Council | Minutes | Meeting 3-1999

Meeting No. 13/96 of the Committee of Deans will be held at 2.15 pm on Tuesday, 15 October 1996 in the Sir George Lush Room, Ground Floor, University Offices 3a, Clayton Campus.

A G E N D A

1. Minutes The Minutes of Meeting No. 12/96 have been circulated.
2. Matters arising from the Minutes not dealt with elsewhere in the Agenda
3. Vice-Chancellor's Report
3.1 Budget The Vice-Chancellor will speak to this item.
4. Urgent Matters
5. Research Matters
6. International Matters
7. Special Items
7.1 Fixed-Term Professorial Committee A memorandum dated 10 October 1996 from Ms B Meredith, Personnel Manager Senior Appointments, is attached. The Committee is required to nominate a Dean to serve on the Fixed-Term Professorial Committee for a period of two years and to recommend that the title of the Committee be changed to the Special Professorial Appointments Committee.	D125/96 p3-4
8. Matters Raised by Deans
8.1 Chair of Molecular Pharmacology A report from the Board of the Faculty of Medicine dated 25 September 1996 proposing the establishment of a Chair of Molecular Pharmacology, is attached. The proposal is to be considered by the Academic Board on 16 October 1996. For endorsement.	D126/96 p5-8
9. Reports of Administrative Divisions / Departments
9.1 University Librarian A report prepared by the University Librarian, Professor E Lim, dated 2 October 1996, is attached. For information and discussion.	D127/96 p9-26
10. General Business
10.1 Standing Committee on Ethics in Animal Experimentation (SCEAE) A submission regarding the proposed new role of the Standing Committee on Ethics in Animal Experimentation prepared by Dr Noel Johnston, Executive Officer to the SCEAE, dated 10 October 1996, is attached. For endorsement and submission to Academic Board for approval.	D128/96 p27-32
10.2 Report of the Associate Deans (Teaching)
A report of the Associate Deans (Teaching) meeting of 11 September 1996, is attached. For information.	D129/96 p33-36
11. Next Meeting The next meeting of the Committee of Deans will be held at 2.15 pm on Tuesday, 5 November 1996 in The Sir George Lush Room, Ground Floor, University Offices 3a, Clayton Campus.

Vice-Chancellor
Deputy Vice-Chancellors
Pro Vice-Chancellors
Deans
General Manager
Executive Director, Marketing & Communications
Adviser to the Vice-Chancellor
Academic Registrar
Campus Director, Gippsland
Campus Director, Berwick
Campus Director, Caulfield
Campus Director, Peninsula

Ms J.H. Newham
Secretary
Committee of Deans
University Secretariat
CLAYTON CAMPUS

Fixed-Term Professorial Committee The paper "Appointment to Personal Chairs and Related Matters" approved by Council at meeting 3/96, recommended that

"Recommendations for fixed term professorial appointments, research professorial appointments, professorial fellow appointments and appointments as adjunct professor or honorary professor for periods of beyond one year should, when they are not made in accordance with 5, above, be considered by a committee of Council which committee should make recommendations to Council. That committee should comprise the Vice-Chancellor (or nominee), two members of the university Council, two members of the Academic Board and one dean."

I should be grateful therefore if the Committee of Deans would nominate a dean to serve on this committee for, I suggest for the sake of consistency in the consideration of proposals, a period of two years.

It was suggested in the text of the paper mentioned above that the name of this committee be the Fixed Term Professorial Committee. Given the range of professorial appointments that the committee is required to consider, it is recommended that the title be changed to the Special Professorial Appointments Committee.

Report to the Committee of Deans of Meeting 5/96 of the Board of the Faculty of Medicine held on 25 September 1996.

Faculty Board received a proposal from the Department of Pharmacology for the establishment of a Chair of Molecular Pharmacology, and noted that funding for this Chair is available from within the Department. The document is attached (Attachment 1). A submission has also been made to the Academic Board.

Pharmacology is unique amongst the biomedical sciences in that it does not seek to explain nature, rather it seeks to discover drugs and/or explain the mechanisms and sites of action as well as the disposition of drugs in the body. Thus it is an applied science which in the past was regarded as applied physiology. However, modern pharmacology is applying the techniques of molecular biology both for novel therapeutics (such as recombinant human hormones; growth factors; cytokines; and enzymes) and for developing more refined techniques to understand drug action (e.g. cloned human receptors and enzymes expressed in permanent cell lines for screening drug candidates; transgenic animal models of diseases to study drug actions).

The Department of Pharmacology has a strong commitment and deserved reputation for pharmacological research through studies of integrated function in isolated tissues and whole animals. It now proposes to develop molecular pharmacology to enhance its research profile and attract pharmaceutical industry funding. This can be best achieved by appointing an established molecular pharmacologist with substantial research funding to a Chair of Molecular Pharmacology following standard advertising and selection procedures.

The Department is not seeking a salary for this Chair from the Faculty of Medicine nor is it seeking 'set-up' funds for the proposed Chair. Instead, it can fund this initiative under its 'one-line' annual budget as detailed in Tables 1 and 2.

Table 1 shows that while the teaching income has remained relatively constant over the last 4 years (due to a steady number of B.Sc./MBBS and postgraduate students (Table 2)), the Research Quantum earnings have markedly risen due to an increase in both the number of research grants and output indices that academic and research- only staff have achieved. In 1995 and 1996, ~ 70% of the Departmental budget was spent on staff. Thus, there are funds for an additional Chair (~$105,000 p.a.). Furthermore, by appointing a molecular pharmacologist with existing grants, this will contribute substantially to the Research Quantum in succeeding years thereby reducing the salary costs of the Chair. In effect, it would not cost any more than appointing a Lecturer Level B or C who did not hold existing grants.

