CAUL 70th Dinner
Address by Alex Byrne, President, CAUL
University of Sydney Club, 12 October, 1998
Page updated 19 October, 1998
Colleagues and Friends, Good Evening!
I am delighted that we have all been able to come together to celebrate CAUL’s achievements in this, its seventieth year.
I must note the presence of many guests, including a strong contingent from New Zealand. I have been told not to mention the Bledisloe Cup and the Rugby League test at LangPark on Friday evening.
It is particularly rewarding to have so many former members of CAUL join us. I must single out one, one who directly or indirectly has influenced all of use through his work, writings and wisdom. He has had the distinction of holding not one but two posts of University Librarian and was also, subsequently, Director-General of the National Library of Australia. He is, of course, Harry Bryan. It is fitting that we are dining at the institution to which he gave so much, the University of Sydney.
Harrison Bryan’s joined CAUL in 1954, twenty-six years after the first gathering of the then few Australian university librarians. That first meeting laid the foundations for the seventy years of cooperation and mutual support which we are celebrating tonight.
Meetings were at first infrequent, as noted in the memoir penned by Neil Radford which has been published as a special issue of AARL to mark this anniversary. However, they became more regular during the years of growth in the 1960s and early 1970s, eventually settling into the pattern of two a year which we continue today, marked always by the most important, and enjoyable, dinner. Some have indeed been memorable: who can forget a dark and stormy night in Perth?
I will not retrace the history, which most of us know well and which Neil has recounted so vividly in the memoir. I will focus briefly on the changes and challenges of the last decade and look forward to the coming ‘opportunities’ (as management gurus call them) for university libraries and for CAUL.
That decade has, of course, seen the doubling of the number of universities in Australia and the consequent doubling of CAUL’s membership. But it has also seen profound changes in the role and operations of CAUL.
In 1989, we heard that a review of Australian academic libraries was to be initiated. That review, under the chairmanship of Emeritus Professor Ian Ross, was far reaching, providing us with a benchmark from which we can evaluate the decade. However, it is not appropriate on such a festive occasion to ponder on the results of its recommendations. Tonight I wish only to mention the response of CAUL to news of the foreshadowed inquiry: "Outcomes? Why should we want outcomes? We haven’t asked for the review so why should we seek outcomes from it?""
A far cry from today! Today we not only respond to a multitude of inquiries, investigations and reports but are regularly consulted, both formally and informally, and invited to nominate representatives to an extraordinary range of committees and working parties. This change has come about through the repositioning of CAUL as the Council of Australian University Librarians in 1993 and the initiatives and dedication of many members, both current and past. I must single out a few:
- Derek Fielding and Neil Radford who, despite some misgivings about the "brave new world", shepherded in the new constitution;
- Steve O’Connor and Colin Steele, our Blue Heelers, who remind us of important issues we need to address;
- John Shipp, who led the new Council with distinction, beating the bath up through BelangaloStateForest so often that the NSW Police suspected an unhealthy interest in backpackers; and of course,
- Diane Costello, our first full time Executive Officer, who, over the past three and a half years, has politely and cheerfully guided errant, forgetful, neglectful and distant Presidents and committee members.
Thanks to their work, the support of all members and the wise decision to locate our office in Canberra, CAUL is now a vital element of both the library scene and the higher education sector. This was perhaps highlighted most dramatically at the end of 1996 when CAUL supported ACLIS, the National Library of Australia and IFLA in an intervention in the WIPO negotiations in Geneva. The intervention was spectacularly successful, stopping the copyright owners’ juggernaut in its tracks. We can thank the authors of that initiative, and particularly Warren Horton, for that success. Earlier work by Derek Fielding and subsequent work by ACLIS, our own Eve Woodberry (to whom we are duly grateful!), Tom Cochrane and Annabelle Herd has placed Australia in the forefront of the defence of fair dealing.
That leadership has been recognised internationally. Indeed, it is remarkable to note that, of the three key committees of IFLA, two are chaired by Australians and the third, on copyright, takes much of its intellectual leadership from another Australian, Annabelle Herd.
Our international links and influence go further than IFLA. Thanks to our seminal work on electronic information consortia, we are now warmly engaged with colleagues in the UK and US and are developing links with European colleagues, particularly in the Nordic countries, Germany and the Netherlands.
In performance management, we are likewise a leader, seen as a more relevant role model than the US for smaller countries.
But it is in Australia that we work and it is to Australian universities and Australian students that we owe our allegiance. How do we measure up?
Being a hard taskmaster, I couldn’t give CAUL a perfect score. But we have done well in many respects. The work of CEIRC, the CAUL Electronic Information Resources Committee, is exemplary. Our joint work on copyright is bearing fruit. Our initiatives in performance management and benchmarking are among the most advanced in the Australian higher education sector, thanks particularly to the work of Helen Hayes and Gaynor Austen. Our lobbying and recommendations have often been influential, with the notable exception of the West Report. But our efforts to safeguard the national information resource, which we have called the "Distributed National Collection", have borne little fruit, and much of that inedible.
We have achieved much. We have embraced the burgeoning electronic information opportunities. The National Bibliographic Database is close to comprehensive in respect of university libraries, catalogue interworking with Z39.50 is becoming universal, our document delivery system is very good and JEDDS/LIDDAS will make it the world leader. But, the core, fundamental issue is still the information resource itself.
We have dallied with the academies, danced around agreements, but still we cannot say that the national information resource next year will be as good as or better than it is this year. In fact we can be sure it will be the poorer. Although it is far from complete, the latest ANU survey of serials cancellations identifies nearly $4 million worth of cancellations this year. There has been little or no consultation between university libraries due to the exigencies of the situation, and the nation will be the poorer.
The reasons are not hard to fathom. Our universities are competitors and the pace and pressure of competition are accelerating. University libraries are not only resources serving research and teaching in their own universities but are also important features of institutional positioning. As Professor Ross reminded us, university libraries are at the heart of universities. The library is in many ways symbolic of all that the university aspires to be. In a world of competition that means that university libraries cannot operate outside their universities solely as elements of a national information resource. They cannot develop a rational, efficient network of information rich nodes to serve all universities. They must respond to the priorities and imperatives of their institutions.
That is CAUL’s dilemma as we move into our eighth decade and the new millennium. How can we reconcile our commitment to our universities with our responsibility to maintain and expand the national information resource (which we know to be vital to the interests of our universities)?
It is the dilemma of the essential need for collaboration in a highly competitive environment. It is the need for ‘landcare’ versus windfall market profits. IT is in that context that Janus has been proposed – as an initiative to promote collaboration in a hard nosed competitive environment.
Enough of seriousness. CAUL is first and foremost an association of peers, Australia’s university librarians. It exists to provide us with collegial, mutual support, stimulus, and encouragement. Associate! Support! And have a good night!
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