum number of documents to determine trends from 550 to 1000.

• Improvements to Web and Patent search results with the addition of refinement options allowing users to narrow the search and manage the results list more efficiently.

http://www.utas.edu.au/library/info/dbase/dbases4.html#s

 

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Teaching and Help

Examination Papers

You can find most exam papers electronically or in print, however some lecturers do not allow their papers, or specific papers, to be published. Exams with multiple choice sections are not usually published. Print copies of all available exam papers are available in the relevant libraries (that is, the Law Library has the law papers etc.).

Examination papers in electronic form are available from the Library’s Catalogue by searching in the title field for the course code eg. BMA 103.

For more information on accessing past exam papers please follow the link: http://www.utas.edu.au/library/info/exams.html

Flexible Library Services

A reminder that those students/teachers living beyond 40 kms from Launceston and Sandy Bay Campus can register for Flexible Library Services.  Practicum placement is a legitimate category.  Those registered can have material sent to their home, so they can keep up with their assignments, while away from their usual place of study.

The Library will post to mainland locations, but bear in mind the user pays the return postage, and sometimes locations are just a bit isolated and the post is slow.  However, attaching extracts to email is also an option.

Any questions consult http://www.utas.edu.au/library/libserv/rls/rls.html or ask your friendly library staff at your location or ring (03) 6324 3534.

Lana Wall
Senior Manager
Launceston Campus Library

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