STATE LIBRARY OF VICTORIA - PUBLIC LIBRARIES UNIT
VICLINK REPORT - FEBRUARY 2004
Prepared by
Brendan Fitzgerald (Manager Public Libraries Unit)
Debra Rosenfeldt (Statewide Public Library Projects Manager)
Frances Savage (Online Projects Coordinator)
Andrew Cunningham ( e-diversity and content infrastructure solutions )
Nicole Lowndes (Project Officer)
Wendy Quihampton (Project Officer)
Sue Ward (Project Officer)
Kirsty Wilson (Project Officer)
Beata Wacek (Events and Business Support)
- State Library of Victoria – update
1.1 Library Board of Victoria Advisory Committee on Public Libraries
The ACPL has made considerable progress on the ‘Framework for Collaborative Action’, which outlines the way in which the Board, the State Library and the public library network will work together over the next five years. Viclink/CPLG have been represented in the development of this document by Lynne Makin, Barb Horn, Chris Payne and Adele Keneally. The ACPL aims to have a draft of the Framework ready for distribution to representatives’ constituents and comment following its 9 March meeting. It hopes to finalise the Framework in April and present it to the Library Board of Victoria for approval in May.
1.2 150th at the State Library of Victoria and VICNET’S 10th anniversary
Events to celebrate both events are under way. VICNET is planning a couple of events with key stakeholders including a one-day conference tentatively set down for 2 July focused on the past, current and future work of VICNET, community networking and the role of ICT in the information and library sector. Other activities include an event with VICNET’s clients and partners over the ten years which will include all public libraries, an event to recognise the contribution of VICNET’s many volunteers and an event for current and former staff of VICNET.
1.3 Robert D Williamson Award by VALA
Gary Hardy and Stuart Hall were jointly awarded the Robert D Williamson Award by VALA for their work with VICNET and Victorian public libraries. The Award was announced at last week’s VALA Conference dinner, attended by some 220 Conference delegates. This prestigious award is made every two years by the Committee of the Victorian Association for Library Automation Inc ‘to an individual or organisation who or which has, in the opinion of the judging panel, made outstanding contribution to the development of information technology usage in Australian libraries and has demonstrated potential to positively and significantly influence development in information technology usage within libraries.’
1.4State Librarian’s Program of Public Library Visits
Anne-Marie Schwirtlich took advantage of the relative quiet of January to catch-up with library service managers at Mitchell, Maribyrnong, Bayside and Central Highlands library services. Don’t forget to add her to your invitation list for openings or other special events. She is keen to accept and will if she can.
- Public Libraries Unit - Update
2.1Public Libraries Unit Staff
Damian Tyquin has resigned to take up the position of Co-ordinator of the Port Phillip Library Service. Damian’s position as a Project Officer will be filled very soon. There has been a slight delay in advertising the position, as the State Library has adopted a new banding system and as position’s become vacant they are reviewed and re-banded. We are currently in the review process.
Sue Ward joins the Public Libraries Unit as the .5 Project Officer for the Middle Years Information Literacy Partnership Project, until late July.
Lynette Lewis from Yarra Plenty Regional Library Service is keeping the content aspects of Victoria’s Virtual Library operating.
2.2PLU visits to Public Library Staff meetings
The staff of the PLU has begun a round of presentations to library branch and staff meetings to introduce the new Unit and its activities to frontline public library staff. Libraries visited in November/December include Whitehorse-Manningham, Mildura, Campaspe, High Country and Goulburn Valley.
- Public Libraries Unit - Projects and Activities Progress Report
3.1Statewide Public Library Development Projects 2003/2004 –
- Libraries Building Communities Project
Debra Rosenfeldt has taken over the management of this project on a day-to-day basis, following Damian Tyquin’s departure. Carol Oxley has also been employed on a casual basis to assist with the project. Carol was the consultant who worked with the Advisory Committee and Viclink to scope the project and write the Specification. She knows it well and has considerable experience in working for State Government on community building and assessment projects. Her knowledge and expertise will be invaluable at this critical stage of the project, drawing the research findings together into a suite of compelling reports. The research phase of this huge project has been almost completed. Data has been gathered from 9,000 completed online surveys, 400 telephone surveys, 50+ face-to-face interviews and 24 focus groups. Our research company, New Focus, is currently working on gathering together the industry Best Practice Case Studies. The final reports are scheduled for publication in late April/early May.
