Information Futures

In 1956 Australia’s first digital computer, called CSIRAC, was transferred from the CSIRO to the University of Melbourne. This was the year of the Melbourne Olympic Games. CSIRAC weighed 7 tonnes, used 30,000 Watts of electricity and operated at a speed of 0.001 MHz. (Today’s laptop computers weigh 3.1 kg, use 10 W of power and operate at over 2000 MHz.)

CSIRAC’s arrival marked the start of a long tradition of technological adoption and innovation at Melbourne. By the early 1980s there were about 400 computer terminals on campus, and probably fewer than 1000 computer users. Computing services were heavily centralised and supported word processing, administrative systems, academic users of applications such as SPSS and researchers who wrote and compiled their own software. In 1984 the University began to develop a campus-wide data network.

Like many other academic libraries ours was an early adopter of technology to improve access to scholarly data. In the 1980s computerised automation became possible for library management tasks: new IT systems were created for cataloguing, checking books in and out, indexing articles and linking to them. Also in the 1980s and early 1990s our librarians were searching international databases and using dialup connections to obtain bibliographic references for the University’s scholars. This was a slow and cumbersome process, but a huge advance on manually searching large sets of indices to locate relevant citations. These technologies required specialist training both in search techniques and in use of the software.[75]

The first permanent connection of Australia to the greater Internet occurred in 1989 when the University of Melbourne established a 56 kb satellite link with the University of Hawaii. The University of Sydney and the Australian National University were also involved in creating and developing Australia’s Internet link to the world. The .au Internet domain was for many years administered by Melbourne’s computer science department, and the three universities were probably the first Australian organisations to create home pages using the new World Wide Web protocol in 1994.

By the late 1990s Australians were connecting to the Internet at home and in workplaces. Our scholars could begin to freely communicate with other scholars using email, access information by downloading files, and share their ideas and their scholarly output without the delays of international air and sea mail. In the classroom we were starting to use computers as a teaching tool. In libraries, not only bibliographic data but full text became available in digital form for purchase, or increasingly for license with access through the Internet. Library staff developed web pages to help our scholars navigate an ever increasing and complex array of scholarly sources. Following the recognition of the value of an integrated approach to the development of the University’s information infrastructure in a digital age, in 1999 the University became the first of the Group of Eight to form an Information Division comprising library, IT and multimedia education services.

Today almost all subjects taught at Melbourne have a presence in the online Learning Management System (LMS). Use of multimedia content and technologies in the classroom is commonplace, and licensing of our multimedia courseware is generating a healthy income stream for the University. By linking selected features of systems including the student portal, LMS, Digitool digital repository, SuperSearch meta-search engine and a custom-built application, the Readings Online service enables students to easily find and use full-text and digitised scholarly works that are directly relevant to their current studies.

Despite our early advances in computing the University now falls behind comparator Australian universities in the infrastructure it provides to its research community. Shared capability became the norm with the establishment of Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (APAC) and the Victorian node (VPAC) in 2000. Whilst Melbourne has been a heavy user of these facilities it has not sought to build its own advanced computing capability, instead developing its capability in grid computing — something that requires minimal investment but good know-how. Today ANU benefits from being the home of APAC and having the skilled people and infrastructure to support advanced computing onsite. Similarly, the University of Queensland hosts its State’s facility. As digital data becomes an increasingly important part of the scholarly process, many universities have set up large research data storage capabilities, a critical component of core scholarly research infrastructure. The University of Sydney, University of Queensland and Monash University provide in excess of 75 Terabytes to meet their research community’s needs. Melbourne does not provide any.

Provision and use of digital material and collections has not reduced the demand for physical library collections: in 2006 half of our library’s materials vote was spent on acquisition of or subscription to electronic resources. A survey conducted in August 2007 by the Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL) indicated a long-term increase in the number of book loans, up by 11 per cent in the past 10 years. Melbourne’s data shows strong loan rates of 42 loans per EFTSU compared to 35 at Griffith and 36 at Monash in 2006.