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> Information Resources and Plans
Accessing Transportation Information Resources
Worldwide
St. Petersburg, Florida
Monday, July 30, 2001 - 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
Information Resources and Plans:
ARRB Transport Research Ltd, Melbourne, Australia
Presentation to Conference on Accessing Transportation
Information Resources Worldwide, St Petersburg, USA, July 2001
Andrew Pentecost
Manager, M G Lay Library
ARRB Transport Research
Australia and New Zealand: a brief introduction
I am the Manager of the M G Lay Library at ARRB Transport Research
Ltd in Vermont South, a suburb of Melbourne, and my presentation
today will attempt to describe the transport information scene in
both Australia and New Zealand, with an emphasis on the organisation
for which I work.
It is worth noting that the population of Australia is at present
estimated at just over 19 million, and that of New Zealand is almost
four million. The surface area of New Zealand is approximately 270,000
square kilometres, or roughly that of Italy or the American state
of Nevada. Australia is much larger, with an area of 7.7 million
square kilometres, which is about the same as the entire United
States (not including Alaska and Hawaii). As a comparison, all of
Europe excluding Russia sits on a total of 4.5 million square kilometres.
A flight from Perth, on Australia's Indian Ocean coast, to Sydney,
on our Pacific Ocean coast, takes more than four hours. A direct
flight from my home town, Melbourne, to New Zealand's capital, Wellington,
takes three and a half hours. Australia's purchasing power parity
GDP per head in 1999 was estimated at $22,200 and New Zealand's
was $17,400. By way of comparison, Switzerland's was $27,100, France's
was $23,300, Spain's was $17,300 and that of the United States was
$33,900. In summary, our two nations are relatively affluent and
we share very low population densities. In the case of Australia
in particular, the distances across the nation are very large indeed,
although the majority of the population live in the coastal fringe
from southeast Queensland to Adelaide in South Australia.
ARRB Transport Research Ltd and the M G Lay Library
My organisation was founded in 1960 as the Australian Road Research
Board. Its foundation owners were Australia's Federal Department
of Transport, and the road or transport authorities in each of Australia's
States and Territories, and it was founded with the aim of coordinating
and undertaking road-related research for the good of the organisation's
owners and for the good of the broader Australian community. ARRB
always had a major emphasis on research and on the transfer of that
research into practice, so a strong, high-quality library has always
been an integral component of the organization. The Library has
had the dual role of a robust information resource for the organisation's
research staff on the one hand and a comprehensive resource for
Australia's road community on the other hand. In March?April 2000,
as part of the commemoration of ARRB's 40th anniversary, we had
the pleasure of naming our Library in honour of Dr Max Lay, a great
supporter of the Library, who was the Executive Director of ARRB
from 1975 to 1989.
The Australian Road Research Board was originally operated on the
basis of government grants in return for which we carried out road?related
research on topics which we considered relevant to the nation's
needs. Since the late 1980s, the organisation's owners have seen
that model as not necessarily optimal, and the funding mix has been
gradually transformed, with the result that all research and consultancy
work carried out by ARRB is now won on a competitive, contract?by?contract
basis. In 1995, the name of the body changed to ARRB Transport Research
Ltd. The new name is seen as carrying a historical reminder of our
old name but moving on to reflect our new identity as an organisation
that is capable of undertaking research in land transport in general,
rather than simply road?related topics.
In fact, the Library is the only division of ARRB that retains
something akin to the old funding model. We employ 5.2 full-time
equivalent staff and purchase a comprehensive collection of books,
reports and journals covering the full gamut of land transport issues;
we also produce a variety of products and services that I will expand
upon presently. Most of the funding for this role comes to us from
ARRB's owners, and the rest is topped up by ARRB itself and by directly
generated revenues from subscriptions and memberships.
Our mission, then, is to provide ARRB's staff, the staff of our
owners, and indeed the broader transport community in Australia,
with a high?quality, relevant and comprehensive library and information
service on roads and land transport. It should be noted that each
of our owners has its own library; we do not in any way try to act
in competition with these individual libraries, but rather we see
our role as creating the sort of national collection, and offering
the sorts of products and services, that enable the owners' libraries
to minimise duplication of resources.
Our products and services
AUSTRALIAN TRANSPORT INDEX
Our flagship product is our large bibliographic database, the Australian
Transport Index (formerly called ROAD). The Index currently contains
more than 132,000 records for transport?related materials dating
back to long before ARRB was founded. The database has an Australian
bias, and is also very good for materials relating to our near neighbours
in New Zealand. Because of our strong overseas links, including
very good reciprocal collection development arrangements, we have
very strong collections of materials from overseas, especially the
United States, Great Britain, Canada, and parts of western Europe.
In terms of subject coverage, the database is clearly slanted towards
road?related matters, but it is increasingly good on topics such
as public transport, intermodal transport, rail transport, environmental
concerns, concrete, and structures.
