Annual report 2004/05

Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2005
ISSN 0311-449X

Output 1.2: Library, information services to support policy advice and publications

• Objectives
• Website services
• JV Barry Library services
• Data services
• Information services outputs 2004-05

Objectives

The objectives of the Information services group are:

• to ensure that AIC researchers maintain their competitive edge through access to the most up to date and relevant information;
• to facilitate AIC access to and management of corporate information and research data; 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.

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 Criminology Research Council, and acts as a gateway to information on crime and criminal justice in Australia. During the year the web team continued to fine tune the design of the website, to improve its user focus. As an example, crime statistics are now listed by subject first, rather than jurisdiction. All Information services sections continued to add and update web content.

The bibliography and results summary of empirical studies of the relationship between illicit drug use and property crime, mentioned last year, has been updated throughout the year. The database is at http://www.aic.gov.au/research/drugs/dpc/. Following work to link the catalogue and the website to produce this bibliography automatically, a further specialised bibliography, on arson, is now available at http://web.aic.gov.au/firstopac/searchFormArson.jsp, and work is progressing on specialty courts, and drugs and crime bibliographies.

New subject sections added to the website include:

• Indigenous justice
  http://www.aic.gov.au/topics/indigenous/;
• Property crime
  http://www.aic.gov.au/topics/property/;
• Arson
  http://www.aic.gov.au/topics/arson/;
• Transnational crime
  http://www.aic.gov.au/topics/transnational/; and
• Cybercrime
  http://www.aic.gov.au/topics/cybercrime/

One of the Institute's summer interns provided invaluable assistance in updating the section on illicit drugs and alcohol. Other updated sections include the Directory of Australian crime and criminal justice libraries; Statistics; Sport and crime; Older people and crime; Young people and crime; Corrections; Occupational violence; Rural crime; Policing; and Local government crime prevention.

The web team provided considerable assistance in updating relevant sections of the Australian Government Women's portal and Indigenous portal.

A new search engine, Panoptic, was installed on the AIC website in June. It is expected that users will find search results more accurate and useful as a result.

The external host for the AIC website was changed during the year. The current contract holder is Netspeed Communications.

Use of the website

The program used to monitor use of the AIC's website was changed during the year, to provide a more accurate picture of actual usage. Even with the slightly lower counts than last year that this involves, usage figures are higher than in previous years. The website currently averages more than 28,100 visitors per day. Australian crime: facts and figures is regularly the most commonly visited page on the web site.

Other websites

The Institute also manages websites for two other organisations:

• Campbell Collaboration's Crime & 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

A comprehensive redesign and reload of the Institute's intranet was undertaken during the year, with the new site launched in February. The redesign was guided by a focus group of AIC staff. The intranet is now much simpler to use and popular with staff. A major program of listing all current policies, with links to the policy documents in the document management system has resulted in a more effective service to staff.

As far as possible, information on the intranet is managed through the integrated library system employed in the AIC, so that details are recorded once only and updating is automatic. This applies to information about policies and guidelines; datasets; research projects; staff presentations; roundtables, as well as to traditional library material and CINCH records.

JV Barry Library services

Client services

The library provides an integrated information service to research and other staff, comprising both current awareness and research assistance, utilising our own collection and external services, in electronic and paper formats. The explosion of material available on the Internet has changed the nature of library work, which is now targeted to finding and filtering the available material to identify the credible and original work needed to support research activity and provide trusted resources to the Minister, the responsible stakeholder agencies, media and the public.

Information services held a planning day during the year to identify the key indicators and priorities for staying ahead of the rapidly changing information environment to ensure that information is managed effectively to enhance research performance. This is revealed in both current awareness and on-demand client service. Interest in the news and subject alerting service is strengthened, with the subject alerts now also available to selected stakeholders. As some other libraries have found, the number of ready reference inquiries is not increasing, but demand for in-depth client assistance throughout the life of a project has increased markedly. 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 so much of the Institute's work uses and relies on data, client services includes a data officer, who is active in the provision of a client service, primarily to research staff, but also to external inquirers. Client service work is thus based on an intertwining of public domain literature and data.

