11th National Library Technicians Conference
Criminal justice information for the 21st century: an Australian library initiative
Karen Collier Australian Institute of Criminology
Abstract
In recent years the Australian Institute of Criminology has made significant progress in the provision of online information services. In the 1980s and 1990s the Institute developed a high profile research library. The work of the library included production of CINCH, the Australian Criminology Database, an abstracted index of Australian criminal justice literature, and also involved extensive networking with other libraries and researchers.
The emergence of internet-based services has provided an opportunity for the Library to broaden the impact of its information services work. Initially the AIC's website was a simple facility, communicating information about the Institute's corporate objectives, program and products. This facility has now developed to the point that it is a portal of criminal justice information, offering a wide range of online services, including a number of external websites.
The paper will describe these services and outline the steps that the Institute has taken in their development. The basis of this work of the Institute is the expertise of the library staff, but the information services being offered extend far wider than those of a traditional library. The paper will also outline the likely path of future development for online services.
Background
The Australian Institute of Criminology, a Commonwealth Government agency, was established in 1973, and operates under legislation of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia. The director reports to the Minister for Justice and to a Board of Management comprising distinguished criminal justice practitioners from around Australia. Key stakeholders include Commonwealth Government ministers and parliamentarians, and Commonwealth departments and agencies. Other stakeholders include State and Territory Governments and agencies, criminal justice practitioners, the criminological research community and community organisations.
The Institute is the national focus for the study of crime and criminal justice in Australia and for the dissemination of criminal justice information. The Institute draws on information supplied to it by a wide variety of sources and its policy advice is objective and independent.
The Institute's information services
The Institute's information work looks to underpin research and other work in the field of criminology by developing timely and cost effective criminal justice information services. Core activities are the continuing development of comprehensive library-based collections and databases; provision of Internet services, including a number of external websites and an Internal Web; publication and communication of research outcomes; and conduct of conferences, seminars and workshops.
In the 1980's and 1990's the Institute's J V Barry Library developed to be a high profile research library. The work of the library not only supports the information needs of the Institute's research program but also services key stakeholders and other clients. It also includes production of CINCH, the Australian Criminology Database, an abstracted index of Australian criminal justice literature. The library is involved in extensive networking with other libraries and researchers.
The AIC's website work
The Institute's website work is co-ordinated by the library manager, who is the webmaster for the AIC's external websites and for the internal web. He oversees a web team of contracted senior undergraduate university students. This team is responsible for web design, development and editing.
Feedback received at the Institute indicates that the current staffing model employed in web development is a key element in the success of the AIC's website operations. The Institute's Library staff have developed important networks with Australian and International agencies and organisations and are therefore well placed to exploit links with these organisations and agencies. As people with 'fingers-on-the-pulse' with policy initiatives and other changes in criminology and criminal justice, the AIC's staff utilise the websites to communicate information on these initiatives to a wider audience. This approach to website development and management by the Institute, has been well received by its clients. Current web usage statistics indicate that there are approximately 300 000 requests for pages per month.
The one-on-one interaction of the Institute's Library staff with the web team means that web development is undertaken in a direct and responsive environment. Library staff are responsive to the day-to-day requirements of both the Institute's management, and government generally, and changes and additions to the websites can be implemented without delay. Library staff are involved in publicising new content or new initiatives with the websites. They communicate these changes through a variety of publications and e-mail discussion lists.
Current website services
The Institute has developed and operates three publicly accessible websites:
More recently, the Institute has developed a criminal justice website for the Campbell Collaboration. The Campbell Collaborations is a significant new international initiative intended to prepare, maintain and make accessible systematic reviews of research on the effects of social and educational intervention, including criminal justice. The Campbell Crime and Justice co-ordinating Group is located at http://www.aic.gov.au/campbellcj/.
Website objectives
The objectives for the Institute's website are to:
- Provide up-to-date, accurate online information to key stakeholders about the Institute's mission, program and related work;
- Continue to develop the reach, value and user satisfaction of the website, including developing a broad constituency of users who frequently access the site;
- Provide a vehicle for stakeholders to seek further information or to provide feedback on issues pertinent to the work of the Institute; and
- Lead to the reduction over time of the costs of publishing and distributing Institute reports, data and other information.