The appointment of a second Professor in the Department of Pharmacology would result in a similar Chair:Staff ratio to the other multi-chair departments (Table 3).

Monash University Library's mission is to provide and enhance access to published information in print, electronic and other formats which supports the University's overall mission, specifically its research, teaching and community programs. The Library's objective over the next five years is to create a "virtual library service" which will deliver the vast array of information that is stored not only in traditional print libraries but also in networked computer data banks directly to academic staff and students, where feasible, by electronic means.

The Library has endeavoured to construct a model of the virtual library service which will allow users to access both analogue (printed books, periodicals, etc) and digital (i.e. electronic) materials using a common interface. Like analogue materials which can be acquired and housed locally or made accessible through document delivery services from remote sites and libraries, digital materials can also be stored on local servers or be made accessible via the Internet and other communications networks. Users need the common interface not only to access the materials acquired locally but also to move seamlessly via hypertext and other links to information resources located remotely. The common interface is therefore an important integrative component of the virtual library service.

* Print will continue to dominate for some time to come, particularly in the area of monograph publishing. For example, more than one million titles of printed books are still published annually. Nevertheless, because of the advantages of electronic publishing, some writers are predicting the demise of print. Others are less extreme in their prediction, and merely argue that the basis of scholarly communication will change, particularly in the scientific areas where preprint servers and e-mail communication are used widely to disseminate the preliminary results of scholarship. The success of the most famous of the preprint servers which is maintained by Ginsparg in the area of particle physics can be gauged by Elsevier's establishment of their own preprint server for their authors. As a consequence, some types of scientific journals may become increasingly irrelevant as a means of scientific communication. Already many scholars in a variety of physical science fields claim that they seldom rely on the journal literature for the latest research as they are already aware of this research through other communication channels. They see journals as merely archival repositories for the results of their research and a convenient means of providing accreditation to support tenure and promotion.

* While the number of purely electronic publications is increasing quite rapidly, the fact of the matter is that many of these publications lack the authentication and imprimatur of scholarly societies and reputable commercial publishers.

* For the next five or ten years, the Library will have to continue to maintain at great cost and expense what are essentially parallel libraries - based on print and electronic resources. In an era of funding constraints, it will become increasingly difficult for the Library to find the resources to maintain these parallel systems. In the past few years, the Library has been fortunate in being able to gain access to external sources of finance, such as Quality funds, Open Learning funds, Research Infrastructure funds, and contributions from the Computer Centre and some academic departments. However, these sources of funding are likely to be diminished or will disappear in the next few years.

A number of key issues have to be worked through in the next few years before the dream of the virtual library service can be realised. The key issues include the organisation and management of key digital resources (some of which are in discrete physical forms while others are merely networked resources), the standards which should be adopted for the bibliographic control of digital resources, how to ensure long term access to these resources, the challenge of balancing the valid interests of intellectual property rights owners and the public interest in fair and reasonable access to a wide range of digital information, and the economics of delivering digital information. Many of these issues are of a technical nature and may be of no interest to the Committee of Deans. However, it would be useful to touch briefly on the economics of electronic delivery, since the future of electronic access will be dependent on how well the Library deals with this issue.

The economic imperatives of the electronic library are still a great unknown. Current experience while limited seems to suggest that far from achieving great savings, electronic access would merely add a new layer of costs to libraries. Some recent studies have revealed a number of interesting findings.

* Electronic publications will not save libraries money in the near term. With but few exceptions various models of charging being put forward by publishers will lead to increased costs. Major scientific publishers like Springer and Elsevier have been experimenting with cost models that include a premium of up to 30% for both the printed and electronic versions. An extreme case, which hopefully will never be repeated, relates to the sudden increase in the cost of access to the full text Lexis/Nexis databases, when that company was taken over by Reed Elsevier. Based on current usage at Monash, for example, the Lexis/Nexis charges will rise from US$15,000 per annum to over US$600,000.

* There are many who think that the Internet will sound the death knell of scholarly commercial publishing as we know it today, and that somehow this will lead to a reduction in costs. Because of the ease with which it is possible to publish on the Web, for example, it is thought that scholars and researchers would themselves undertake the distribution of the results of their scholarship and research and thus bypass traditional scholarly publishers. At the same time, commercial publishers would face strong competition from other non-traditional players such as software and multimedia companies. In point of fact, such predictions do not pay sufficient recognition to the role that scholarly publishers play in adding value to a publication in terms of maintaining quality via the editorial and peer review processes, and facilitating the distribution processes through advertising, marketing, administration and the maintenance of subscription lists. Scholarly commercial publishers have also not been slow to protect their interests by jumping on the IT bandwagon. In fact, in the scholarly (and especially the scholarly journal) arena, much of the scholarly information continues to be digitised forms of information originally available in print publications. These publications may be merely bitmapped images of the original print journals, or may have been reformatted into HTML, ASCII, SGML or Adobe PDF file formats. There are still relatively few examples of scholarly journals which are only available in electronic form and which are produced by institutions or individuals who are not part of the scholarly publications establishment. Although the number of purely electronic journals is increasing, only few of them are peer reviewed

* It is not clear whether the new electronic publications that are increasingly being published on the WWW will provide a way out for libraries. Some of these are peer reviewed, most are available free at the present time, and may eventually develop sufficient reputation to compete against the traditional scholarly journals.

* Publishers of key scholarly journals continue to try to protect their print market, and in most cases, will allow access to their electronic editions only if the print subscription is continued. Overall no standard approach from commercial publishers has emerged, either with regard to pricing or to conditions of access. All kinds of restrictions are usually imposed on access to the electronic versions, eg access being permitted only from a single computer, or a single building, or a single campus in a multi-campus university and so on. Software like watermarking, encryption and other licensing restrictions will continue to allow them to control access and ownership. In fact, the archival role of libraries may be diminished by the fact that many of the systems currently being developed provide only for article access on demand. In situations where the publishers allow their electronic publications to be stored on local servers, there is a danger that they might continue to seek to retain ownership of the electronic publications. The net result could be that libraries subscribing to these electronic journals may end up with nothing when they cancel their subscriptions.

