Responding to feedback collected last year from students and staff, our fabulous Library Systems team spent this summer making changes to SuperSearch and the online catalogue.

From the start of Semester One 2009, searching for a journal article or library book should now be much easier and faster. We have also created links between the catalogue and other systems so that, if an item is unavailable at Melbourne, you can easily request an inter-library loan without abandoning your current search.

There are a few problems we can’t yet fix. For example, you may still need to retype your password occasionally when using SuperSearch – but we have significantly reduced the number of times this is likely to happen.

Students, staff and alumni can access SuperSearch and the Library catalogue directly from the Library’s home page, or via the Learning Management System (LMS). The main catalogue is also available to the public.

Bouquets, comments and suggestions for further improvements are always welcome – email  info-futures at unimelb.edu.au to let us know what you think of the SuperSearch and catalogue searches.

This 15-minute questionnaire asks students, staff and other scholars to describe, in their own words, how they find, use and share scholarly information.

In part, the survey was inspired by Danny Kingsley’s PhD research at the Australian National University. By surveying almost 300 academics Danny identified discipline-specific differences in how academics find and publish scholarly information.

The table below is based on my notes of a presentation given by Danny at the VALA 2008 conference. The full text of the refereed paper is available from the conference web site.

Will we find similar patterns among students and academics at the University of Melbourne?

The Outstanding! survey will be online until Friday 9 May. It takes about 15 minutes to complete, and we’d love to hear your voice. What’s your experience of finding and using scholarly information?

If all the current barriers disappeared and you were working or studying in an ideal environment, what would that environment be like? How would it feel? How would you do things differently from today?