Website context
Initially the Institute's website was a simple government site, communicating information about the Institute's corporate objectives, program and products. The website has now developed to the point that it is not only an extensive source in its own right for publications, documents, and data, but also a significant portal of criminal justice information, offering a wide range of links and online services.
The maintenance and enhancement of the website are driven by the need to deliver content, clearly and at high speed and in accordance with the Institute's values of being professional, serious, and accessible. The website aims to be visually attractive and user-friendly, and modern, without being over-elaborate or fussy. While charts and graphs are included, other graphics and photographs are kept to a minimum, aside from where they are presented in reports and other printed publications.
What does the website hold for libraries?
- Corporate information
- Includes the AIC's corporate plan, staff details, and a section for the Criminology Research Council.
- Research program information
- Library information
- Includes the online catalogue of the Institute's J V Barry Library
- Publications
The website includes the full-text of a number of AIC publications that are released concurrently with the print version. In addition, it includes the full-text of a wide range of Institute publications, published since the late 1980s and now out-of print.
Conferences and seminars
This section includes information on forthcoming AIC conferences and seminars, as well as programs from previous AIC conferences and seminars, with papers from these conferences and seminars.
Special subject sections
Special subject sections or pages have been developed to include information, documents, publications and links on subjects with relevance to the Institute's programs and of wider relevance to Australian commonwealth, state, territory and local governments. These sections are an important feature of the AIC's website. They are developed, maintained and regularly by the Institute's Library staff, in consultation with research staff and other experts in the field.
Topics already covered include:
- Australian Alcohol and Illicit Drugs;
- Australian Deaths in Custody;
- Australian Violence Prevention Awards;
- Corrections in Australia;
- Crime and Violence Prevention;
- Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA);
- Issues and Innovations in Australian Policing;
- Occupational Violence in Australia: An Annotated Bibliography of Prevention Policies, Strategies and Guidance Materials;
- Restorative Justice in Australia; and
- Smuggling and Trafficking in Human Beings.
In preparation:
- Crime Prevention and Community Safety for Local Government.
Criminal justices statistics
The website includes statistical data sets drawn from a variety of sources. It also includes links to other sources of criminal justice statistics. This section is currently being redeveloped.
Directories
The Institute's website currently includes two directories with information contributed by clients external to the AIC. These are:
- Directory of Australian Researchers in Criminology and Criminal Justice; and
- Directory of Criminal Justice Libraries, Australia and New Zealand.
Redevelopment issues
I quote from the Executive Summary of the December 2000 of the Government Online Progress Report (Page 1):
Agencies are increasing the volume, range and functionality of services that they bring online. Compared to the present situation where online services are dominated by the provision of static information, around half of future services will have transaction and data interchange capacities.
Future directions for the website
Scenarios for the Institute
Last year the Institute conducted a survey of both Institute staff and external users to determine the direction that the website should take. Those who completed the survey nominated a number of issues for consideration for the modernisation and further development of the Institute's website, they included
Statistics online
Researchers in the field of criminology and criminal justice have a continuing requiring requirement for statistical information. The Institute would be aiming to develop and implement interactive tools to permit users to create statistical tables tailored to their information requirements.
Currently on the Institute's website statistical information is provided in static form. The AIC will aim to develop and implement interactive tools to permit users to create statistical tables tailored to their information requirements.
E-Commerce
The Institute would be aiming to improve facilities for online ordering of its publications. The aim would be make online ordering attractive to a wide range of customers through the availability of a fully automated facility with secure online credit card facilities.
The Institute would be aiming to develop facilities for online registrations and expressions-of-interest for conferences and seminars, also payment, where required.
