Pacific Twinning Project

This may already be familiar to those of you who attended the BIALL Conference last year in Edinburgh, but to me it was all very new and exciting.
The project began in the 1980s in a very small way when librarians in Australia began sending old law books and law reports to the under-resourced Court libraries of the Pacific Islands.

Through relationships formed at international conferences and symposiums the idea of twinning was discussed and in 1991 it was agreed that a Library in the Pacific should have just one contact in Australia, a twin who would be able to form a deeper understanding of their needs and provide tailored assistance.

Over time the people involved began to learn more about the needs of their Pacific colleagues. They discovered it was more than just books that were in desperately short supply. Communication was difficult, in many cases there was no internet or fax and telephones were expensive, libraries were unorganised and underfunded and there was a lack of professionally trained staff. These problems were set in the context of much wider issues; poor natural resources, political unrest and the threat of natural disasters. It's hard for the Government to justify the cost of a subscription to the All England Reports when the country has just been devastated by war or a volcanic eruption.

The lack of resources meant that many lawyers were arguing cases from the knowledge in their heads and had no access to recent case law that might have a profound influence on their client's case. (In one instance, in Fiji, a life sentence was reduced thanks to information received by the High Court from their twin library at the High Court of Australia. In this case the project was literally a life saver.)

Spurred on by this knowledge, the Australian Twins put huge amounts of time and effort into the project. Contacts were established between Twins, then visits were organised where Australian Librarians were able to offer help and advice in situ; setting up and training on new cataloguing systems and helping to rebuild damaged collections (in some cases even building the shelves). Legal publishers such as Thompson and Lexis/Nexis were approached for gifts of books, CDs and computers. Development of the PacLII project, an initiative of the University of the South Pacific School of Law with assistance from AustLII, has also helped by providing a wide range of legal material online. See http://www.paclii.org/.

Legal Research Training

This session brought together the training experiences of staff in both Universities, ALLG and Law Firms. It focused on the collaborative project between the University of Melbourne, ALLG (Victoria Division) and law firm Phillips Fox to develop a module for librarians to acquire Legal Information Skills online.

For Nicki McLaurin Smith, Head, Legal Resource Centre, University of Melbourne, the main problem with teaching Legal Information skills is the sheer size of her target audience. The University has 450+ new students each year! Information staff had difficulty resourcing traditional chalk and board style sessions. They also felt the need to keep up with the needs of IT literate students who increasingly asked for online tutorials which could be completed in their own time, and even from home.

This led to the development of an online Legal Information Skills Tutorial (LIST). A series of interactive modules which equated to 6 hours of class time. LIST uses a mixture of movies, textual guides, simulated searches and quizzes which can be worked through at the student’s own pace. At the end of each module there are exercises and a research scenario which can be completed and submitted online.
The project proved such a success that funding and support were granted for an advanced legal information skills course (ALIS) to be developed.

This was all very interesting to the ALLG (Victoria) members who organise training in legal information skills for librarians. Although they recognised the networking benefit of bringing delegates together in person for training, there also knew that many people found it difficult to travel and places on courses were limited. They decided to collaborate with the University of Melbourne to develop online training for 'Finding the Law' or FLO. They started with a case law module which was incorporated in the ALLG’s Finding the Law session for the first time in July 2004.
FLO was used in concert with live trainers and each trainee was able to follow the session online with the presenter.
This catered to a variety of learning styles which feedback from the trainees showed was very much appreciated. FLO was also made available to students for 6 weeks after the course to enable them to go over material again at their own pace.
Valuable feedback was gained from this exercise which is being used to develop FLO further and a legislative product is now underway.

You can learn more about LIST by reading the paper presented at BIALL 2003 by Nicki and by Prue Presser, 'Educating the MTV Generation: Legal Information Skills Online', Legal Information Management, 4 (2004), pp 37-43.

Consortia

What is a consortia? Fran Wilson of the National Library of Australia (NLA) defined it as a group of organisations who join together to co-operate and share. She explained how the need for Consortia has developed with the growth of information sources and the decrease in library budgets. Organisations can be members of many consortia at a time and use them, for example, as a way of increasing their buying power for electronic resources. By working together and having a central point of contact Consortia members can negotiate better pricing deals with vendors. Bulk buying power allows the Consortia to drive the content and licence agreement terms.
Fran offers this checklist for those wishing to start their own consortia. Her experience comes from the NLA’s membership of the Council of Australian State Libraries (CASL) Consortium for the joint purchasing of online databases.

Membership – Start small. Consider carefully who to invite. Who would both help the group and benefit from it the most?
Governance – How will the group be run? Remember, the more centrally you act, the more successful you will be. In the case of CASL, the NLA took on the role of lead negotiator and members signed an agreement allowing NLA to negotiate on behalf of them all.
Funding – One of the ways CASL funded the consortia was by its member organisations giving staff support for a certain number of days per week/month.
Operation – Communication is the key! Set up a website and email discussion lists. Hold regular teleconferences and an annual meeting in person.
Products - Survey your members, identify products where a consortia approach will lead to price savings. Have a quarterly workplan of products to trial by subject area with different vendors.
Pricing & Licenses – Know your members requirements. Develop a good relationship with vendors. Draft a profile of the consortia to educate vendors on the needs of the membership. (For example, a cost by usage pricing structure is no good for a National Library which has a potentially huge number of users throughout the country.) This can encourage vendors to be more flexible. Have a Statement of Principles to check licensing agreements against and which can also be used to inform vendors of your needs. Think about issues such as long-term access, renewals, technical support, training, user statistics and service level agreements.

