There have been significant changes in the world, and within the University, since the original Growing Esteem 10-year strategy was adopted in late 2005. The “Refining Our Strategy” consultation process is an opportunity to review progress thus far, and to fine-tune the University’s priorities for the next 3-5 years.

The University Library will make a written submission to the review, and we need your help to do it.

Library staff are invited to attend an introductory forum today, 2.00 pm to 3.00 pm, in the tutorial room, ground floor, Baillieu Library. At this session we will identify which aspects of the discussion paper the Library ought to address in its response.

• View the presentation slides from the 11 June forum (Microsoft Powerpoint 1.2 Mb)

Over the next few weeks there will be other opportunities for you to contribute to the Library response.

To stay in touch with what’s happening, subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed or keep an eye on the Information Futures home page.

As well as being the first annual University Librarian’s Lecture, the presentation was the first in this year’s Information Futures Forum series.

Almost half of the audience — 49 people — completed feedback forms to tell us what they thought of the event.

The first graph (below) shows high levels of satisfaction with the topic and quality of Philip’s presentation.

The second graph (below) shows how people heard about the forum. Most people named only one source of information, though 12 of the 49 respondents said they heard about the forum through two or more channels.

Graph showing the effectiveness of different communication channels. Source: survey forms collected immediately after forum.

Several people offered suggestions for future forums and other events. Suggestions included:

• Web2.0 technologies in academic libraries
• Revisit e-books
• How does the library support academics — why the decline despite more academics
• Someone from Economics & Commerce, given their new location and student numbers
• Tea and snacks to be provided – will increase crowd attending
• Panel of disc. Lib. + their future vision
• CIO’s initiatives for the University/library/researchers
• Google: friend or foe?
• Digitisation – especially cultural collections – is to be desired, but we need to be able to stgore and manage digital resources effectively
• Digitisation of cultural collections.
• Activities of eScholarship Research Centre.
• Liaison/relationship between academics and librarians/information managers.
• Open source software.
• More updates from U Librarian – quarterly?
• Would welcome exploration of Open Access as mentioned
• Specific forms of digitisation
• Faculty heads talking about their information needs and desires

Video of today’s Information Futures Forum will be published on the Information Futures web site in a few days.

If you attended today’s forum and didn’t complete a feedback form, we’d still love to hear from you — feel free to leave a comment on this blog, or send an email to  info-futures at unimelb.edu.au

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.