Creating Value for Our Clients

Library Objectives:

• Extend Information Literacy Partnerships

• Linking clients with relevant information resources

• Provide a conducive learning and working environment

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Extend Information Literacy Partnerships

The number of students opting to undertake courses in the flexible mode has increased, resulting in a small decline in face-to-face sessions and a preference for online support material. There was a greater effort to link material to Blackboard and to produce material congruent with the learning outcomes of individual courses. There was a significant increase in the number attending Division of CQU Library tours.  Chart 1 illustrates changes in demand and activity in 2005 compared to 2004.

During 2005 the following observations were made:

A significant amount effort went into reviewing and rewriting instructional material. The aim of the LOOT (Learning Objects in Online Teaching) project (commenced in May) was to identify core material, store it as learning objects, and to make the material available for reuse.  This project has been delayed until the implementation of the institutional repository. The Learning Objects will then be stored in the repository.

Some discipline area (Nursing, Health and Human Performance, OHS, Education, History, Geography, Biomedicine) offered meaningful programs. Throughout 2005 it was necessary to consolidate them and to ensure that new CQU academic staff understood and supported their structure.

Non-Faculty areas such as STEPS Nulloo Yumbah, and CQU International  have remained committed to information literacy. Staff from these areas continue to collaborate to ensure that programs are comprehensive, timely and relevant to students. The STEPS programme remains an important part of information literacy offerings on all Central Queensland campuses.

Throughout 2005 there was collaboration from the areas of Psychology and Biology to incorporate information literacy into the CQU undergraduate programs. Both areas, while supportive of the concept, have previously been reluctant to introduce compulsory and assessable components. Foundation courses have now been selected and in 2006 introductory skills will be introduced with a view to further developing the skills in subsequent years.

Linking clients with relevant information resources

The SearchSMART resources portal was launched as a component of CQU Library's new web site in February. Its aim was to consolidate access points to library resources from one location. Apart from making Course Resources Online a prominent search option (replacing the e-journal and newspaper search), the interface has remained fairly static throughout 2005. Further developments will be implemented in conjunction with a federation searching solution that the Division of CQU Library has purchased and hopes to implement in early 2006.

Databases, especially the full text databases, were very heavily used. It is hard to compare usage amongst vendors as many vendors measure different things, eg searches, documents or sessions. Scopus and Science Direct databases were added during the year and Informit changed its method of statistic collection mid year. Table 2 shows selected databases with high usage figures:

Database	2005	Av. per day	2004	Variance
Proquest (documents)	1,229,189	3,368	809,265	52%
Emerald (total sessions)	84,410	231	84,784	Little change
Informit (total searches)	18,459	51	13,761	Unable to compare
Infotrac (total sessions)	52,788	145	69,943	-25%
Scopus (searches)	2,826 (June - Dec)	16	N/A
Science Direct (searches)	52,600	144	N/A
Blackwell Synergy (PDF downloads)	45,274	124	10,117	318%

 

The 1-Click to article option was implemented allowing CQU staff and students to go directly to an article from a citation bypassing the Article Linker results page wherever possible.

Usage of Serials Solutions continues to grow with total searches up by 55% in 2005 from 193,850 to 432,006. The Division of CQU Library catalogue's MARC record URL link usage was low as it was only activated in November 2005. Charts 2 - 5 illustrate the number of Serials Solutions searches across subject, database and titles.

A subscription to Syndetic Solutions' enhanced bibliographic data for catalogue records was taken out and activated at the end of 2005. This service is providing TOC, Summary, Author Notes and Book Jackets to predominantly post 2000 published books across a wide variety of subjects via ISBNs and is directly linked to and available from the Division of CQU Library catalogue.

During August and September, the linking functionality within Google Scholar to Serials Solutions Article Linker was investigated and activated. CQU Library links now appear beside or under relevant search results within Google Scholar allowing CQU staff and students to search the Division of CQU Library holdings through the Serials Solutions e-journal or SearchSMART portals. At this stage, Google Scholar is still in Beta testing and therefore the links are not yet optimal in consistency or links.

