Annual report 2003/04

ISSN 0311-449X
Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2004

Output 1.2 Library, information and reference services

Objectives

The objectives of the Information services group are

• to deliver to AIC researchers and management a comprehensive information base of published material, research data, research project and administrative information; and
• to provide our stakeholders with information about the work and output of the AIC and a gateway to the wider world of crime and criminal justice information.

These objectives support the institute's delivery of budget output 1.2 - Library, information and reference services to support policy advice and publications.

Core activities include:

• website services;
• JV Barry library services;
• data services;
• CINCH database of Australian crime and criminal justice information; and
• contributions to Australian and international information networks.

Website services

Internet sites

The institute's website (www.aic.gov.au) provides information about the work of the institute and the CRC, and acts as an internet gateway to information on crime and criminal justice in Australia.

During the year the web team worked on a complete redesign of the AIC and CRC website, including:

• moving all pages to sit within a common template so that future style changes will be implemented across the site automatically;
• completing metadata coding for all relevant pages;
• adding the full text of all past AIC publications and conference papers, where available;
• ensuring compliance with Australian Government branding requirements; and
• ensuring compliance with website accessibility standards.

The revised website was launched in June 2004.

In addition to the website redesign project, Information services continued to add and update web content. The website now includes a bibliography of empirical studies of the relationship between illicit drug use and property crime, funded by the Australian Government National Illicit Drug Strategy. This will be updated automatically as new material is added to the catalogue. The database is at http://www.aic.gov.au/research/drugs/dpc/

One of the institute's summer interns compiled information for a section on Indigenous justice.

Updated sections include the directory of researchers in Australian crime and criminology, restorative justice, small business crime, fraud and corrections statistics.

The web team provided assistance in the compilation of relevant sections of the Australian Government Indigenous portal, one of a number of web-based portals compiled by the Australian Government to provide links to information about issues of interest, including environment, health, science, resources etc.

An internal audit of the website was undertaken during the year. Action has been taken on most of its recommendations, with the remainder, mostly concerned with IT security and with online publishing, due for completion during 2004-05.

Use of the website

Use of the AIC's website, measured in terms of requests for pages, currently averages more than 27,400 visitors per day, almost 10,000 more than at the same time last year. Australian crime: facts and figures is regularly the most commonly visited page on the website.

Other websites

The institute also manages websites for two other organisations:

• Campbell Collaboration's Crime and Justice Coordinating Group <www.aic.gov.au/campbellcj> The Campbell Crime & Justice Coordinating Group is an international network that prepares, updates and rapidly disseminates systematic reviews of high quality, evidence-based research conducted worldwide on effective methods to reduce crime and delinquency or improve justice; and
• Australasian Police Multicultural Advisory Bureau (APMAB) www.apmab.gov.au

APMAB's mission is to facilitate coordination, cooperation and consultation among the police jurisdictions in Australasia and with ethnic communities to provide a professional response to the challenges of cultural and linguistic diversity.

These websites are all managed by institute staff and operate on an externally located web server.

AIC intranet

The focus of work on the intranet this year has been on updating and improving content in preparation for a major redesign of the style and management of the site in the coming financial year. A major program of adding all current policies has resulted in a more effective service to staff.

Specifications were written and work has been continuing for developing the integrated library management system as a searchable organisational knowledge base on the intranet, covering external and internal information sources.

JV Barry library

Client services

The library provides an integrated information service to research and other staff, comprising both current awareness and research assistance, utilising its own collection and external services, in electronic and paper formats.

The library keeps researchers up to date with new information in their areas of interest as it appears and undertakes literature searches and other reference work to support the work undertaken in individual research projects.

As well as notifying researchers individually as new material is published, the library produces a number of subject alert services. In addition to the existing alerts covering crime prevention, drugs, and people smuggling and trafficking, new alerts in the areas of Indigenous justice and juvenile justice were introduced, and the one on money laundering was expanded to cover financial and cybercrime.

A media alert was introduced during the year, to ensure that staff are aware of developments in the press in their subject areas.

Information services contributes to the National homicide monitoring and Deaths in custody projects by monitoring press coverage of these topics.

Major reference tasks through the year dealt with drugs and property crime, publications arising from CRC grants, arson, fraud cases, child pornography on the Internet, information and communication technology offences, and road rage.

Starting in 2004, Information services has introduced information sessions for AIC staff on the services available to them. Sessions so far have covered access to electronic journals, the CINCH database, new dataset procedures, and searching the catalogue.

The library responds to external requests for information as fully as resources permit. Averages of 30 public and 20 stakeholder requests are answered each month.

Collection

The institute continues to develop a high quality library-based collection of Australian and overseas material in print and electronic formats. The subject focus of the collection reflects the requirements of the research program. In addition, the library collection covers Australian criminological literature comprehensively, comprising both gratis and purchased material. The library is increasingly collecting electronic documents, either downloading them to an intranet repository or providing links to reliable external sites. The library is also converting individual articles in the collection from paper to electronic copy.

A review of business processes carried out in November and December 2003 laid the groundwork for streamlining cataloguing and indexing processes while ensuring the continuation of records to both Kinetica and CINCH. The review confirmed the suitability of the FIRST integrated library management system as an information management package for institute-wide sources. The consultant for the review was Libraries Alive! Pty Ltd.