* The cost of staffing can be quite high. Staffing requirements include project management staff, development staff, staff to maintain systems once installed, and staff to undertake promotion and training.

* Infrastructure costs can pose huge problems. For example, the basic infrastructure required would include a high capacity network, desktop computers, fast laser printers, powerful server and software, sophisticated text management database, intellectual property management systems and so on.

* The paradigm shift from local ownership to the access model may not result in libraries or publishers being able to guarantee permanent access to the contents over time.

Despite some of the problems outlined above, the Library has continued to pursue its strategy of developing a model of the virtual library service that will support the University in its flexible delivery programs. A brief description of some of these initiatives are provided below.

(FOOTNOTE: The “Archives of New Journals” site (http://gort.ucsd.edu:80/newjourn/) lists 2404 new electronic journal titles, but only a handful are peer reviewed)

When the University Library opened its new Branch at the Berwick Campus in March 1996, students found four banks of computers and no books on the shelves. The Library had taken seriously the University's declared intention to create an electronic campus and to provide library facilities by electronic delivery with back-up from a conventional library located on the adjacent Casey TAFE campus. The electronic reserve collection is at the core of the "electronic library" at Berwick. Students may retrieve, view and print bit-mapped images of journal articles, book chapters and similar recommended course readings. A significant part of the software for this system was developed within the Library. There are now more than 350 items in this rapidly growing "collection". The existing arrangements require the Library to approach publishers for each item separately requesting approval to scan and store the item in digital format. It is pleasing to report that in the majority of cases publishers have given this approval without charging a royalty fee.

Copyright rather than technology may ultimately prove to be the rock upon which the virtual library initiatives will flounder. For example, our hope of creating an effective electronic reserve system may be blocked by the high copyright charges that CAL wishes to impose. CAL has proposed a charge of $200 to digitise an article or a "per view charge" of between $2.00 and $5.00. If these charges were agreed to by the Copyright Tribunal, the Library would need to find more than $40 million in royalty fees to convert all its reserve materials to electronic format, or pay between $600,000 and $3,000,000 per annum to permit students just to view these items. To date, the AVCC and CAL (Copyright Agency Limited) have not been able to agree on a reasonable rate of remuneration for "electronic copying", e.g. the scanning and storage of materials in electronic library reserve systems. As a result the AVCC Board has decided to apply to the Copyright Tribunal for an order to determine the amount of licence fee payable to CAL for each book chapter or journal article copied into electronic databases in university libraries. Four universities have agreed to represent all Australian universities in this application to the Tribunal, viz. the Australian National University, Deakin University, Monash University and the University of New South Wales, after receiving assurance that the AVCC will meet all their legal expenses. By a coincidence, CAL has also made an application to the Tribunal naming all 37 universities who have given remuneration notices as respondents. CAL's brief covers a wider range of issues than that of the AVCC, and includes not only the issue of electronic reserve, but also questions about appropriate remuneration for copies included in course packs, books of readings or other collections and the means of sampling the number of copies made.

The Library is a partner with the ANSPAG Group in the Faculty of Engineering in two experimental projects. The audio-on-demand project is built around the popular, but currently very labour-intensive, "tape lecture service". A pilot project will be conducted, hopefully, in the first half of 1997.

The video-on-demand project, called McIVER, will allow Visual Arts students to use PC's located in the Humanities and Social Sciences Branch Library and the Caulfield Campus Library to access video clips and other multimedia materials which have been placed on a server by the course lecturer. The latter project is supported by a grant of $40,000 from the Vice-Chancellor's Multimedia Small Grants Scheme.

A third project, under the direction of Dr Carol Steiner, is a joint project of the Faculties of Arts, Business and Economics, and Engineering and the Library to establish a video-on-demand service for the Berwick campus. This project involves the purchase and installation of networking equipment and is intended to piggy-back on the ANSPAG McIVER research project.

In 1995 the Library purchased from OVID Technologies Pty Ltd a major database system (software and data base licenses) primarily to support information access for both internal and external (DEC) students at the Gippsland campus. The system is running on a UNIX platform. Its functionality is similar to that served by the CD-ROM network on the other campuses. It presents a uniform search interface for all databases stored on it and is capable of being accessed via dial-up modems. This makes it ideal for off-campus users. The Library has now used 1996 Quality Funds as well as funds from its recurrent budget to further expand the system by (i) increasing from 16 to 40 the number of licensed concurrent users; (ii) upgrading the software including acquisition of a World Wide Web and Windows interface; (iii) adding several additional databases in psychology, medicine and business. The business database incorporates the full text of 500 periodicals in business and computing and while the medical databases include Medline and the full text of 15 key medical journals. With these enhancements the facility has become accessible from all Monash campuses, including the four teaching hospitals (Alfred, MMC, Box Hill and La Trobe Valley Hospital).

More and more workstations are being installed in public areas in the Library for use by library clientele. This began some years ago when public access workstations were provided in all Branches of the Library to permit access to the CD-ROM network. During the first half of 1996, multi-media workstations were installed in the Music and Multimedia Library and in other branch libraries. These are equipped with CD-ROM drives, sound cards and earphones and video cards. Nine workstations are provided in the Postgraduate studies area in the Information Services Building, and Computer Centre has provided a further 11 PC's for the same area. They are available for a range of uses including both search and retrieval of library information and for applications such as word processing. Recently the Department of Politics funded the Library for two more PC's for student use in accessing information resources. This grant was matched by the Library.

