While acknowledging the issues some libraries have had in batch loading to Kinetica, non-contributors and slow contributors were encouraged to participate in the overall interest of all Australian libraries. The growing provision of access to the NBD for end users was endorsed as a significant strategy in improving the utility of the database. The interdependence of shared cataloguing and resource discovery was stressed. Authority control within the NBD remains an issue for some Kinetica users, while the majority are dealing with authority control within their local systems. Funding of the Kinetica service Recent growth in use of the Kinetica service is encouraging.
Libraries now have the option to catalogue on their local systems, and many have chosen to do so.
As a result, there has been a decline of about 20 per cent in original online cataloguing in the first year of operation of the Kinetica service. As the National Library is required to run Kinetica as a cost-recovered service, a 5 per cent price increase has been proposed to take effect from 1 January 2001. The National Library has also taken steps to reduce expenses including suspending the loading of the Blackwells Table of Contents file for the time being. Application software and telecommunications issues Response times, ergonomic factors and operation of the cataloguing client software continue to cause concern for some users. The recent survey of response times from 20 Kinetica customer libraries indicated that many libraries achieve satisfactory performance, while some others do not.