The University has allocated special funding for six Scholarly Information Future strategic initiatives during 2009.
In addition, the University Library and the IT Services division have incorporated Scholarly Information Future goals into their operational plans for 2009.
The list below is from the University Library’s operational plan for 2009. These are examples of Scholarly Information Future initiatives that are being funded from the Library’s existing programs – that is, no additional project money has been allocated by the University for these activities.
Learning and teaching initiatives:
- Continue redeveloping library/Student Centre precincts to provide improved physical and virtual environments for individual and group study
- Continuing improvement of LMS and online service provision for Library users
Research initiatives:
- Develop policies, processes and services to encourage contributions to, and use of, digital repositories of primary research data and scholarly output
- Improve the support available to researchers who need to create, manage, analyse and share research data
- Further improvements to research management systems
- Improve public profile of University research via a web-enabled expertise database and links to research publications
- Provide research training to established researchers and students in the discovery and management of scholarly information that support the research and e-research effort
Knowledge transfer initiatives:
- Access for alumni to selected digital collections held or licensed by the Library
- Establish large-scale digitisation capability for the University
- Digitise selected cultural and other materials, provide online access for researchers and the public
- Publicise the University’s cultural collections as an integral part of learning, teaching and research, and as an enriching and differentiating factor of the Melbourne experience
- Host the annual series of Information Futures Forums: guest lectures by external experts addressing current topics in scholarly communication
- Influence national information infrastructure policy and advance developments in national information infrastructure and open-access scholarly publishing
Other initiatives that support the Scholarly Information Future strategy:
- Identify key service and support processes for students, and re-engineer these to provide a consistent, seamless student-centred service across the University through more effective use of information and communication technologies
- Improve internal use of management and other information for decision-making, service quality, compliance, streamlined processes and procedures