The Index is a true index, as opposed to a library catalogue -
that is, we include analytical entries for relevant conference papers
and journal articles. It is also worth mentioning that the 130,000
records include more than 30,000 records from other libraries' catalogues.
This feature makes it a truly national database, one which both
offers a good depth of coverage and also promotes interlibrary loans
and document delivery throughout the nation.
We make the Index available to the public through the Informit
Online website, either via an annual subscription or on a pay-per-transaction
basis. The other format in which the Index is available is Informit's
'Engineering and Applied Science' CD-ROM, which is also subject
to a subscription.
TRANSPORT AND ROAD UPDATE
On average, we add about 350 records to our database each month
(more than 4,000 each year). As a current awareness service to the
transport community, we publish these monthly batches of records
in a bulletin called Transport and Road Update, details of which
can be seen on our web site. This product is available by subscription
only, and we have about 400 subscribers at the moment, 70 of whom
receive it as a PDF file via e?mail (the majority still prefer the
hard copy which we send them through the postal service).
DOCUMENT DELIVERY
Transport and Road Update generates a substantial traffic of interloans
and document delivery. To other libraries, we supply loans and photocopies
through the national and international interloans systems. Users
without a library can obtain photocopies from us if their request
conforms to the Copyright regulations; and they are able to borrow
from us if they join our library as a 'Borrower Member'. Roughly
half of all of our interloan transactions are supplies to our owners'
libraries (the Federal, State and Territory departments of transport
or roads), which I consider to be a clear indication that we have
a comprehensive collection that really does enable our owners to
minimize duplication of resources.
OTHER PRODUCTS
We also produce a number of one-off products that have proved to
be very useful to the transport communities of Australia and New
Zealand. One of these is our database thesaurus, which we use in
the creation of the Australian Transport Index and our other databases;
other local transport libraries use it for various purposes, including
searching our database, indexing in their own catalogues, and cataloguing-in-publication
data for the reports that they publish. It differs from the overseas
thesauri in that it is tailored to our specific subject needs, it
uses local terminology, and it deliberately avoids the post?coordinated
approach of the ITRD thesaurus.
Another product is the Road Safety Contacts Register, a regularly
updated directory of approximately 250 people and organisations
who work in the field of traffic safety in Australia and New Zealand,
as well as a variety of other small directories and databases.
INFORMATION AND ENQUIRY SERVICE
If the Australian Transport Index is our flagship product, our
flagship service is without doubt our enquiry and information service.
We answer a very large variety of requests for assistance, ranging
from very simple questions on specific statistics, right through
to complex literature searches. Anything quick and easy is handled
without a charge to the user, but literature searches carry a fee
of at least 100 Australian dollars (plus tax), depending on labour
hours and complexity. Because our own database is now so large and
comprehensive, it is very often the case that literature search
requests are met by means of our own database only, without the
need to consult the major international databases (ITRD and TRIS).
Increasingly, of course, in addition to the traditional literature?based
approach, answering reference enquiries involves the use of the
internet for both web sites and documents published online (usually
in PDF format). Our reference librarian maintains a remarkably comprehensive
and up?to?date list of web sites that she has found useful in her
own work. We make this list available to ARRB's research staff,
and we also send the list via e?mail to a small mailing list of
external people. I am regularly reminded of how valuable librarians'
information retrieval skills are in this age of the internet; there
have been numerous occasions in the past few years in which we have
been able to locate relevant information or documents very quickly
for people who have spent valuable time trying to make sense of
the internet before asking us to step in.
REFERRAL TO EXPERTS
In addition to the traditional library work outlined above, we
have a long history of referring requests from the general public
to the resident experts who work in ARRB's Research Division. Although
the organisation has changed markedly in recent years, and some
of our very capable research staff have moved on or retired, the
Library's reference staff still have at their disposal a solid resource
of senior specialists with a tremendous amount of knowledge and
corporate history. These 'gurus', as we like to call them, are invaluable;
if they don't know the answer to a question, they are nevertheless
very likely to be aware of someone else who does know the answer.
PIARC's World Interchange Network
As a very useful adjunct to our enquiry service, we have been an
active participant in PIARC's World Interchange Network since its
inception in the mid-1990s. WIN is not a literature search service,
but rather a person?to?person expert referral and technology transfer
network, and it has proved invaluable in putting Australians and
New Zealanders in touch with their peers overseas, especially in
Canada, the United States, Great Britain, France and Finland. WIN
has also opened up an important connection with South Africa, whose
climatic and topographical conditions are so close to those in many
parts of Australia. My own experiences with WIN, especially the
WIN meetings I have attended in many parts of the world, have left
me absolutely convinced of the usefulness not only of person?to?person
advice as a tool in the information armoury, but also of meeting
one's professional colleagues. The acquaintances I have made in
recent years, people from so many countries and walks of life, have
been vital in my work, as well as enjoyable and fulfilling. This
current conference on worldwide information resources is relevant
in its own right, but all the more so because of the friendships
and professional acquaintances it is fostering by bringing together
so many people under the one roof.