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, Indigenous justice and Juvenile justice a new alert on Evaluation was introduced. The focus of the Financial/Cyber Crime alert was changed to cover all types of cybercrime. A new staff alert was introduced for new books and reports received during the previous week.

Information Services continued to contribute to the National homicide monitoring program and the National deaths in custody program by monitoring press coverage of these topics in addition to the daily media alert for all staff.

Major reference work through the year is driven by AIC research activity, and was undertaken on the impact of AIC and CRC funded research; arson; vehicle violence; specialty courts; property crime; Indigenous drug issues; jury trials; victim treatment in sexual assault cases; fisheries crime; illicit markets; federal offenders and stalking.

The library responds to external requests for information as fully as resources permit. Averages of 46 public and 25 stakeholder requests are answered each month. Requests made to client services are monitored for trends, particularly in public inquiries, so that demand can be anticipated and provided for with additional information on the website. Crime and criminal justice statistics are the primary area for this activity.

Collection

The Institute continues to develop a high quality library-based collection of Australian and overseas material in print and electronic formats, comprising both gratis and purchased material. The subject focus of the collection reflects the requirements of the research program. In addition, the library collection covers Australasian criminological literature comprehensively.

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. We have taken part in seminars this year to consider the short and long term problems of access to digital material.

In many ways electronic reports are less straightforward to deal with than print ones. They are harder to find out about, elusive, and often on websites only transiently. There are issues with long term accessibility, whether downloaded or linked. Despite the advantages of Internet publishing, there is still a valuable body of material in hard copy, including the body of literature on which the discipline is based, and the library will continue to operate with a hybrid collection for the foreseeable future.

The library has changed its way of cataloguing material and contributing to the national union catalogue. All records are now created using a CINCH record format and subject headings, with records sent to the AIC catalogue, Informit for the CINCH database, and the National Library for the national union catalogue, as required. This change, which required substantial task redesign and testing with external recipients and the online public access catalogue, has resulted in efficiencies and savings in processing costs and times, and permitted the recording of additional types of material, such as policies and staff presentations. All cataloguing is now done in-house.

During the year 967 monographs were acquired in print or electronic format. Of these, 809 were gratis or exchange items and 158 were purchased. In the previous year, 1020 monographs were received; 739 being gratis or exchange items and 281 purchased. The smaller intake reflects both a sharper focus in collecting, and resource constraints.

At 30 June, the library was receiving 1364 current serials, of which 152 were paid subscriptions. These include journals, annual reports and report series. Wherever subscriptions are also available in electronic format, we subscribe to them, to give staff desktop access to the material they need. At the end of the financial year, over 85 titles are available electronically. The program of culling low use serials continued this year, with a reorganisation and rationalisation of the annual report collection.

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.

Following a reduction in such activity in recent years, the library has revived its participation in cooperative interlibrary lending schemes, where no charges are made for interlibrary loans. This facility has been extended to criminal justice libraries in Australia, and members of the ALIES (Emergency management), Gratisnet (Health) and GLASS (Social sciences) networks. The library utilises the National Library of Australia's Kinetica Document Delivery service for the rest of its interlibrary loans work. Full text fee for service databases are increasingly used for recent journal articles.

There continues to be a decline in some of these figures, reflecting the availability of public domain and paid electronic documents on the intranet and Internet. Material acquired on interlibrary loan for AIC researchers shows an increase, however, reflecting increased use of all library services and the wider range of subjects being researched, for example, fisheries, in which we have limited holdings.

The decrease in loans to staff reflects the increasing availability of material in electronic format. Staff use of this material through the catalogue is not recorded as a loan. Indicators of staff service, monographs and articles acquired on interlibrary loan, have increased this year.

