CQU's Division of Library Services is seeking feedback from students and staff throughout Australia and is involved in development of a national portal to integrate library resource sharing services.

The library survey is across all CQU campuses in Australia and is being conducted to determine staff and student opinions of the library service. It also will survey if the library services are meeting the needs of staff and students. The survey is one that is conducted nationally at most Australian universities and results will be benchmarked against other academic libraries. The survey is available online and in paper. Sponsors have given prizes to provide incentives for staff and students to fill in the survey, including a digital camera from Videopro and vouchers for the CQU bookshop. Details are available at: www.library.cqu.edu.au/survey.htm Meanwhile, CQU Library is a participant in an Australian Research Council grant for the development of an Australian Academic Research Library Information Network (AARLIN) portal for resource sharing.

The project is "to research and develop an architecture using portal technologies which integrates the various library resource sharing services so that all users have an integrated view of the information resources available in the current collaborative environment".

The project is significant because it allows researchers to access a wide range of Australian and overseas information resources from their desktop computers and to create their own approach to the information landscape.

The project received $2.8 million systemic infrastructure initiative funding from the Commonwealth Government.

Institutions participating in portal training at Rockhampton include James Cook University, University of Tasmania, Northern Territory University, University of Southern Queensland and CQU.

CQU is now at the stage of implementing the system, which will be made available to its researchers later this year.