Publishers Liaison Update March 2007

PUBLISHERS LIAISON UPDATE MARCH 2007

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Systematics - Quantum online - current only to mid 2005 - contacted 23/01/2007 - by email

RESPONSE - from Kylie Peterson - We are currently reviewing this situation with the content provider and I will come back to you as soon as I have further information about the future of the service. There has been no policy decision at this stage to discontinue the service and we are hopeful that we will indeed be able to return the product to its former level of currency.

OUTCOME : without any further response from Systematics BF emailed again 6/3/07 - nothing further yet

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lawbookpublishing.com.au - Annotated Land Title Act - updates are infrequent, publication often lacks currency; there have been comments from members of the list that other titles from this Publisher are not updated often enough and that errors remain uncorrected from one issue to the next - contacted 22/02/07 - by phone

RESPONSE - publisher Devi Alberti reports that the Annotated Land Title Act is updated 2 x per year and that the scale of payment for each update is charged out at about 65c per page. His advice was that the last update was published 30/6/2006 and the next will be approximately 1/7/2007. A year for this publication is is a financial year. He has also requested that the ALLG(Q) approach him in writing and not by phone.

OUTCOME : the Committee is considering writing to this publisher to outline our problems with looseleaf titles which have very long intervals between updates.

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Comlaw - ongoing problems with the interface, slowness of response time and inconsistent results ; responses harvested from the Queensland list were emailed 19/2/07 to National Publishers Liaison representativel Petal Kinder

OUTCOME : no response as yet

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Thomsons - loss of visible online indexes - TLA and other services; these are available in the print versions, are a valuable resource for online users & we would like to have them; BF emailed as personal request 24/2/07 but received no reply; further emailed a list of responses from the Queensland list 18/3/07

OUTCOME : BF to meet with Thomsons representatives Wed 28/3/07 (updated on original info)

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LexisNexis AU - Queensland Planning and Environment Reports online but no pdf version available : BF rang Printacular (the publisher in Moorooka) to see if there might be an impediment at their end 14/03/07 - left message

OUTCOME : no response as yet

NLS 2006

On December 1 and 2 2006 hundreds of new Librarians converged on the John Niland Scientia building in Sydney to participate in ALIA’s New Librarians Symposium (NLS). This is the fourth event of its kind to be held in Australia. The theme pathways and possibilities matched the event’s purpose to facilitate lively debate amongst new Librarians on what we should be saying about our profession. Some delegates took this a step further by presenting their first conference paper.

Papers were presented on a variety of topics of interest to new and not so new Librarians. Many of the papers and presentations can be viewed on the Symposium’s website.

There was a strong presence from the Law Library field with the ALLG NSW Division staffing a stall in the Trade Exhibition. Aspiring Law Librarians were able to listen to the advice of Vanessa O’Meara and Melanie Adams in the session “So you want to be a Law Librarian?” Lisa Paul presented a very interesting paper on her involvement as an Academic Law Librarian in the review of undergraduate law curriculum at Griffith Law School and how this has benefited her in her career.

We can highly recommend NLS as an opportunity to learn, develop your networks and have fun! We’d encourage the ALLG to continue to support this event in the future. Keep your eyes peeled for the next issue of the ALLG (Q) Newsletter, out next week for a full report on NLS2006.

-Sally Manser & Kirsten Harte