In 1995 the Australian Vice Chancellor's Committee made a research grant to Monash University Library to conduct a pilot project in the transfer of an existing conventional journal, the Australasian Journal of Engineering Education (AJEE), to electronic media. The project involves the University Library, the Unit of Medical Informatics and the Unesco Supported International Centre for Engineering Education (USICEE), in the Faculty of Engineering. During 1995 the appropriate hardware and software were acquired to serve as the host for the project and for future electronic publishing ventures. A staff member from the Library was trained in the various skills required in creating information for distribution via the World Wide Web. Two electronic issues of the journal(volume 6 numbers 1 and 2) were published in parallel with the paper version and made available for viewing on the World Wide Web. Reader comments were obtained by means of a questionnaire sent to all subscribers.

A further research grant of $30,000 was provided by the University from the 1996 Quality Funds. This will enable the project team to continue to publish all issues of the AJEE electronically on the World Wide Web, using the techniques that have been pioneered during 1995. Procedures for the electronic submission, reviewing, refereeing and editing of all manuscripts to the AJEE will be developed and trialed. Alternative methods for the processing of electronic subscriptions, including the collection of subscription fees, using electronic payment software, such as CYBERCASH, credit card secure on-line transactions, micro-billing for specific information visited, etc. will be investigated and trialed. Expansion of the scope of the publishing venture will be explored with the editors of other scholarly journals that are published by or under the auspices of Monash University faculties and departments.

The "virtual library service" model is postulated on the availability of an integrated common interface through which users can gain access to a range of analogue and digital resources. This interface will be based on the Library's computer system, which must have the capability of providing a gateway to local as well as remote databases. The Library computer system that was acquired in 1988 does not have that capability as it is based on 1970's technology. It is one of the oldest library systems among Australian university libraries and may have to be replaced soon as it is becoming increasingly expensive to run and maintain. For example, the Library's recent proposal to add a processor to the Unisys mainframe to cope with the vast increase in the number of transactions has been frustrated by Unisys' demand for an upfront fee of $415,000 (or $11,000 per month) for a five year operating system licence, as well as an additional $2,400 per month for hardware maintenance. Moreover, the catalogue's command driven enquiry system is frequently criticised for its lack of user friendliness, although the Library's development of the Web interface has improved the situation. The likely cost of an appropriate new system, based on the recent experience of the University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne is at least $3 million. Attempts by the Library to build up a reserve to partially fund the replacement system have been frustrated by the University's insistence (as occurred this year) to use up whatever surplus it has managed to build up for operational purposes.

Developments in information technologies and telecommunication systems have improved many areas of interlending and document delivery operations. Electronic communications, for instance, have evolved to the point where information can be transmitted to potential suppliers in a matter of seconds. Electronic transmission of documents is also evolving at a fast rate to the point where it is expected that most documents will be delivered directly to the requester's desk top within the next year or so. The last several years have also seen a dramatic rise in the number of commercial suppliers, whose principal objective is to supply information as quickly and efficiently as possible, requiring expert knowledge on the part of document delivery staff to realise the full potential of these services for the benefit of the academic community.

However, past attempts at keeping up with such rapid change and implementing many of these desirable developments has meant that extra routines have been layered over existing, more traditional ones, and training staff over a wide area, with varying success rates, has compounded the already complex nature of interlending and document delivery operations. Yet, the Library feels an obligation to be innovative in its approach to service provision and to take the best of the emerging technologies to ensure streamlined, efficient, and relevant services are always made available to its primary clientele.

In order to realise the full potential of these technological developments and to provide the best possible environment for implementing these new initiatives, the Library resolved to undertake a complete restructuring of interlending and document delivery services. This new structure has now been in place for more than a year and is continuing to evolve and keep pace with other new and exciting developments in information provision.

As amalgamations took place at Monash, the Library was left with the problem of assimilating and levelling all services across eight branch or campus libraries. Within each of these independent operations existed an historical breakdown of interlending and document delivery services comprising the traditional interlibrary loan services, hospital loan services (circulating Monash owned material to the growing number of affiliated teaching hospitals), and the newly introduced service of intercampus loans. This meant a replication of services, staff expertise and expensive equipment across eight different locations, multiplied by three individual services. Because of the complex funding arrangements there could be no cross-use of services by academic staff and research students. That is, for instance, academic staff members located at Caulfield, could not avail themselves of the interlibrary loan services at a Clayton branch. Adding to that complication was the fact that each type of service required a specific paper form to be completed. This created many obvious and frustrating barriers to an efficient operation.

A further complication was with staff training. As more and more changes were being implemented across all information services, locally, nationally and internationally, it was becoming increasingly difficult to ensure that all staff were kept abreast of all innovations in a timely and logical manner. This created an inequality of service and training especially for the smaller branches where staff were often employed on a part-time basis or had a variety of tasks to perform in one day. The complexities created by the new information technology meant that there was a need for a small pool of expertise which could be maintained and used to the full advantage, with the more practical or manual tasks being relegated in a logical and efficient manner that reflected good work flow practices for higher productivity. But the new communication technology also provided the opportunity to create electronic links to each individual client who needed the services of an efficient and informed pool of experts.

Monash primary clientele who are eligible for interlending and document delivery services will now find that:

* the quickest, most direct route in submitting requests is via the electronic form.

* patrons need only input their Family Name and Monash ID (which together constitute their electronic signature and binds them to the original copyright declaration they completed), the system automatically verifies their registration and inserts other personal details such as delivery address, etc.

* searches may be conducted through the web access to Sesame2 or through any other Windows-based programme and information dumped directly into the Comments Box in the electronic form.

* once a request has been submitted, the information is returned to the requester on the screen, this may be printed off, mailed to themselves or saved as a file.

* the electronic form saves time, it is convenient, provides electronic filing of request information, and a visit to the Library is not required;

* document delivery is a 24 hour service which allows requests to be submitted after the Library has closed.

