Many thanks to everyone who submitted a written response, commented via this blog or attended a meeting or focus group session during the last fortnight.

The written submissions are available from the main Information Futures web site.

Over the next 10 days we will revise the strategy and seek further input from the University’s senior executives and from the Information Futures Commission’s Steering Committee.

The completed strategy will be presented to the 26 June meeting of Academic Board for endorsement, then to the 14 July meeting of University Council.

An implementation plan will be presented to the Planning and Budget Conference at the end of July.

1. Progress Report from the Commission’s Steering Committee
2. Melbourne’s Information Future: one possible strategy

The documents outline the Commission’s work to date and describe some long-term options for the University’s library, archive and cultural collections; research data management; IT support for research activities; collections of information created for learning and teaching purposes; scholarly outputs such as theses and journal articles; and the support services and human capabilities required to create, acquire, use and manage all of these.

The documents are available for downloading from the main Information Futures web site, or in a ‘commentable’ format on this weblog (see the “Progress Report” and “Draft Strategy” links in the navigation bar at the top of this page.)

We encourage you to read and comment on the documents.

Of particular interest are the five “strategic questions and difficult choices” identified in the Progress Report:

1. What type of library or libraries should we have?
2. What should be in the libraries?
3. Who can use our libraries?
4. How ‘open’ do we want to be?
5. How should we organise ourselves to achieve our aspirations?

Ways to respond

• Read the Draft Strategy on this blog and leave your comment/s on the relevant pages
• Download the documents from the main Information Futures web site (where you will also find lots of background information about the initial consultation phase and its results)
• Send your comments to the Commission’s project team
• Invite a member of the project team to speak to your committee or group meeting

Deadline for comments

The review period ends on Friday 6 June.

What happens after 6 June

Your feedback will be used to refine a 10-year strategy for the University’s scholarly information and technologies.

The revised strategy will be presented at the June meeting of Academic Board and the July meeting of University Council.

A funding proposal will be submitted to the Planning and Budget Committee’s mid-year conference.

To deal with a rapidly changing environment we will:

1. Value the diversity that our discipline and individual backgrounds bring to our understanding of the future.

We will look for ways to learn continually from the different views that disciplines and individuals have of our present situation and of future needs. We will use this to inform our choice of initiatives, looking for synergies where these are possible and supporting differences where they add value and richness.

2. Harness the diverse insights and innovative ideas of each new generation of students.

We will involve our students, who are attuned to their cohorts’ learning needs, in gathering information on current and future expectations and in implementing change, acknowledging that our students are both consumers and producers of new media and scholarly information. We will be informed by the pedagogy of peer support and involve our students in the design, delivery and evaluation of student-facing services, to empower students to support students, to build more sustainable learning cohorts, to generate more powerful learning outcomes, and to nurture student leadership.

3. Work as partners across discipline and professional boundaries to achieve our aims.

We will use the expertise that exists across different parts of the organization rather than duplicate academic and professional knowledge and skills. We will create the mechanisms to make working as partners easy – ensuring that tools and communities of practice are in place, and that we develop our information and infrastructure in ways that are useful across disciplines.

4. Make choices and implement initiatives in ways that ensure we can be agile, adaptable and flexible.

Whenever possible we will provide the frameworks and infrastructure to enable experimentation, prototyping and trials to determine what works and should be further developed, rather than investing in large-scale implementations. We will leverage existing capabilities effectively – in particular relying on solutions that already exist at the University or elsewhere.

5. Encourage innovation in the use of scholarly information and technologies.

We can be sure that the pace of technological change will not abate, that disruptive change will continue to occur, that we cannot with any certainty imagine ten years forward in IT terms. Research and reflection on scholarly practices will be essential to inform the development of our policies, services, systems and infrastructure.

To deal with globalization of education and its infrastructure we will:

6. Leverage the opportunities offered by being part of a global collaborative community.

We will actively seek to be part of collaborative communities and foster partnerships to ensure that we can influence and leverage abilities beyond our means as an individual organization. We will use global standards, open source, and other open initiatives to ensure that we can collaborate, ‘trade’, and re-use the work of whole communities most effectively.

