A National Library for Australian Educational Research

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A National Library for Australian Educational
Research

• Sue Clarke
• Manager, Cunningham Library
• Australian Council for Educational Research
• 27th IATUL Annual Conference Porto, Portugal,
• May 22-25th, 2006

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Strategic Environment

• Researchers require access to research carried
  out by colleagues worldwide in refereed scholarly
  journals, books, theses, research reports etc
• Changes to strategic environment for scholarly
  research in education
• International open access movement, emergence of
  digital repositories, impact on online publishing
  internet services including the social web
• ACER is placed strategically to provide access to
  educational research information both nationally
  and internationally, as it is a major research
  and publishing organisation

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Overview

• Cunningham Library
• Provides access to information to support
  research
• Pays a major role in disseminating research
• The Library is embedded in the learning and
  research process by
• Having a close alignment of corporate and library
  goals
• Through its development and dissemination of
  Knowledge-based products and services
• Some issues and challenges facing online
  publishing, information research and retrieval
  will be highlighted

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Australian Council for Educational Research
(ACER)

• Australias premier educational research
  organisation
• An independent, not for profit organisation since
  1930
• Creates and disseminates knowledge and tools to
  improve learning in the context of lifelong
  learning
• International orientation to work with offices in
  India, Dubai and Cambridge, UK
• Goal is to improve outcome for learners through
  reliable, scientific research and dissemination
  of a
• www.acer.edu.au

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ACER Research Programs

• Assessment and reporting
• Early Childhood Education
• Learning Processes and Contexts
• National International Surveys
• Systems and School Testing
• Teaching Learning
• Transitions Economics of Education

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Australian Council for Educational Research
(ACER)
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www.acer.edu.au
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Australian Council for Educational Research
(ACER) Cunningham Library
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Australian Council for Educational Research
(ACER) Cunningham Library

• Build and maintain an information resource which
  supports policy development, research, practice
  and debate in the field of education
• Provide information access to the education
  community on research and practice in the field
  of Australian education
• Compile and maintain the Australian Education
  Index and other knowledge based products such as
  the Australasian Education Directory, the
  Australian Thesaurus of Educational Descriptors

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www.acer.edu.au/library
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Libraries and Research at ACERHistorical context

• History of ACER Library is linked to the history
  Australian librarianship (outlined in paper)
• Library has always been embedded in research by
  being both a publisher and a disseminator of
  research
• The Library collects and disseminates information
  by building databases and then re-using and
  repackaging educational information in a variety
  of products.

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Information Management Diagram
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Australian Education Index
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Australasian Education Directory
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Australian Thesaurus of Educational Descriptors
(ATED)
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Research in International Education
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Online Content - Full Text EdResearch Online
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EdNA Online
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Education Research Theses (ERT)

• Doctoral Masters
• Theses

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Summary - challenges for Information Providers

• Professional and research organisations have a
  range of services available to their members and
  stakeholders
• Explore how ACER fits into the national
  information infrastructure by continually
  developing new business models according to
  customer needs changes in scholarly publishing
• Researchers want less places to look when finding
  information and / or
• Federated searching across content open url
  compliance

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Some Questions??

• The role of information providers in the Google
  web world if people want to find information,
  will they just use Google (and find what they
  want?) or go to a systematically indexed
  database?
• The role of organised systematically indexed
  material and constructed thesauri, taxonomy like
  Australian Thesaurus of Educational Descriptors
  (ATED), vs free text searching of full text
• With more and more material being made open
  access, will people pay for information?
• Collaborative web space users as providers of
  information in My web, wikis blogs, RSS feeds
  

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Information Dissemination new technologies

• New tools emerging that store and disseminate
  information
• Examples include use of RSS feeds for Library
  alerting services which are disseminated in a
  regular way, such as new acquisitions lists / or
  bringing information to the website from other
  website, e.g. EdNA
• An idea could be the use of webblog technology to
  create an Australian Education Webblog

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ACER Research Repository
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Conclusion

• ACER is strategically placed to work with the
  educational research community and collaborative
  partners to explore new business models, develop
  metadata and document repositories to avoid
  duplication of effort and fragmented collections
  of resources
• Examples have been provided of some initiatives
  with Informit, education.au, and the education
  community
• We welcome collaborative discussions with people
  here today so please let us know if you have any
  ideas!

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Contact

• Sue Clarke
• clarke_at_acer.edu.au
• www.acer.edu.au