* given presentations to library staff in Law, Hargrave, Biomed, H&SS, Caulfield and Peninsula libraries, explaining the implementation schedule and answering questions on the services

* devised new routines and put into place for the request side of document delivery services. These routines continue to be developed and revised as new staff adjust to the procedures. Their is constant communication and exchange of ideas as to how best to order these routines.

* devised three routines which are not only logical in the order of procedures but also provide each person undertaking that routine with a new challenge and interest for each week. It also means that each person becomes more responsible for a particular routine because that routine has follow-on effects to the next

* in-house staff training and each new staff member rotates, on a weekly basis, between routines

* ensured that our primary clientele are well looked after and have developed a positive and helpful customer service focus

As with most new innovations, there have been some hiccups in the system. But generally speaking, the service has been extremely effective in reducing turnaround times for "non fast track" interlibrary loans from up to two months to less than 10 days for 90% of the requests, and less than three days for inter-campus loans. So successful has the service been, that the number of requests from January to the end of July has increased by nearly 64% for interlibrary loans and nearly 39% for inter-campus loans. Staff are processing an average of 300 requests a day. This is an unsustainable rate of increase, especially as there are some individuals requesting as many as 200 items at one time because of the ease of using the electronic request system. It has been estimated that at the current rate of demand, the Library will overspend its document delivery budget by $300,000 by the end of the year. Because of this, the Library is re-examining its policies and developing a new strategy to contain the demand, and this may include the imposition of a quota in 1997.

A survey of users of the document delivery service will be conducted shortly. A draft questionnaire has been prepared, and we hope to survey all users by email. The results of the survey should provide the Library with additional information to further refine and streamline the document delivery service.

CILLA is a project initiated by Macquarie University, Monash University and RMG/CAVAL, and sponsored by CAUL. Funding is provided through the AVCC's Standing Committee on Information Resources, which manages the DEET Library Infrastructure funds. The Project will undertake a feasibility study, from both a technical and a business perspective, into the development of a local interlibrary loan and document delivery administration system. The proposed project will be undertaken in close association with the Australasian National Document and Information Service Project team, the Joint Electronic Document Delivery Project, the Australian Council of Libraries and Information Services to ensure cross-sectoral interests, and the Association of Research Libraries in North America. If the study is feasible, a recommendation would be made to implement a strategy to ensure that the CILLA software is developed. Judith Greenaway, Document Delivery Librarian, has been seconded as Project Manager to undertake the detailed planning of the project, carry out the work and present the findings.

The Copyright Advisory Committee, which was established in 1995 and is chaired by the University Librarian, has the following terms of reference:

2. To advise the Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor on copyright matters.

The Copyright Advisory Committee has been involved in a number of activities. These include, inter alia, the following:

The Committee drafted and published a pamphlet which provides information about the copyright policies which must be observed by Monash University staff and students. The pamphlet has been widely disseminated and has assisted greatly in raising awareness about copyright issues.

The Committee arranged for the text of the copyright pamphlet to be placed in a prominent position on the University's Internet Home Page. This "site" also provides links to other Australian and overseas information about copyright.

In 1995 members of the Committee organised the Audio Visual Copyright Society's (AVCS) major survey of University audio-visual copying - working with AGB McNair.

In 1996 members of the Committee have been responsible for the similar, but much larger, Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) survey of University photocopying - also working with AGB McNair.

These surveys involve more than a hundred departments across all campuses of the University and are extremely important for purposes of determining the amount of our annual license fees. The exercises involve a great deal of energy and input from those involved in organising them - not least because they are less than popular with University staff.

The agreement which the University has with CAL which permits us to photocopy extensively imposes a number of obligations - including that of "marking" (stamping) copies made for educational purposes in the terms specified by the Copyright Regulations. The Committee has been instrumental in advising departmental heads about the observance of these and other requirements.

The Committee has been involved in the Library's E-Reserve project, receiving regular reports from the Deputy University Librarian. This project aims to make the scanned images of reserve reading material available to Monash staff and students via the Computer Network. There are obvious major copyright implications resulting from this project.

Members of the Committee have participated in drafting new sections of the Finance Handbook which provide instructions about dealing with copyright fees and charges.

In addition to those matters listed above the Committee has consulted and advised on diverse issues including copying done in and for Monash overseas campuses, special copying facilities for users with disabilities, the legality of charging fees for copying in the light of the Higher Education Funding Act, and selling student reading materials from University bookshops. It has also made submissions to the review of copyright legislation being undertaken by the Copyright Law Review Committee.

Until recently the Committee reported to Professor Lauchlan Chipman, Deputy Vice-Chancellor. It is not clear to whom the Copyright Advisory Committee will now report.

The survey of distance education students is one of several initiatives being conducted as part of the Monash Library's quality assurance program. This survey is designed to give an in depth view of how the Monash Library's distance education students perceive the Off Campus Library Services provided by the Gippsland Library. The questionnaire used is a modified version of the CAUL "Library/Clientele Congruence" performance indicator. 6000 questionnaires have been distributed by mail, but only 22.3% have been returned. The Library is in the process of analysing the data and preparing a full report, which will be widely distributed when completed.

The Library's Staff Development Committee made a submission to the review of the Professional Development Centre. It noted that 70% of the Library's staff in grades HEW2 to HEW5 attended some staff development activity conducted by the PDC in 1995. As approximately 70% of the Library staff are classified at these levels, the PDC makes a very significant contribution to the development of this group, because it can be difficult to meet development needs of these people, as professional conferences and activities are generally aimed at more senior staff.

The Library nominated four women from its staff to attend the 1996 Women in Leadership programme. Ms Christine Cooze, Deputy Branch Librarian, Humanities and Social Sciences Branch Library was successful in her application for participation in the University's Senior Women Advancement Scheme (SWAS).