- SWIFT Initiative Phase II
Phase II of the SWIFT Initiative has been completed. Public relations firm CPR was contracted to develop and implement a communication strategy about the findings of the SWIFT business case to all stakeholders, including the public library sector, local and state government. A request for funding of stage one of SWIFT’s implementation has been made, by Viclink President Lynne Makin, to Minister’s Brumby, Broad, Thwaites and Thompson. The matter has been referred to the Ministerial Advisory Council on Public Libraries. The Project Advisory Committee is satisfied that CPR has done all that it can do for the project, within the prescribed parameters. Members of the Project Advisory Committee will continue to build on CPR’s work by holding briefing meetings with relevant MP’s, senior bureaucrats and local government representatives.
- Statewide Marketing Project
Nicole Lowndes is now managing this Project, following Damian Tyquin’s resignation. The first @yourlibrary campaign, ‘Holiday Fun’, was enthusiastically supported by 43 library services during January. Evaluation of the program is currently being undertaken. The next campaign will be ‘Your Future’, in March, followed by ‘Just Ask’ in May. Two @yourlibrary television commercials have been produced and will be screened on Channel 10 and the Southern Cross Network as Community Service Announcements. Leader Newspapers will sponsor the campaign in the metropolitan area and advertisements are being trialed in The Weekly Times to reach rural areas. A Marketing Seminar for public libraries staff is being planned for May, as are PR activities for Library and Information Week. The Project Advisory Committee wishes to defer work on a new Statewide Marketing Plan in order to take strategic advantage of the findings of the Libraries Building Communities reports.
Statewide Training Project
In the first half of the financial year, thirteen unique courses were offered, providing 30 days of training, with 416 attendees. Highlights of the Training Calendar from January to July are courses in Library Display, Events Marketing and Management, Managing Drug and Alcohol Affected Customers, Dealing with Difficult Frontline Situations, Reference Interviews, Staff Supervision, Project Management, Train Small Groups, Advanced Internet Searching, and Cross Cultural Awareness. Forty-two library services have taken up the offer of the in-house Visual Merchandising Course and all 44 services have indicated their intention of using the $2000 IT Skills Training Grant. Six Victorian public librarians will attend the Aurora Leadership Institute, with their places fully funded by the Training Project. On 23 April the Training Project will run a full-day seminar ‘The 4C-able Future: Challenges of Community, Consumer and Career’. All library services should now have received the new and completely revised and updated edition of the HR Manual.
- Writers on the Road
From January to July the adult stream of the program will tour to West Gippsland, Mildura, Swan Hill, Ganawarra and Glen Eira library services. The youth stream of the program will tour to Hobsons Bay, Port Phillip, East Gippsland, Maribyrnong, Boroondara, Yarra Plenty, Monash, Kingston and Hume library services. Participating writers include Isobelle Carmody, Jane Clifton, Sonya Hartnett, Elliot Perlman, Michael Pryor and Terry Denton. A reminder that the report on the Review of Writers on the Road is available on the Infonet (
- Middle Years Information Literacy Partnership Project
This project, to develop an Information Literacy toolkit for public libraries, is about to get underway with the recent appointment of the Project Officer after a lengthy recruitment process. Sue Ward had her first meeting with the Project Advisory Committee last week and over the next month will visit several library services across the State to get a sense of their resources and what they would like to see coming from the project.
- Local History Digitisation Project (PictureVictoria)
Wendy Quihampton is now managing this Project following Damian Tyquin’s resignation. The PictureVictoria database development is now almost complete. Over 600 data records and images from Maribyrnong Library Service have been loaded for testing, and now require editing. Once the database construction is complete, these records can be amended in-house at Maribyrnong. Further pilot data will be sought from Boroondara and Central Highlands library services. Other technicalities to be finalised include Terms and Conditions for participating libraries, membership and requirements of PictureAustralia, and copyright agreements and statements. PictureVictoria should be ready to launch to coincide with Picture Australia’s 1,000,000th image, expected around May/June 2004.