Secretariat services
The Institute aims to utilise web technologies to support the work of research groups or committees. The web would be used to distribute information, data, agenda papers and minutes. In some instance this could involve use of restricted (ie: passworded) websites or sections of websites, and restricted discussion lists. Note: In the latter part of 2000 a restricted-access facility was introduced for the AIC's Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) project (see: http://www.aic.gov.au/research/duma.html).
Distributed authorship
The redevelopment of the website will be accompanied by a move to a distributed authorship environment within the Institute, with Research staff, and also staff from other units, preparing and contributing material. This new direction will improve and expand the services delivered online by incorporating in the design of the site the experience of staff who are most familiar with the needs and demands of their clients.
CINCH, the Australian criminology database
CINCH is a major source of information on Australian criminal justice literature. Currently the AIC has contracted with RMIT Publishing to make the database available commercially on CD-ROM and online. This arrangement has provided a significant source of revenue to the Institute over the past decade, and because of this, the Institute is not currently contemplating making the database available as part of its own website services. However, this issue will be kept under review and there is scope to offer subsets of the Database available free-of-charge on the Institute's website.
Portals
The Australian Government's Government Online Strategy provides a mandate for all Commonwealth departments and agencies for the development of online services. The National Office for the Information Economy (NOIE) has responsibility for facilitating and monitoring Government Online commitments.
The December 2000 Progress Report of the National Office announced the development of a customer focused portals framework as a major Government initiative.
Terry Morrow, from the University of Bath, UK, speaking at the Information Online Conference, Sydney in January this year, stipulated that for an Internet website to be considered a portal, it should conform to certain characteristics. He suggested that these characteristics might include some or all of the following:
- A theme or specialisation for the whole portal;
- A collection of primary material related to the theme of the portal;
- A searchable catalogue or catalogues of various materials that appear elsewhere either on the web or on other media;
- Links to related material elsewhere on the web, possibly evaluated and described;
- Facilities for communicating with people of similar interests (bulletin boards, e-mail lists); and
- Facilities for personalising, registration, alerting services.
The first characteristic is what portal sites are all about, providing a focus on a particular interest or activity or type of material. A government research agency with a clear mandate for the dissemination of information would always be well placed to develop a portal site. The Institute's website contains an abundance of primary material; current and previously distributed publications, conference papers, reports and statistical data.
The Institute's website also contains secondary material; eg: the J V Barry Library's online catalogue and the two directories previously mentioned.
Morrow stressed in his paper that the last three bullet points (links, communication, personalising) are important features of the type of service that we refer to as in a portal in the context of this paper. At the Institute, web services have been managed by Library staff and these professionals, with considerable experience in the field of criminology, have been able to exercise judgment, particularly in regard to developing subject-specialised pages for the AIC's website, and for assessing the relevance of other sites for linking.
Why are portals important?
For a long time we have relied on search engines but there is much material that is accessible over the web that is completely invisible to search engines. Further, as Morrow points out, search engines are unable to make value-judgements on the quality, provenance, or relevance of the items they find, and we all know that there is a large amount of material accessible on the web that is of poor quality, out-of-date, or simply wrong.
As the web grows in size and matures, so it becomes ever more necessary to use intermediary sites who have undertaken some of the quality control work, and pre-selected material and items that are up-to-date, authoritative, and trustworthy.
Conclusion
The AIC has assumed a strong national and regional leadership role in the provision of online criminal justice information. The regional role can be seen with the development of the website for the Asian and Pacific Conference of Correctional administrators; nationally with the development of the Institute's website, as well as the site of the National Police Ethnic Advisory Bureau. This leading role and the future directions of the Institute's website will ensure that the search for criminal justice information the 21st century is not only an eventful journey but also a fruitful one.
References
Morrow, Terry 2001 Dancing to the Same Tune: A UK Perspective on Portals, Hubs and E-Communities http://www.csu.edu.au/special/online2001/papers/intranet_strategiesc.htm
National Office for the Information Economy 2000. Government Online Progress Report, December 2000 http://www.govonline.gov.au
Note: This paper builds on aspects of previous papers presented by John Myrtle at The Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology conference 2001 and World Criminal Justice Librarians meeting 2001
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