7. Focus on the quality of our staff and students as a key differentiator in a competitive world.

We will invest in developing outstanding scholarly literacy amongst our learning community through the curriculum. Professional and academic staff will work in concert, using each other’s expertise appropriately to achieve the best outcomes.

8. Seek to shape national and international agendas in line with our role as a leading institution.

In keeping with our standing as a global leader we will advocate for change to government and other relevant agendas, where possible in collaboration with other organizations. In this way others may also invest or change policy in areas of importance, enabling us to more readily advance scholarly information and communication and to achieve our vision.

To deal with the tension between emerging client needs, existing values and competing demands within finite resources we will:

9. Invest in actions which bring unique and deep value to our mission as a University.

We will invest in activities that enhance our contributions to research, learning and teaching, and knowledge transfer. We will not invest in doing things that we can readily achieve in other ways, or where they do not add unique and deep value to our mission.

10. Be firm on the strategic priorities whilst being flexible on the means.

We will be clear on what we want as the endpoint, but flexible on how we get there, aiming to do so in ways that are the most cost effective to meet our needs within the environment of the time.

11. Plan and implement what we do in ways that are financially, technologically and environmentally sustainable.

We will ensure that what we do will not impact negatively on our environment, or will seek to offset any negative effects that we cannot avoid. We will be aware of issues of data longevity in choices for new technologies. We will not implement major capital initiatives without identifying a funding stream to operate and maintain them as sustainable services.

This strategy builds upon the principles outlined above. The fundamental aim is position Melbourne to effectively compete in a global knowledge economy through differentiation – embedding the Growing Esteem vision within our approaches to scholarly information.

Aspirations

Linking the strands: a vision for Melbourne’s information future

Building on Melbourne’s deep heritage, its commitment to advancing knowledge will be strengthened through the creation, use and preservation of academic works to link and mutually reinforce research, learning and teaching, and knowledge transfer, nurturing the University as a physical and virtual scholarly community.

We will achieve this vision by working toward the following aspirations, aspirations which seek to differentiate Melbourne in an increasingly competitive world.

1. The output of our scholars, from research data through to published scholarly and creative works, will be made accessible in ways which enrich our teaching, learning and knowledge transfer aspirations, contributing to global knowledge and profiling Melbourne as a leading research university.
2. Our campuses will function as a learning community, offering a seamless transition between physical and virtual environments and facilitating a sense of belonging.
3. Our scholars, both staff and students, will continually advance their knowledge and skills and have access to the services required to be independent, internationally competitive, effective and discerning scholarly information seekers and contributors.
4. Our academics, students, and library and information professionals will partner in new ways in order to capitalise on our collective expertise and so further enhance our research and teaching.
5. We will showcase Melbourne as a leading university of the world by building, profiling, and making accessible, our unique, internationally significant collections and archives.
6. We will innovate, collaborate and influence to position Melbourne as a leader in the application of scholarly information and technologies to advance scholarship, investing in areas of research strength.

1. Research
2. Learning and teaching
3. Knowledge transfer

Finally, we propose a strategic direction for linking the strands through improved provision and support of scholarly information and technologies.

To enhance Melbourne’s position as one of the great research universities of the world, a university that values diversity, that adheres to the importance of being research-led and comprehensive, we must provide the people, information and infrastructure to meet the diverse needs of our researchers, both staff and students, across the different disciplines. Melbourne has a unique opportunity to provide these capabilities in a way that fosters cross-disciplinary research by developing information professionals and frameworks which enable researchers to easily work across discipline boundaries.