There are a substantial number of Library staff members occupying junior or middle management positions who have never received formal management training. In order to remedy this situation the Library contracted with AIMA (Australian Information Management Association) to conduct a programme for 20 staff members, tailored to the needs of the University Library. The programme was conducted in six one-day sessions over a period of several months. A very successful feature of the programme was a series of information sessions conducted by senior University Managers, including the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), the General Manager, the Director of Personnel and the Director of the Computer Centre, each of whom gave the group their perspective on the future directions of the University.

The Library has been consulting with the Personnel Services Division on several industrial relations issues relating to the terms and conditions of casual staff who make up a substantial part of the Library's workforce. The lack of clarity on the issues, viz. annual increments for casual staff, and penalty rates for casual staff, is a concern. The Library is reviewing its practices with respect to the extensive use of casual staff, also in the light of expected budget restrictions in future years, whilst acknowledging at the same time, that the employment of casual staff helps the Library to cater satisfactorily for fluctuations in service demand across the year.

During August and September the Library hosted two international visitors, Mr Ardana Putra, the Librarian of the Universitas Udayana Politeknik in Bali, Indonesia and Professor Zan Pingchuan, Deputy Librarian, Technical Services, China Central Party School, Beijing, China.

The Library has acquired a collection of over three hundred pamphlet plays from the eighteenth century. This complements the collection of plays from the Restoration period purchased in 1994, and the seventeen bound volumes of eighteenth-century plays from the Colquhoun of Luss Library acquired in 1995.

A large collection of early Australian comics has been purchased. This will support the growing interest in popular culture in the History and English Departments.

A collection of press clippings books from the former Herald Library has been purchased. These concentrate on communism in Australia in the late 40s and 50s.

8.1.1. Reserve Database. Reserve Staff have designed and implemented a Microsoft Access database, which identifies the progress of reading lists and processing of reserve material.

8.1.2. Asian Resource Guide for East Asia and Southeast Asia. The completed guide will be published and marketed by Moninfo and will be part of the pre ALIA conference workshop planned later for this year.

8.1.3. Monash University Library Telephone Service (MULTELS). Monash University is expanding the use of IVR (Interactive Voice Response) service and MULTELS will soon be trialing its first IVR program. It is hoped that this will enable the Library to offer telephone loan renewals in the future.

8.2.1. Electronic Services. In 1996 this Branch purchased access to MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and the Core Biomedical Collection from OVID Technology, to replace the current systems being offered on the CD-ROM network. The Core Biomedical Collection offers access to 15 full text journals, including The Lancet, The British Medical Journal, American Journal of Medicine, Archives of General Psychiatry, British Medical Journal, Circulation, and Paediatrics. There is no cost to the user to download articles. Two additional Biomedical full-text collections are scheduled for release in late 1996 and early 1997. In addition, full-text collections are being developed for Life Sciences, Engineering, Nursing/Allied Health, Mental Health and the Humanities.

8.2.2. The Biomedical Library Home Page The creation and expansion of the Biomedical Library's Home Page is probably one of the most important developments in planning for the future provision of information to the clientele served by this Branch. In 1996 the Biomedical Library created a page on the WWW with an annotated listing of selected journals available in full-text over the Internet in the area of Biomedicine. Journals listed include the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Physics in Medicine and Biology and Nucleic Acids Research. The page also includes information on sites such as BioMedNet that provide access to not only full-text journal articles, but also information on conferences and job vacancies in the medical field. Four thousand dollars of 1996 Research Infrastructure Funding has been allocated to cover the cost of new electronic journal subscriptions during this transitional period of time when subscribing to print and electronic versions is still necessary.

User education programs now routinely refer users to this journals information and other information on the Home Page that would have been previously provided in print, such as guides to databases, and guides to information on essay topics. As the number of remote users expands, the value of the Home Page will continue to increase in importance.

8.2.3. Monash Medical Parents Contribution The Biomedical Library has received a donation of $3,000 from the Monash Medical Parents Group. This is a regular donation received by the Biomedical Library and has been used in the past, in consultation with the donors, for equipment and facilities that will benefit the Library's users.

8.3.1. MEADS - Monash Electronic Access and Delivery for Serials. This is a joint project between the Hargrave Library and the Monash Library Document Delivery Service. The initial planning phase was completed in the first half of the year. A six months pilot project, July to December 1996, will provide eligible Hargrave primary clientele with direct access to electronic ordering and journal article delivery covering journals cancelled by the Hargrave Library. The pilot will offer free document delivery. Funding arrangements will be worked out in the context of the cost and effectiveness of the MEADS pilot. It is intended to offer a MEADS type service to cover journals not held in the collection.

8.3.2. Electronic Services. The Home Page was extended, updated and enhanced with graphics. This is an ongoing project with new files being added as they are produced. A PC "Noticeboard" was set up near the library entrance to advertise new services and information sources using a PC monitor and liteshow portable presentation. The Electronic Information Desk has been completed and a special purpose stand is being built.

8.4.1. Legal Information Online Project. The Law Library is embarking upon a project to provide online, full-text access to areas of its print collection of case law, legislation, treaties and journal articles. It is envisaged that such an "image" database, accessible via the Web, will open up many currently somewhat inaccessible areas of the collection to wider use amongst both the University population and the wider, commercial community. The ALLI (Australasian Legal Literature Index) database will be a key component of the new Legal Information Online, or LIO service. The project is in the consultation process.

8.4.2. Student Docking Stations. The Law Library is also involved in a pilot project with the Computer Centre, whereby purpose built "docking stations" will be installed with a view to allowing student-direct access to the network by way of their lap top computers. The Library will supply the furniture while the Computer Centre will arrange for the necessary wiring and connection to the network. If successful the project will be much expanded across the University Library system and has the potential to greatly reduce pressure to build and provide new computer facilities for students.

