Technical note: Transport information sources in Australia and New Zealand: The role of libraries and the tranzinfo group

Road & Transport Research, Dec 1999 by Pentecost, A, Jensen, J, Capurro, F

INTRODUCTION

Members of the transport community who need information have a variety of sources through which they can gain access to that information. This applies equally to practitioners, administrators and researchers, and to people in road transport, rail transport, aviation and the maritime field.

Sometimes the source of information is close at hand: a paper in the proceedings of a professional conference; a phone call to a trusted colleague; a well thumbed reference book from one's personal collection; internet discussion lists; searches of the World Wide Web.

Other sources from which transport professionals may gather information include state transport authority seminars and training sessions; memberships of professional organisations such as the Institute of Transportation Engineers; or international conferences such as the PIARC Congress or the European PTRCs.

TRANSPORT LIBRARIES

Beyond these information sources, there is a rich array of library-based information at the disposal of the entire transport community. This library network has been in existence for many years and has kept pace with advances in technologies, information requirements and changes in the transport sector itself.

The six Australian state road or transport authorities have all had libraries for many years, primarily serving the authorities' own staff with information concerning technical and administrative matters. The Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory governments now also have libraries for their transport staff.

A number of other organisations also have longstanding libraries with relevant material; these organisations include the University of Adelaide's Road Accident Research Unit, the Roadwatch unit at the University of Western Australia, Ansett Australia, Sinclair Knight Merz, Opus International Consultants, Air Services Australia, and specialist engineering libraries in several universities.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

When in the 1940s Caleb Grafton Roberts of the Victorian Country Roads Board recommended the establishment of an Australian road research centre, he specified that this centre ought to have a librarian on the staff. Roberts envisaged an organisation responsible for "the initiation and coordination of research by the various State organizations, [ ... I the collection and analysis of results, and the publication and distribution of reports" (Roberts 1948, p.8). In the early 1960s, the first years of the existence of the then Australian Road Research Board, this library served the research staff, but its role soon evolved into a much broader one.

In 1971, a meeting of the National Association of Australian State Road Authorities (NAASRA, now Austroads) "requested that ARRB convene a meeting of the librarians of the State Road Authorities, ARRB and the Commonwealth Bureau of Roads to consider cataloguing systems and inter-library cooperation" (Bayes 1976, p.1). At the inaugural meeting of librarians, a decision was made to develop a national index to road-related literature printed or published in Australia. Production of the Australian Road Index (ARI) was coordinated by ARRB. Whilst the majority of records in the Index were provided by ARRB, to ensure a comprehensive coverage, the State and Commonwealth government road authority libraries also provided input.

ARRB hosted annual meetings of the librarians to discuss not only issues involving ARI but other issues of importance to the profession as well as initiatives to foster further cooperation.

In addition to ARI, there were two other databases available which indexed information in the road and transport subject areas. The Bureau of Transport Economics developed the Australian Transport Literature Information System (ATLIS) which was a very useful index to transport related information whilst the Federal Office of Road Safety made publicly available their database, LASORS (Literature Analysis System, Office of Road Safety). LASORS was later incorporated into the ROAD database, which is discussed in more detail below.

The transport libraries whose fields of specialisation were public transport, rail, aviation or maritime also developed a cooperative network and produced a directory of transport libraries in Australia (TRANSLIB Directory 1988). With the amalgamation of some government road and transport authorities in the late 1980s, TRANSLIB, a network of librarians with an interest in road and transport information, was established.

TRANZINFO TODAY

TRANSLIB is now called TRANZINFO, the change in name reflecting the Trans-Tasman composition of the group. Its members number in the dozens and come not only from the transport authorities but from a spectrum of organisations as diverse as the Aviation Information Centre, the Orbital Engine Company, the Port of Brisbane Corporation, Sinclair Knight Merz, and the Land Transport Safety Authority in New Zealand. TRANZINFO's subject coverage spans road, rail, air and sea, as well as intermodal issues and concepts.

TRANZINFO members meet each year to plan cooperative ventures, assign TRANZINFO tasks to particular people or organisations, and discuss issues of common interest. Cooperative initiatives include the compilation of a directory of member libraries detailing the strengths of each collection (ARRB Transport Research 1999) and a combined listing of journal titles held by member libraries (Beaumont 1994). These two tools facilitate the kinds of cooperative sharing of information and resources that have long characterised TRANZINFO, and are well used by members. TRANZINFO also produced a list of transport related Internet sites for delegates at the 1998 Australasian Transport Research Forum Conference in Sydney.