In the rapidly changing scholarly information landscape all researchers will need to work in partnership with professional staff, staff with a breadth of relevant discipline understanding together with current, deep knowledge and skills in information management. These new information professionals blend aspects which are both academic and professional, in one sense the ‘scholar librarian’ re-invented for the digital world. In an increasingly complex environment they will be ‘connectors’, linking researchers with researchers, researchers with professional experts, researchers with relevant information, tools and services, to achieve research outcomes. They will be part of the research process, understanding the scholarly information landscape, ensuring our researchers have access to relevant scholarly works, leading techniques and tools, advising and assisting with data management, particularly how best to maximise the impact of the research through publication.

In the humanities the value of such professionals will primarily lie in their deep understanding of our collections, of other collections which may be of value, and in their awareness of emerging opportunities being offered through technology. In science-based disciplines they will typically bring a deeper technological understanding, assisting researchers to describe, manipulate, manage and curate large data sets, blending an understanding of information management with emerging technological possibilities. Growing this capability will ensure that Melbourne stays at the forefront in a rapidly changing world.

Whist we are seeing a growing trend toward open access publishing there is no sign that the amount of published ‘for profit’ journals and books are in decline – in fact the reverse. And whilst it is clear that journals have moved to predominantly digital form, and textbooks may well follow within the next decade, we will still need to pay for these publications for the foreseeable future – no matter what their form.

The scholarly community will need to find ways in which the peer review process can evolve in a changing publishing landscape given its importance to the sector. We will be paying for access rather than ownership in many cases, so it will be incumbent upon us to participate in international consortia which seek to protect in perpetuity access to digital publications, fulfilling our traditional obligations as a custodian of knowledge for future generations. If the University seriously seeks to be internationally competitive and comprehensive we must be able to provide access to deep and rich collections, no matter what their form.

Open standards, open publishing, open source and collaboration will continue to grow in importance for research information, systems and infrastructure. International collaboration will be essential if we are to be positioned as a leader. We will need the ability to enter partnerships, to collaborate, from a whole of University level down to the level of the individual researcher. We should strongly encourage, perhaps ‘mandate’, open publishing of our research if we value our role in contributing to knowledge creation, equity of access and promoting the work of our scholars. We should make it easy for our researchers to publish in this way. We will need to recognise complex intellectual property and copyright issues, particularly in some disciplines and will need to manage these appropriately, while advocating for change where possible and beneficial.

Whilst more research computing will happen in the “Internet cloud”, for the foreseeable future a great research university with a strong science-base will need ready access to peak computing facilities to be globally competitive. And whilst there are emerging international repositories for research data through to publications there will continue to be a need for the University to provide such capabilities. Our researchers will need ever-increasing amounts of storage for research data during the course of research, and for publication of both the data and final outputs, where these make an enduring scholarly contribution of national and international significance. We need to make this easy yet sophisticated, so that researchers can allow differentiated access to collaborators, students, colleagues, or to the world.
The tools and infrastructure required to facilitate collaboration, access to and sharing of scholarly output will be critical foundations. Our internal network, our links to the world, our collaboration tools, will need to be continually upgraded to cope with rapid technological change, ever increasing demands for greater bandwidth and massive increases in data.

In summary, to advance Melbourne’s position as a leading research university it will:

• have the necessary capabilities to compete in a globally competitive world by providing advanced large scale data stores, collaboration tools and networks;
• differentiate and demonstrate unique value by building its scholarly information capabilities in a way that encourages and facilitates discipline depth whilst making it easy for interdisciplinary research to occur.

Scholarly literacy will be integral to our students’ ability to work across different domains of knowledge. In a rapidly changing information landscape they will need the knowledge and skills to be discerning information seekers, to find, manage and create scholarship which represents different ways of knowing, to engage with research data, with scholarly and professional publications and with related technologies. Scholarly literacy must be embedded within the curriculum so that our students gain familiarity with the various forms of information relevant to different disciplines. For example, students learning about disciplines that use large datasets should gain hands-on experience in manipulating, visualising and managing that data. And we cannot assume that introduction in the first year of study is sufficient. Scholarly information sources, learning tools and technologies, will continue to rapidly evolve so this must be an integral part of students’ entire course and beyond.