The use of the e-reserve system as well as various online services has been increasing rapidly. A substantial collection of printed monographs has also been acquired, and these are housed in the Berwick Tafe Library. There have been some complaints by both academic staff and students concerning the separation of the print materials from the electronic resources. But as the Berwick Electronic Library was never designed to house print materials, it will be difficult to change the model of library provision without extending the space currently provided.

8.6.1. Adaptive Technology Room. A room in each Campus Library has been made available for the purpose of providing students with disabilities with the opportunity to access electronic services. The equipment in these rooms have been provided by the Disability Liaison Unit and includes in each case a computer with a voice synthesiser and zoom text.

8.6.2. Electronic Services. Reuter's Business Briefs is available on line from a terminal located in Library. This database is updated on a daily basis and provides a range of business information including the full text of articles from several Australian newspapers. CCH Electronic Tax Library and Financial Factfile can be consulted at Caulfield. General Periodicals Ondisc, a full text database of 376 periodicals in the areas of arts, social sciences, business and computing can be soon accessed at Caulfield. Access to the full text databases ABI Global (Business) and the Core Biomedical Collection will shortly be available from terminals in the two libraries. In addition The Age newspaper on CD-ROM, Australian Financial Review, Sydney Morning Herald and Business Review Weekly will shortly be added to Caulfield's CD-ROM network.

Peninsula has ordered The Oxford English Dictionary on CD and Visible Human CD. The Examination Papers Database is now available from terminals at both campus libraries.

8.7.1. Restructure of the Gippsland Campus Library. A new Library staff structure and amended staff profile was approved towards the end of 1995. The changes include:

* Creation of a position of Customer Services Librarian, in charge of on-campus and off- campus services;

* A new External Services Unit, which integrates telephone enquires, services to distance education and to open learning students, and document delivery;

* Strengthening of the reference/information section to provide services to both on-campus and off-campus students, by the inclusion of the former off-campus librarians in the section;

* Reclassification of an existing position to create a position of Associate Technical Services Librarian (Gippsland), in charge of serials, acquisitions and cataloguing/processing.

8.7.2. External Services. After a ruling last year by the University Solicitor that the former compulsory fee for additional services ('free' return postage and 'free' photocopies) could be an illegal fee under the Higher Education Funding Act, an optional fee of $40 per year was introduced in 1996. To date some 1700 Distance Education students have elected to pay this fee.

The abolition of the compulsory fee has resulted in some drop in the number of items sent (8,773 for the first six months of 1996, compared with 11,926 for the same period in 1995) but with the drop in fee revenue, and a subsequent reduction of casual staff, the External Services Unit has been very busy this year.

8.7.3. Library Acquisition Funds. From 1988 to 1995 the Library acquisition funds for the Schools of the Gippsland Campus were controlled by the individual Schools. This year the funds have returned to the control of the Library. A special meeting of the Gippsland Library Users Committee was held on 26 March to discuss the distribution of acquisition funds to the Schools, in accordance with the General Library Committee's formula under which acquisitions funds are distributed to faculties.

The statistics for the period 1 January to 31 August 1996 show a growth in the volume activity, particularly in Document Delivery Services. The following table provides some comparison of the same period in 1995:

Please find attached a submission requesting approval of changes to the name, structure and functions of the SCEAE.

The SCEAE met on 4/9/96 to discuss changing its role in 1997. Following extensive discussion a document was prepared and considered at its meeting on 2/10/96. This document was revised in response to suggestions by committee members and sent out for further comment on 3/10/96. Some minor changes have been made to produce this submission and there is general agreement on the final document.

MONASH UNIVERSITY STANDING COMMITTEE ON ETHICS
IN
ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION (SCEAE)

In the past few years several members of the University's Animal Experimentation Ethics Committees (AEECs) and some researchers have expressed concern at the SCEAE reviewing projects which had previously been approved by the AEEC. The SCEAE has discussed these concerns at least annually and decided that the variations in quality of submissions coming from the AEECs made additional reviewing by the SCEAE necessary. Now that the quality of submissions being approved by AEECs has improved a detailed second review of all applications in no longer warranted. It is felt that the emphasis of the Standing Committee should move to addressing other important tasks, and leave the reviewing of submissions to the AEECs. These proposals have the support of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor responsible for research matters, Professor Peter Darvall.

The primary role of the committee is, and will continue to be, to ensure a uniform and high standard of animal welfare and ethics in animal experimentation throughout Monash University. The provision of high quality animals for research, and a high quality of animal welfare, will ensure continued funding for research. Another primary role of the committee will be to monitor the activities and ethical standards of the Departmental/Hospital AEECs. The future focus of the committee will be directed towards both of these important issues. Therefore we consider that the proposed changes will strengthen the high level of ethical standards relating to animal usage within the University.

The word ethics was not included in the name because
(i) The Departmental/Hospital committees are Animal Ethics Committees
(ii) The central committee needs to be seen to be different
(iii) The central committee's primary focus is animal welfare, which covers a range of activities including the ethics of using animals in research and teaching

The position of Executive Officer of the SCEAE would then become Animal Welfare Officer of Monash University.

To authorise Departmental/Hospital AEECs to approve the use of animals in research and teaching on behalf of Monash University - subject to regular audit of their work. The Standing Committee will ensure that the AEECs' activities are in conformity with State law and NH&MRC guidelines, and that University policies are being implemented consistently.

When an AEEC is authorised to approve projects, its decision in relation to a project will not be revisited by the central Committee, except under exceptional circumstances. If the central Committee finds substantial problems in the performance of an AEEC during an audit, it will have three options:

Generally, the first course would be preferred, and the third only pursued if a re-audit revealed continuing problems.

