Bulletin

Issue: May 2004

News

Library service speeds research

Research in Australian universities has been made easier with a new web-based service that enables postgraduate scholars and university staff to obtain books and documents more simply and quickly from their campus libraries - and from libraries in Australia and overseas.

La Trobe University is one of the first in Australia to launch the new interlending and document delivery system, the result of an Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee project that oversaw development of the software for the new system during the past ten years.

The University Library has implemented Fretwell-Downing Informatics VDX (Virtual Document eXchange) software as a member of a consortium of several Australian university libraries.

La Trobe University Deputy Librarian, Barbara Paton, served as Chair of the VDX Users Group for Australia and New Zealand.

The service was launched recently at La Trobe University's main Melbourne campus at Bundoora by Vice-Chancellor, Professor Michael Osborne.

It has been implemented at La Trobe University libraries in Albury-Wodonga, Bendigo and Bundoora and can also be accessed by eligible staff and students at all other campuses, as well as from off campus and offshore.

Professor Osborne says La Trobe University has always had an innovative approach to its library and has been to the forefront of many new library developments.

'It is another step forward in the important task of making access to information more easily and widely available.'

The service gives details of the holdings of libraries across the world and enables access to the University's own library catalogue as well as the catalogues of the National Library of Australia and the US Library of Congress - all via a single web page.

It automatically tracks and reports on the availability and status of requests and then generates email alerts to advise scholars that documents are available on their desktop, or that books have arrived from lending libraries.

The significance of the service for Australian libraries can be gauged from the fact that, for example, last year there were requests for 19,000 items for external library and document supply services from La Trobe staff and students alone. La Trobe supplied about 12,000 items from its collections to other libraries.

As well as improving resource sharing between the research libraries and state libraries, the system helps libraries manage their interaction with users and organisations supplying documents.

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