3.2Victoria’s Virtual Library ( )
Multimedia Victoria has funded a print run of posters and new bookmarks to further promote the site. Contact the PLU if your need more. The arrangement to keep the content aspects of the VVL up to date is in place with Yarra Plenty Regional Library Corporation to be reviewed in June 2004. The Reference Bookshelf has proven extremely popular with over 17,000 links being taken from the reference Bookshelf in the past 6 months. The Victorian Biography resource Centre has had over 2000 links from it. Overall site Statistical results are at In summary the hits and user sessions for each month from June 2000 to January 2004 are as follows
Table 1 – Hits on Victoria’s Virtual Library since launch– Raw Data
VVL hitsMonth / 2000 / 2001 / 2002 / 2003 / 2004
January / 143,601 / 192,285 / 768,164 / 525,843
February / 170,014 / 203,634 / 836,926
March / 198,500 / 245,347 / 1,083,752
April / 178,375 / 261,650 / 923,944
May / 205,086 / 263,412 / 1,186,002
June / 62,851 / 176,641 / 200,431 / 876,328
July / 80,570 / 198,481 / 243,931 / 1,019,282
August / 102,944 / 230,480 / 270,577 / 692,953
September / 137,633 / 204,060 / 241,195 / 545,065
October / 113,655 / 203,489 / 248,609 / 553,476
November / 130,024 / 192,009 / 238,883 / 501,718
December / 101,438 / 156,593 / 369,095 / 401,341
Total / 729,115 / 2,259,330 / 2,979,049 / 9,388,951 / 525,843 / 15,882,288
Table 2 – User Sessions on VVL since September 2001 – Monthly Usage
Month / 2001 / 2002 / 2003 / 2004January / 7,952 / 11,195 / 11,170
February / 8,501 / 11,211
March / 9,572 / 13,241
April / 10,036 / 12,241
May / 10,646 / 14,678
June / 8,505 / 12,253
July / 9,861 / 12,253
August / 11,078 / 12,724
September / 7,637 / 10,079 / 12,805
October / 7,336 / 10,281 / 12,896
November / 7,732 / 9,718 / 11,668
December / 6,795 / 8,521 / 9,829
Total / 29,500 / 114,750 / 146,994 / 11,170 / 302,414
Total visits 302,414 since calculations commenced in September 2001. Please note that since the redesign of the Virtual Library, the page has attracted more "hits". This is due to the fact that it is a dynamic site, and more scripting has added to the number of hits. The number of visits is a far more reliable way of measuring traffic on the site.
3.3Ask a Librarian and Hot Topics– VICNET
Ask a librarian is progressing as normal within the State Library doing this month’s questions. This operates on a monthly rotating basis and so far over three years ten libraries have contributed.
Hot Topics current affairs database to date has 169 topics in the database. Some of these are old however the database keeps all topics as the nature of current affairs is generally cyclical. Over 9000 links have been followed from the Hot Topics database since approx March 2003 with the most popular topics being:
Asylum seekers 622Australia/USA Free Trade104
Bali Blast164Bushfires523
Capital Punishment165Child Obesity195
Christmas159Cloning170
Drought 313Drugs in Sport133
Easter 125Euthanasia116
Gene Therapy323Governor General170
Housing affordability144Jaidyn Leskie105
Moonlight Cinema274PAN Pharmaceuticals 133
SARS 297Space Shuttle – Columbia106
Terrorism166Tertiary Education195
War On Iraq1028Web Censorship130
Water Usage365
If your library would like to take part in either of these collaborative activities or you would like to know in more detail what is involved please contact either Frances Savage at the PLU in VICNET or Lynette Lewis at Yarra Plenty Regional Library Service.
3.4 Statewide Network Infrastructure Project (SNIP)
Victorian public library branches has closed. Fifteen libraries have applied for the funding with the fund oversubscribed by approx $250,000. Frances Savage is managing this project. The cross-government panel (MultiMedia Victoria, Department for Victorian Communities and Arts Victoria) will be meeting shortly to decide on the successful applicants.
This Project also has $26,000 to support the upgrading and replacement of public access printers in metropolitan library services. VICNET will be investigating a bulk purchase to maximise the money.
3.5Tomorrow @yourlibrary Seminars
The PLU is organising 5 @yourlibrary one-day industry seminars for 2004. In effect the public library industry in Victoria will have a 5-day conference spread across the year. These will be held on Fridays, as this seems to give staff from country libraries in particular the best opportunity to attend.
The first of these was the 2nd Open Road conference held on Friday 6 February and featured many speakers from a range of organisations and States. Recognition and thanks to:
- Beata Wacek who organised a smooth conference for 150 attendees,
- John Murrell for an excellent job of MC’ing the day,
- Patti Manolis and Barb Horn for presenting papers and chairing panels so ably.
The conference attracted people from all states and a number from overseas.
3.6SCOPE project for people with complex communication needs
SCOPE, which was formally the Spastic Society of Victoria, has obtained a grant from the DHS to investigate, identify and obtain appropriate communication aides to assist staff in public libraries dealing with people with complex communication problems. The grant also has an awareness-training component for frontline public library staff.