NSLA eNews, December 2011

Annual stats: 2010-11 in numbers

NSLA's annual statistics show that use of our libraries online and the number of people visiting us in person both continue to grow.

• 11 million people visited our libraries (up from 9.4 million in 2009-2010)
• 243 million pages were viewed on our websites (10 million more than last year)
• 1491 terabytes of digital collections were stored (increased from 1018 terabytes)
• $34.7 million was spent purchasing items for our collections
• $5.6 billion was the total asset value of our collections
• $1.089 billion was the total asset value of our buildings/sites.

Australia's libraries aren't the only ones experiencing growth: the Institute of Museum and Library Services recently announced that library use in the United States is at an historic high, increasing nearly 40 per cent in the last decade.

Digitisation research report

Earlier this year, NSLA commissioned an in-depth digitisation research report to describe and analyse digitisation funding strategies that have been successful in other parts of the world, including public-private partnerships and government funding. It concluded that, while various models of partnerships and funding exist, the countries that have been most successful in digitising cultural collections and making them available online have opted to integrate mass digitisation as a specific strategy within an overarching national digital or information policy.

The report will be used by NSLA member libraries to inform future digitisation funding proposals to government. Its findings were also highlighted in NSLA's submission to the National Cultural Policy discussion.

Bringing grey literature to light

NSLA will collaborate in a research project to analyse the production and circulation of informally-published digital publications (aka 'grey literature'), particularly those coming out of the research and higher education sectors. The project was recently approved for funding by the Australian Research Council and will begin in 2012. 

Grey literature is research produced and disseminated outside of commercial publishing, which nevertheless may make a substantial contribution to public policy, innovation and social development. Despite its growing importance, grey literature presents problems for research and innovation because of a lack of standards, credibility and access, meaning that many of the considerable potential benefits of this literature are lost to the wider community.

Led by Swinburne University, other project partners include the National Library of Australia and Victoria University. NSLA's contribution will be coordinated by the Collaborative Collections group.  

Digital archives: What do I do with all this stuff?

The Archival Collections project has published a second and final edition of the Guidelines for library staff assisting donors to prepare their personal digital archives for transfer to NSLA libraries. The report sets out practical ideas to assist managers of archival collections in their conversations with potential donors, with the ultimate aim of enabling faster processing and faster public access to new collections.

While each library has a unique operating system and digital archiving policy, few have a dedicated program for the management and preservation of digital archives and most still require electronic material to be deposited on physical carriers.

This final edition of the guidelines incorporates comments and suggestions from NSLA library staff, and is a starting point for creative discussion about the collection and management of born-digital material now and in future years.

National Cultural Policy

NSLA's submission to the Australian Government's National Cultural Policy discussion made three key recommendations:

• That libraries, museums and other national cultural collection institutions be recognised explicitly within the policy for their role in preserving and making available Australia's wealth of knowledge, cultural identity and creativity.
• That the policy should commit to the development of an online cultural collections strategy to prioritise digitisation and digital preservation of cultural collections.
• That the policy include an additional goal to preserve and ensure ongoing access to Australia’s cultural collections and creative output for the future, in digital and physical formats.

Meet our Literacy and Learning project managers

The Literacy and Learning project is gearing up for a busy year in 2012, having recently released an ambitious project mandate. Luckily, the group has two highly experienced project managers at the helm: Anne Rennie, Manager, Participation and Learning at the State Library of WA, and Andrew Hiskens, Manager, Learning Services at the State Library of Victoria.

We chatted with Anne and Andrew about their hopes for the project and how libraries enable 'learning by stealth' - read the interview.