Legal Librarians and Library Training in the ‘Noughties’ – three different viewpoints for the future of our profession

Peter Clayton from the University of Canberra started by discussing the problems currently experienced by Universities offering librarianship degrees. The major problem is that there are just too many library schools in Australia, and they’re too small as overall student numbers are declining. This means that each department is suffering from a lack of funding, leading to fewer optional modules. Special librarianship is being dropped from the curriculum. They are also suffering from an image problem, school leavers just don’t want to be librarians.
The situation is now so bad that both the University of South Australia and the University of Canberra have closed their undergraduate programme and no longer offer a professional qualification in librarianship.
So what can be done to turn this around? One solution is to have fewer, bigger schools. This has worked well in New Zealand where there are only two schools offering a library degree, both highly successful.
What else can be done? Diversify. Offer Information Literacy / Research Skills. This idea has received excellent feedback but still there is not enough take-up to make it viable.
Distance Education has worked well in New Zealand and has prompted Canberra to offer a graduate diploma and coursework masters online from 2005. It's a risky venture as the costs of setting up online courses are high but already they have had enquiries from potential students all over the world.
Peter's prognosis is a dark one. More schools will close, especially as professors retire and there are fewer qualified professionals to follow them. If replacements cannot be found, university programmes will close.
Undergraduate education will diminish in favour of full fee-paying graduate students. Therefore fewer qualified professionals will enter the workforce. However, this might not be all bad news. With more demand for staff, salaries will rise and if salaries rise enough, the demand for graduates will also rise bringing the profession back into vogue.

Andrew Shiells of the Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT), also highlighted the changes he has seen in Libraries over the past 10 years: the hybrid paper v. electronic environment, increasing digitisation of resources, increasing expectations of users but decreasing budgets, staff numbers and materials. In his view this has led to the rise of paraprofessionals such as Library Technicians (LTs) who can now be expected to perform more complex reference tasks and client services which were formerly the province of qualified librarians. Andrew also gave statistics for the shift to the casualisation of the Australian workforce and the increase in part-timers.
Over the past 5 years the numbers of qualified librarians have decreased by approx. 8% while the number of less qualified LTs have grown by approx. 38%. The boundaries between the two have blurred to such an extent that many job adverts could be suitable for either Librarians or LTs but do not necessarily ask for a degree.
This shift in the workforce means that Librarianship training has to change too. LTs need practice-ready skills, necessitating an upgrade in LT training to Diploma level and above.
Andrew proposed that courses could offer specialised qualifications such as Public Library LTs, School LTs, Corporate Library LTs with an IT focus. this would allow students to be more ‘work-ready’. Learning centres could also implement more flexible learning (particularly good for mature students). The CIT itself has been busy developing online delivery within a practical learning environment and you can find out more about this by visiting their website:
www.cit.act.edu.au/about/organisation/faculties/bit/infotech/index.php

Pam Swords of Blake Dawson Waldron gave a corporate view of the skills needed for our changing profession.
In Pam's opinion, teaching skills are fundamental to Librarians but no course offers this at undergraduate level. The same is true for presentation and communication skills – it seems the hope is that these skills will be caught, rather than taught. The goal for Librarians therefore is to reflect on the way they’ve been taught not just content of the course.
Librarians must also have a clear idea of what the profession means to them and what role they aspire to. It is important to learn to be a life-long learner – to continually develop your own learning and skills. Volunteer for projects! Join organisations and committees, help to advance not just your own career but the profession as a whole.
Managers and employers too have an important role in the creation of what Pam calls the ‘super librarian’. She calls on them to give new Librarians the opportunity to use analytical skills, to delegate and give their staff the scope to develop and grow.
As a profession Pam believes we should develop mentoring. This is a role in which professional organisations particularly can take a more active approach to Library students. Pam said that when she was at University she felt there was no involvement at all at student level from the library associations.
Right from the beginning, Graduates must recognise not just their attributes but also the gaps in their knowledge and work to fill those gaps through a programme of continuing professional development (CPD).
CPD is more than just attending meetings or courses and Pam called on the professional organisations to work together to develop a broad CPD statement to define what activities they see as CPD. (This would also be useful for employers. )
Pam's vision was for every Librarian to create their own CPD programme which she hoped would encourage the pursuit of new skills: IT, web design, marketing, finance and business, project management, contract management, staff development etc.
Some suggested CPD aims were: go to court and observe a trial, mentoring, job exchanges, write a paper (e.g. research a small special library topic, write it up and write up the research process and learning experience).
Pam's main point seemed to be that all of us have a responsibility to look for ways to enhance our professional reputations and our profession. I think we would all agree with her on that one.

The CLIG bursary gave me a wonderful opportunity in attending the ALLG Symposium in Australia and I learnt a great deal from it. I have tried to share some of my impressions with you here but there is really no substitute for being there. I urge you all to apply for a foreign conference bursary and experience it for yourselves.

Claire Fox, Senior Information Officer, Eversheds LLP