To act as a referral committee. Proposals will be referred to the central committee when either

To develop and review Monash University policy for animal use and welfare. This will be undertaken whenever it is felt appropriate that a University-wide policy is required. The Committee will also be responsible for determining and disseminating best practice within the University.

To maintain a central register of approved submissions.
The AEECs will be responsible for advising applicants of the approval or otherwise of their submissions and providing a copy of these documents to the Executive Officer. The Executive Officer will continue to advise funding bodies that applications have received ethical approval by the University. Together with the Research Grants and Ethics Branch, the Executive Officer will remain responsible for ensuring that funds from successful grants can only be expended when ethical approval has been obtained.

To develop and review uniform submission, annual and final report forms for use throughout Monash University.
It is essential that uniform application and report forms are used throughout the University. The AEECs will be responsible for obtaining annual and final reports from researchers, and providing copies to the Executive Officer.

To ensure adequate education and training in relation to animal use and welfare.
This will be provided for AEEC members (lay, welfare and academic), researchers, research students, and laboratory and animal technicians. Some of this training will be provided by AEECs.

To keep the Academic Board informed of matters relating to animal welfare and ethical issues, and seek its endorsement for major new policies.

The committee will as far as possible, have an equal membership of men and women, as recommended by the University.

The quorum for meetings is five, with the following categories of membership represented:

Each appointment (except the Executive Officer and the Director of Animal Services) is for a two year term of office with up to one renewal followed by at least one year off the committee.

Monash University ASSOCIATE DEANS (TEACHING) Report to Committee of Deans The Associate Deans (Teaching) met on 11 September 1996.

That the Committee of Deans note the Proceedings of the meeting of the Associate Deans (Teaching) held on 11 September 1996.

P R O C E E D I N G S 2. Presentation - Use of the World Wide Web in Teaching

The Associate Deans (Teaching) were given a presentation regarding the use of the world wide web in teaching by staff from the Department of Psychology (Dr Yelland and Dr Hughes).

Members noted the different uses to which the Department of Psychology puts computers and the world wide web, including

It was also noted that both on-campus and off-campus students could access the information and use the services of the department using a variety of methods and technologies.

Issues raised by the increased use of computers and networks in teaching and discussed at the meeting included the need to carefully control the release of lecture notes to ensure that students continue to attend lectures; the perception that use of computers in teaching supersedes the need to have black- or white-boards in classrooms (which it does not); and the need to always have backup procedures in case the computer-aided notes cannot be used. Security measures, including supervision of any examinations conducted on-line and use of passwords, were also considered, in relation to the anticipated use of on-line systems in assessment. In this context, it was noted that Distance Education methods of teaching and assessment are now also being used in on-campus settings.

Members discussed the pedagogical issue of whether students were actually learning better or were simply being better entertained by the new technologies and concluded that it was important to remember that the new technologies were tools for the teacher which allowed greater interaction in some areas and earlier response to data entry than in the past. Of particular interest to the Associate Deans (Teaching) was the use of class newsgroups for on-line 'discussions', in which an academic moderator posts a question for discussion and students respond in their own time with their own on-line posts. This is considered in some respects an advantage over tutorial groups and individual meetings with academics because students who would not normally speak in class may feel less intimidated in front of a computer screen (and away from other people); students' questions are often answered by other students; students can advance unpopular or controversial points of view more readily; and students have the time to consider their answers for longer before they post them to the newsgroup. The moderator then is able to correct any misunderstandings or misinterpretations and can make a summary of the issues and responses, as in a normal tutorial, and often presents this summary in a face to face setting.

Members noted that the cost of a transition to more on-line teaching could be considerable, and that the roles of support staff also change to accommodate a greater need for computer related support rather than secretarial or clerical.

As Monash moves towards the concept of the 'virtual university', members noted that there are two main issues for further consideration in relation to on-line instruction: intellectual property rights and right of access to information; and the educational merit of the changes and the role of 'live' versus 'virtual' academics. It was noted that some of the changes in relation to this second issue are merely changes to method and medium, as the increasing use of the world wide web to access information changes the function of paper-based libraries. It was noted that, just as both paper-based and on-line libraries have their specific uses, so do on-line and live academics. Live academics are seen to be non-linear, unlike the web, and the web is largely useful at this point as a supplier of information. However, this implies changes in the culture of the lecture, as the lecture becomes less a forum for the provision of information (which is available on the web) and more a forum for teacher-student interaction.

Members were asked to consider what had been accomplished in each faculty in terms of transition in 1996 and what each faculty would add to the process in 1997. This information will be brought to the October meeting of the Associate Deans (Teaching).

Members noted that many of the problems experienced by students in transition from secondary to tertiary studies have been social rather than academic in orientation. However, it was also noted that a changed approach to teaching and learning matters for first year students could lead to the solution or reduction of social problems. For example, if a social problem is loneliness and isolation, enrolling students in the same tutorial groups in at least three subjects provides the student with a support group, and with a potential social network. It was agreed that the introduction of a mentor had a positive impact on the students involved, giving them a person to talk to about the social difficulties they were experiencing. Some In some cases argument could be made that better secondary school presentations might be made, to encourage students to make practical choices for their tertiary education as well as emotional ones: advising the student who lived in St Albans that Monash would be hard to reach on a daily basis might make a difference to the impact of the travel time necessary on the student. It was noted that academic programs which facilitated student to student interaction were beneficial for first year students because they felt that they could rely on each other and many of the social issues became less important. It was also noted that many students perform worse in their first year at University than in Year 12, and members discussed whether an innovation for 1997 and beyond should be the introduction of Faculty-based specific subjects for first year students, much like the programs in the professional faculties, which directly encourage the kind of student to student interaction indicated above.

Members noted that three points to be considered when developing transition plans for 1997 were:

Committee of Deans Meeting 13-1996

A G E N D A