Students are typically time poor, juggling work, family or other commitments with study. They want access to convenient and efficient information services – the ability to quickly find what is relevant to them, to access it from home or from work, to have effective ways to manage information overload. Nothing indicates that this will change. The future landscape will need to include greater access to full text digital publications and to tools and technologies which help students to effectively and efficiently find and manage information, manage their learning, and present their work. Affordable printing services will need to be part of that landscape for the foreseeable future. It may be that mobile devices of a variety of kinds will start to reduce the reliance on printing, though matters of equity must always inform our decisions.

The University will continue to encourage and support innovative approaches to learning and teaching. We have reaffirmed our commitment to developing and maintaining high-quality teaching and learning spaces, and to the importance of the on-campus experience. Approaches to teaching and learning in different disciplines will remain diverse and will continue to evolve, hence it is incumbent upon us to continue to develop our virtual and physical infrastructure in flexible ways and reposition our teaching and learning spaces as flexible and interactive spaces. We have seen a growing demand for collaborative spaces and technology-enriched spaces that enable students to work together on problems in new ways. Yet space for quiet, contemplative, independent study will continue to be just as important. Currently we do not have enough of either type of space.

Just as the internet has become part of our everyday lives, more media-rich mobile devices with unimaginable data storage capacity will become the norm in the coming decade. It is likely that in the medium term the emphasis will shift from University provision of devices for information access –microfiche readers, video and CD players, computers – to providing services, systems and infrastructure which can integrate with the diversity of devices brought to the campus by students. Students are likely to drive the adoption of new ways of learning, new information tools, new technologies. We will need to be able to provide scaleable, mass yet individualised, virtual and physical learning environments. The agility to adopt new learning and teaching tools more rapidly, to respond to emerging practice and harness these capabilities, will be a prerequisite. We will need ways to capture student experiences, their understanding, and use it to inform our teaching practices, our services, our technologies, and our spaces.

In summary, to advance Melbourne’s position as a leading teaching university:

• our graduates will have the necessary capabilities to compete in a globally competitive world by making effective use of digital tools and technologies to support student learning, as appropriate for different disciplines, and in ways which recognise and support diverse student needs;
• the University will differentiate and demonstrate its unique value by engaging all undergraduate students in a genuine research experience, developing our graduates as discerning information users skilled in the recognition and production of various forms of scholarly information.

In a digital age sharing our scholarly works — our teaching, our research, our collections — has never been easier. The world is now our community; our reach can be broad ranging, can be of greatest impact, touching those who can derive maximum value from it. For example, RH Macmillan’s Mechanics of tractor, a book by an ex academic in engineering (2002) is one of the most-accessed items in the University’s ePrints repository with more than 10,000 downloads, a significant proportion of which are by people in India and other developing countries where access to knowledge about tractors can be greatly needed and difficult to obtain.

By facilitating open publishing of our research data, of our teaching materials, of our published works, we expose our scholarship to the broader community. By providing web-based communication, collaboration and publishing tools this community can become co-creators and be part of the University, blurring the boundaries between the University and the broader community. This happens now — it will only accelerate. We must be a part of this, recognising both the opportunities presented by the digital world and the challenges arising out of intellectual property laws and other issues such as the uncertainty regarding publishers’ evolving business models.

Melbourne has rich and deep collections which are natural attractors to building strong relationships with our community. We have many items which are of international and national significance. These treasures remain largely hidden, many uncatalogued, many in need of restoration, very few with any display space to showcase them to the broader community and even fewer available as digital objects open to the world. Over the next decade we should aspire to unlock these treasures for the benefits of our scholars and the broader community.

In summary, if Melbourne is to be a leader in knowledge transfer it must:

• have the necessary capabilities to compete in a globally competitive world by making its scholarship open to the world;
• differentiate itself to demonstrate its unique value by unlocking its rich collections through cataloguing, digitisation and display.