During the year 1,020 monographs were acquired. Of these, 739 were gratis or exchange items and 281 were purchased. In the previous year 1,256 monographs were received, 938 being gratis or exchange items and 318 purchased.

At 30 June, the library was receiving 1,427 current serials, of which 175 were paid subscriptions. These include journals, annual reports and report series. The program of culling low-use serials continued this year, as did the serials binding program.

A total of 1,214 monographs and 200 serials were catalogued. The cataloguing contract is held by Informed Sources Pty Ltd.

Loans and interlibrary loans

The library provides loans, interlibrary loans and document delivery services founded on partnerships and interlibrary cooperation. For AIC staff these activities enable the library to deliver publications, documents and information that are not available in the institute's own collection. The library utilises the National Library of Australia's Kinetica document delivery service for the majority of the institute's interlibrary loans work.

There is a decline in the number of loans. This is common across all types of libraries as users and libraries are taking advantage of public domain and paid electronic documents on the intranet and internet.

Table 5: Summary of library lending and borrowing

	2003-04	2002-03
Loans to institute staff	1,554	2,517
Loans to other libraries (interlending)	238	438
Photocopies issued to other libraries	560	601
Monograph titles acquired on interlibrary loan	38	39
Photocopies acquired on interlibrary loan	198	228

Data services

The institute acquires or creates datasets for many of its research projects. This year, with the establishment of a data section, Information services completed preliminary work on the establishment of a register of datasets and implemented a recording scheme using the integrated library management system. Information is now available on all such datasets, and all project outputs list the datasets used. This information is now used to leverage the data collected to deliver client data services where appropriate.

The Information services group updates the statistics and commentary for Australian crime: facts and figures. This is the most popular section of the website. Beginning this year the process has changed from a one-off, annual exercise to a continuous process throughout the year as statistics are released, which should allow a more timely production of future reports.

As statistics are released throughout the year, the website statistics section is also updated, to ensure that the website is kept up to date with current information.

The establishment of a data section has allowed the delivery of a more dynamic client service, both internally and externally, based on published statistics from different sources and the AIC's own datasets.

CINCH

The JV Barry library makes a unique contribution to the dissemination of criminal justice information by producing CINCH, the Australian criminology database. This bibliographic database is an index of Australian subject matter relating to crime, crime prevention and criminal justice. The bibliography is particularly valued for the abstracts it includes.

CINCH is available online through Informit Online, an Internet-based information service from RMIT Publishing at www.informit.com.au

CINCH is also available on CD-ROM as part of the AUSTROM disc. In addition, a selection of CINCH records is now also available as part of two other CD-ROM compilations from RMIT Publishing; ATSIROM and AUSThealth.

Informit changed its database software during the year. Significant work was undertaken to clean up records, reconcile subject indexing discrepancies and conform to Informit's new requirements. During the year 1,635 records were added, compared with 1,894 records for the previous year. At the end of June 2004, the database contained over 49,400 records.

The contractor for indexing for the CINCH database is Informed Sources Pty Ltd.

Contributions to Australian and international information networks

Within Australia, the Information services group maintains close links with the AGD and other relevant agencies and departments.

A directory of Australian and New Zealand criminal justice libraries is maintained on the institute website at http://www.aic.gov.au/services/directories/libraries/index.html

Internationally the JV Barry library is an active member of the World Criminal Justice Library Network, making frequent contributions to its listserv. The manager of Information services attended this body's conference in Slovenia in June.

Electronic dissemination of information

Information services staff regularly contribute criminal justice information to a variety of listservs and other electronic discussion lists. The information disseminated includes details of institute publications, services and activities, and also other information of interest to the wider criminological community. Groups included in this information dissemination include Crimnet, the World Criminal Justice Library Network, the Virtual Clearinghouse on Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs, Indigoz and Australian Policy Online.

Cooperative cataloguing

The institute has continued to make a significant cataloguing contribution to the National Library's Kinetica service. The service, which is an essential part of the operation of hundreds of Australian libraries, facilitates the creation and sharing of quality cataloguing data for library materials, acts as the central resource in an efficient interlibrary loans service, and supports the provision of reference services.

This year the JV Barry library contributed 645 original cataloguing records to Kinetica, 367 records were upgraded, and holdings were added to 342 records. In the previous year, 402 titles had been added to Kinetica with original cataloguing, 267 existing Kinetica catalogue records were upgraded, and 968 holdings were added.

Assistance to Papua New Guinea

The JV Barry library continued to assist the Papua New Guinea Attorney-General's Department by identifying criminal justice and criminological material in Australia to build and supplement the existing collection in the department's library in Papua New Guinea.

Information services outputs 2003-04

• implementation of a register and searchable database of AIC datasets;
• updating and publication of Australian crime: facts and figures 2003;
• updated statistics on AIC website;
• searchable drugs and property crime database on AIC website;
• cleaned up CINCH records on AIC and Informit databases;
• 1,635 records added to CINCH;
• specifications for revised intranet developed;
• record structures developed and implemented for adding AIC submissions, projects, presentations and datasets to the intranet;
• AIC policies added to intranet and updated;
• news alerts introduced;
• current serials alert introduced;
• two new subject alerts introduced, to make a total of six topics covered;
• staff information sessions introduced;
• press monitoring for NHMP and NDICP;
• revised AIC and CRC website launched;
• APMAB and Campbell Collaboration websites maintained; and
• expanded and updated criminology topics on website.