AustLit

'This paper provides an overview of Stage One in the development of a new resource about school libraries and teacher-librarianship in Australia and New Zealand. This new advocacy, research and information tool was produced by a team of academics from the School of Information and Communication Studies, Charles Sturt University. This team have expertise in education, librarianship, and teacher-librarianship. Curating over 100 years of resources for, and about teacher-librarians and school libraries in Australia and New Zealand, Stage One of the Knowledge Bank of Australian and New Zealand School Libraries (KBANZSL) is a point-in-time guide and record of critical reports, books, papers, and other resources about Australian school libraries and teacher-librarianship. It is intended to support researchers, administrators, practitioners and advocates of school libraries and teacher-librarianship by recording literature in the field in a single location. Details of the project's scope, development and parameters are discussed, and examples of the intended final outputs are provided. The overall project addresses an identified gap in the research around teacher-librarianship in Australia and New Zealand. An opportunity to build on this current research exists, with the intention that Stage Two of the project will extend the resource into the online environment.'  (Publication abstract)

'At least 140 Australian journals ceased publication in the past decade. While there are still more than 650 Australian journals, 75% of the discontinued ones served the arts, social sciences and humanities disciplines. The loss of journals has significant implications for local scholarship.' (Introduction)

'This paper reports on part one of a multi-part research project investigating Australian public library responses to the requirement to close their physical sites due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The aim was to examine how Australian public libraries responded to the crisis during their periods of closure in terms of services and resources, the challenges they faced, and the role locality played in their response. In total, 212 public library authority managers completed an online questionnaire survey in August 2020 representing 695 public library branch locations. The results showed that during their periods of closure of their physical sites, libraries established new services (e.g. wellbeing phone calls, delivery of craft kits to users) and expanded several existing ones, especially those related to e-resources. The biggest challenge reported was managing staff working arrangements. While most libraries kept permanent staff and fixed-term staff on full hours, most completely cut volunteers and casual staff hours. There were some geographic differences in the response of libraries to the crisis. Overall, however, whilst metropolitan, regional and remote public libraries faced immense challenges, especially regarding staffing and human resources, they were also able to respond rapidly and with agility to the challenges brought about by COVID-19.' (Introduction)