Table 5: Loans and interlibrary loans

	2004-05	2003-04
Loans to Institute staff	808	1554
Loans to other libraries (inter-lending)	255	238
Photocopies issued to other libraries	512	560
Monograph titles acquired on inter-library loan	63	38
Photocopies acquired on inter-library loan	251	198

Data services

The Institute acquires or creates datasets for many of its research projects, and these are all recorded using the integrated library management system. All project outputs list the datasets numbers 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 & figures. This is the most popular section of the website and is also a widely distributed print publication.

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.

CINCH

The JV Barry Library makes a unique contribution to the dissemination of Australian 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 reached its 50,000th record during the year. 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. This is the last year that these products will be produced. Informit is changing its royalties payment model to reflect online database usage. From the end of June 2005, CINCH records will be available to external users through the upgraded library OPAC, accessible from the AIC website.

CINCH records have been reloaded this year; many records had been cleaned up during the year, and all data display problems related to new Informit software were resolved. During the year 1734 records were added, compared with 1635 records for the previous year. At the end of June 2005, the database contained over 50,820 records. The contractor for indexing for the CINCH database is Informed Sources Pty Ltd.

Contributions to Australian and international information networks

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. It was updated during the year, and will be expanded next financial year.

Internationally the JV Barry Library is an active member of the World Criminal Justice Libraries Network (WCJLN), making frequent contributions about AIC and other Australian activities to its listserv.

As their focus changes from emergency services to community safety, the library was invited to join the Australasian Libraries in the Emergency Services (ALIES) network this year, and participated in their annual workshop at Mount Macedon. Information services has offered to host a listserv for the police subsection of the group, and to include other criminal justice sector libraries as well.

Apart from the cooperative interlibrary lending networks mentioned earlier, the library also belongs to the Australian Government Libraries Information Network (AGLIN), a group covering government libraries at the federal level. As well as providing a communication mechanism for these libraries, this group makes a very practical contribution to efficient management by negotiating standard contracts with a panel of suppliers for subscriptions, monographs and services, to save member libraries from having to undertake this work individually to meet federal financial requirements.

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 other information of interest to the wider criminological community. Groups included in this information dissemination include Crimnet, WCJLN, the Virtual Clearinghouse on Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs, Indigoz and Australian Policy Online. A new network to which contributions are made is the Indigenous network established by Crime Prevention International.

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. As mentioned earlier, the library has changed the way it contributes records. The new mechanism was developed during the year, and has resulted in a successful transfer of relevant records to date. A file will now be sent monthly, rather than creating the records onto the National Library's system and downloading them weekly to the AIC. As a result of the savings this change has produced, the library will now be able to contribute records for individual AICrime reduction matters and Crime facts info releases.

The library has been invited by the National Library to participate in a project to ensure the capture of digital Australian Government publications. Investigations are continuing into whether this is best achieved through metadata harvesting from the AIC website or the catalogue records transfer method recently developed. The National Library has developed the project in response to concerns about continuing access to digital publications.

This year the JV Barry Library contributed 547 original cataloguing records to Kinetica, and holdings were added to 889 records. In the previous year, 645 titles had been added to Kinetica with original cataloguing, 367 existing Kinetica catalogue records were upgraded, and 342 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 2004-05

• Updating and publication of Australian crime: facts and figures 2004
• Updated statistics pages on AIC website
• Searchable arson database on AIC website; regularly updated drugs and property crime database
• Cleaned up CINCH records on AIC and Informit databases
• 1734 records added to CINCH
• Revised intranet launched
• 133 AIC policies added to intranet and updated
• 111 AIC research projects added to intranet and updated
• Around 150 AIC procedures, guidelines and tips added to intranet and updated
• 20 AIC staff presentations added to intranet and updated
• 11 AIC roundtables added to intranet and updated
• Current new books alert introduced
• New subject alert introduced, to make total of seven topics covered
• Daily press monitoring for NHMP and NDICP
• APMAB and Campbell Collaboration websites maintained
• Expanded and updated criminology topics on website

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