The TRANZINFO Group
Librarians in Australia are eligible to join the professional body,
the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA), and its
many and varied interest groups. Unlike the SLA, however, ALIA does
not have a transport division. Instead, the transport librarians
of Australia and New Zealand have a long history of cooperation
and informal annual meetings under the name of TRANZINFO (previously
TRANSLIB). TRANZINFO has its directory online, as well as a very
large union list of periodicals and series; both of these products
foster cooperation amongst TRANZINFO members and enable us to minimise
duplication of resources. Our next meeting will be held in Melbourne
in late August, and will be another opportunity to discuss matters
of interest to special librarians and matters pertaining to transport
information, and to renew acquaintances and meet some new members
of our small community.
Current and future issues and developments
A major issue for us at present is that of electronic information
sources. We have just recently started to add URLs to our database.
With this major step comes the prestige of looking as though we
are keeping up with the latest technology, as well as the associated
down side of having to run a link checker program every month or
two, to ensure that our database does not contain references to
web documents that have moved or been deleted.
As we are in many respects a national archive of transport research
materials, we are still very resistant to taking out subscriptions
to electronic journals. Because of the licensing agreements that
most electronic journal publishers insist upon, the content of those
journals can often be used in the library's host organisation only,
which is not at all suitable for a library like ours with a national
document delivery role. Also because of this role, we tend to download
PDF files of reports and the like, and print and bind them for holding
in our physical collection, rather than relying on the information
remaining indefinitely on the internet.
On a more general level, we do of course exist in the kind of uncertain
atmosphere that many special libraries have been experiencing for
several years. Our funding system is a year-by-year proposition,
which makes long-term planning a question of contingency plans rather
than a vision set in concrete. On the other hand, this kind of uncertainty
keeps us on our toes and makes us arguably a little more attuned
to giving excellent service to our client base, be they internal
or external. It is certainly the case, though, that if our funding
source starts to shrink, we will not be in a position to retain
5.2 staff members or to maintain the level of service that we are
currently proud to generate. Australia's low population density,
relatively small total population, and the very large distances
between our major cities, would prevent us from surviving comfortably
on a purely fee-for-service basis. This difficulty would also be
compounded by the fact that most of our customers are accustomed
to obtaining access to most information either without cost or at
a comparatively low cost.
Another issue for us at present is the expectation on the part
of some of our customer base that access to information resources
should be seamless. We are not currently set up to be able to provide
anything approaching seamless access. Our database is available
on the web, but only by subscription. Most of the records in our
database point to documents that exist in paper copy only, which
means that they can be obtained only by purchasing them or requesting
them on interloan. To digitise the large corpus of Australian (let
alone New Zealand) paper-based transport literature would be a mammoth
and expensive task that has not yet been mooted, and probably will
not be seriously considered in the foreseeable future. In other
words, our region's large and useful collection of transport literature
is comprehensively collected, expertly indexed to a high level of
detail, and available via interloan using an efficient system that
has worked very well for many years, but none of this satisfies
the growing desire for electronic, internet-based, seamless provision.
How can international users gain access to our information?
Given that we are such a long distance from most of the rest of
the world, and given that we are usually asleep when people in Europe
and North America are at work, the best way to contact us is via
fax or e-mail and the best way to find out full details of our capabilities
is via the web.
What follows is a list of web sites that will enable you to find
out more information about ourselves than I have been able to include
in this brief paper. I have also included the web sites of TRANZINFO
and ALIA, both of which I mentioned earlier in this presentation.
Although we are a fee-for-service information centre, we are always
happy to do our best to assist transport libraries in other parts
of the world. If you have a quick reference request or a straightforward
document delivery need, we will be happy to oblige without charge.
My contact details are as follows:
Andrew Pentecost
Manager, M G Lay Library
ARRB Transport Research Ltd
500 Burwood Highway
Vermont South VIC 3133
Australia
Phone +61(3)9881-1603, fax +61(3)9802-5502
My e-mail address is andrewp@arrb.com.au and the Library's main
e-mail address is info@arrb.com.au
Web sites that may be useful:
- For all details of our services, products, memberships and subscriptions,
check our web site: http://www.arrb.com.au/inf_serv/inf_serv.htm
- Our thesaurus can be found in PDF format on our site at http://www.arrb.com.au/inf_serv/thesaur.htm
- For subscriptions to our database via the internet or on CD-ROM,
the host is Informit Online (http://www.informit.com.au)
- For information on the TRANZINFO group of transport libraries
in Australia and New Zealand, visit the TRANZINFO web site: http://www.transport.sa.gov.au/tranzinfo/index.shtml
- For information on ALIA, the Australian Library and Information
Association, see their web site: http://www.alia.org.au
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