The Chief Justice has been reported complaining “about the paucity of investment and the need for more resources. The €500 allotted to the library, for example, was not even enough to purchase the proper judicial volumes, let alone access judicial websites”.
This call for an improvement of the library at the law courts was echoed by MP Franco Debono.
MaLIA fully understands the Chief Justice’s predicament. Useful information costs money and unless one has access to the right information one cannot make good decisions.
An investment in information appropriate to the intended use is a good investment.
A news item entitled Work Starts On €29m Life Sciences Centre reports Finance Minister Tonio Fenech, who was visit-ing the site of the BioMalta campus, saying that it will be a knowledge cluster between the University of Malta, Mater Dei Hospital and the life sciences industry.
One questions: How much of this €29 million investment will go towards the setting up of an information unit trusted with the purchase of access to life science databases on an ongoing basis?
Or will all potential users of the BioMalta campus be treated as University of Malta library users with access to the same library’s extensive and expensive databases? In which case, what about other researchers who do not qualify for a University of Malta library card? Will these be blocked out of access to essential information?
How can research happen without specialised and costly information?
It is becoming increasingly clear that library and personal budgets to acquire relevant information (in print or electronic format) for use by students, researchers and professionals have to be substantial and that individual libraries are facing difficulties to meet these costs, let alone small to medium sized companies and individuals. Yet, without this information we cannot aspire to become a knowledge-based society.
There are two ways how the country can cope with this substantial cost in purchasing information and make investment already in place more cost effective:
The first is to purchase access to electronic information at national level rather than at individual library level. This applies mainly for academic and specialised libraries.
Secondly, we should avoid as much as possible duplication of printed library resources through better cooperation between individual libraries.
In both cases, the newly set up Malta Libraries Council can play an important role in getting the key players together to discuss to what extent such suggestions are possible.
About five years ago, the IT Ministry had commissioned a report along these lines, aimed at assessing the feasibility of the setting up of an electronic Malta libraries portal. Has this report ever been published?
Such a portal would be one way of integrating the different online public access catalogues of the different libraries and allow the researching public to find out which individual libraries hold the published works they need to consult.
One can understand that some libraries may be reluctant to lend out parts of their collections that are in great demand by their primary library users but, surely, making such items available for reference should not present too big a difficulty.
In its own way, MaLIA is supporting the research process and the creation of a knowledge-based society. This is being done through its work on an update of its publication Directory Of Libraries And Infor-mation Units In Malta. Any library that would like to be included in this publication should get in touch with the association at info@malia-malta.org.
www.malia-malta.org
The author is chairman of the Malta Library and Information Association (MaLIA)