Like many other university libraries, CQU is experiencing an overall decline in its traditional reference and information questions. Chart 6 illustrates that while requests for traditional type reference questions has declined, this has been combined with a significant increase of queries received through the AR System.  This highlights the changing nature of services provided by the Division of CQU Library including the emphasis on electronic access for library resources and the move by CQU to online course delivery and/or support.

Over the last few years there has been a small budget allocation for CQU undergraduate student document delivery requests. The proviso has been that it can only be used when CQU students, with the assistance of a librarian, can not find anything in the collection on their selected topic. After feedback from CQU Deans and ADTLs, 4th year CQU honours and project students are also now eligible to access this service.

Door counts across all CQ libraries dropped in 2005. Again this is consistent with trends across the university sector. Gladstone library experienced the greatest reduction in clients visiting the library followed by Mackay.  Rockhampton's door count dropped from 194,267 in 2004 to 188,930 in 2005. Chart 7 illustrates these variances.

In Gladstone, the door count was down by 10% on 2004, but does not reflect the massive reduction in the number of loans. This could indicate that the library is being used more for a study, access to computers and as a meeting venue, rather than specifically for borrowing books. Requests for items not immediately available at Gladstone campus have reduced significantly. This would indicate that the floating collection has improved students' access to materials.

Continuing the trend of electronic access and use increasing email enquiries from staff and students increased from 6247 in 2004 to  11,455 in 2005, an increase of 83.4% and may account for the downward trend in phone enquiries of 12.2% from 8064 in 2004 to 7079 in 2005. Charts 8 and 9 illustrate this.

A further 80 images were received from Steve Mullins, School of Humanities for the Historical Coastlines Images archive and these were added to the catalogue by the end of the year. This collection no comprises of 770 images and can be accessed via the Image Archive or via the following catalogue OpenURL.

439 Capricornia CQ Portraits records were created and successfully loaded into the catalogue. Records in the collection can be viewed by keyword searching 'CQPortraits' (one word, no spaces) or via the CQPortraits CQOpenURL link. It is hoped at some stage to scan the associated images and link them to these records.

Patronage of the Capricornia Central Queensland Collection, based in Rockhampton, also dropped. Highlights of the CQ Collection included a display at the Multicultural Fair (Businesses in East Street), CQ staff attending an archives seminar in August and various donations. Community users accounted for 67% of patrons. Overall, usage dropped by 9%. Chart 10 illustrates changes in demand between 2004 and 2005.

A regional collection for the Wide Bay - Burnett region has been established at the Bundaberg Campus Library. The collection will endeavour to collect books and some other items of relevance to the Wide Bay-Burnett region. As at December 2005 there were approximately 100 items waiting to be redesignated Wide Bay-Burnett Collection. A web page has been designed and will be added to in the near future.

The new Technical Services "About Us" corporate (public) web pages were completed by the end of January in preparation for the launch of the new Library web site. These pages was created to provide information about the section to other libraries following several external requests and after difficulties were experienced in finding similar publicly-available information available about Technical Services sections on other library web sites.

The Records and Archives Office continued to work closely with Chancellery and Registry staff to complete the implementation of recordkeeping practises and the TRIM records management system. The Office also provided advice to other areas of the University on recordkeeping matters. Chart 11 illustrates the number of enquires handled by Records and Archives staff during 2005.

Provide a conducive learning environment

At Bundaberg and Gladstone CQU Campuses, staff have been involved in the planning of the information commons at each site. Discussions have been held to consider CQU staff and student needs in order to make the concept work. the Library has also recognised the need for staff development in the areas of computer hardware and software to support users of the information commons.

The Library Reading Room in Rockhampton was selected as the venue to co-host a Cocktail party for the Teaching and Learning Showcase and was used by a number of other Faculties and Divisions to host activities. Work continues on replacing furniture, developing a new training room, and upgrading the group study rooms at Rockhampton. These should be in place for the commencement of Term 1 2006.