Our research data and tools, our rich special and cultural collections, can all be part of the undergraduate research experience. At the same time they can act to engage the broader community in knowledge transfer initiatives. Imagine how digital images of the specimens collected by Joseph Banks, or research data about climate change, or three dimensional models of Melbourne in the 1870s built from our wonderful map collections, could be used to excite students, to enrich the curriculum, to engage the broader community. The VCA holds Australia’s oldest and largest collection of short films, over 3600 works archived over 40 years, which could be digitised and made available as a unique historical record. Imagine how we might engage the community in providing rich information they have collected — historic photos, rainfall readings, oral histories — to inform our research, to enrich our teaching, to build a knowledge base for the community.

To create a vibrant learning community, one in which our students, our academics, our professional staff, share ideas and learn from each other, engage in rich and powerful discussions, we must create physical and virtual spaces that facilitate this. With fifty thousand people being part of this community it will be necessary to provide a range of physical spaces, spaces which preserve the sense of human scale and encourage interaction, yet which realise the benefits of aggregation.

Evolving the campuses towards discipline-clustered precincts such as humanities, sciences/engineering, business/law, and so on provides a natural grouping for building such communities, for fostering a sense of belonging. It enables the library, which continues to be at the heart of all scholarly endeavour, to continue to be the focal point in a networked world

Each precinct will be distinct, reflecting the different ways in which cognate disciplines engage in research and learning, the different ways in which they interact with scholarly works in all forms, the different patterns of publishing across disciplines. Within the precinct the library will be at the heart, with student information centres, social spaces, coffee shops and spaces within the precinct enabling staff and students to engage in learning in a variety of ways.

A few small specialist libraries will continue to exist, where the physical collection, the way in which the collection is to be used, or the location of the school, makes this necessary. Veterinary Science at Werribee, the teaching materials in the Education collection and the maps, models and high quality print collections used by Architecture are obvious examples. By reducing the number of specialist libraries it will be possible to extend the range and quality of services offered through the precinct libraries whilst extending their opening hours, something that will be essential to the quality of the student experience.

Great universities of the world will be differentiated by the richness of their rare research collections — the print, special and cultural collections and archives which distinguish them as places of deep scholarship. These collections which are already unique and valuable will become an even greater asset, attracting international scholars. These collections cannot be re-created. A digital version will never tell the same story to a scholar as an original physical work, just as a printout is a poor stand-in for a “born-digital” work.

Melbourne will build a great research and cultural library, one which links the city and the University, one which is a magnet for international scholars, particularly in the humanities. Public spaces within the building will invite the community into our scholarship, into a window on our collections, both print and digital. It will provide space for displays of our rich research and cultural collections, for events, for opportunities to showcase Melbourne as a great university. For scholars there will be browsable access to research reference works, quiet contemplative study spaces and ready access to our relatively low use research collections through a rapid retrieval service, with the collections themselves housed in temperature and humidity controlled closed access conditions to ensure their preservation. Creating such a space for our cultural heritage and low use research collections will also relieve pressure on space in the precinct based libraries, enabling collection growth and the creation of more quiet and collaborative study spaces for students.

In summary, if Melbourne is to advance its position as an institution in which the triple helix of research, teaching and knowledge transfer are tightly bound, each reinforcing and informing the other, it must:

• have the necessary capabilities to compete in a globally competitive world by providing a physical campus which fosters the development of a learning community and creates a sense of belonging
• differentiate itself to demonstrate its unique value by linking the strands of the helix through scholarly information

Our graduates will be equipped for lives and careers in which knowledge boundaries are more permeable and issues of professional practice often require interdisciplinary understanding and knowledge that is rapidly renewed.

Our campuses are defined by discipline-based precincts clustered around a library, learning environments and social learning spaces which foster the development of an outstanding learning community and a sense of belonging.

We are recognised as a leading university by exposing our rich special and cultural collections through digitisation.

We have built a link between the city and the University and a magnet for international scholars through a landmark building which appropriately houses and displays many of our our research, special and cultural collections, both physical and digital.

We are recognised internationally as a leader in the application of scholarly information and technologies to advance research and scholarship.