About www.rolibrary.com

A) What is www.rolibrary.com?
B) What kinds of resources are catalogued?
C) Benefits to library users
D) Benefits to library contributors
E) Search engine design principles
F) Disclaimer

A) What is www.rolibrary.com?

www.rolibrary.com is a searchable on-line catalogue of information resources on the recovery and management of compostable organic materials; and the manufacture and marketing of recycled organics products.

The www.rolibrary.com hosts summaries of information resources from over 50 relevant agriculture, industry, university & government agencies in Australia. The catalogue’s Search function allows users to quickly pinpoint resources. Search results link directly to downloadable resources where possible.

The www.rolibrary.com provides free access to quality information when it is needed – supporting informed decision making across all areas of recycled organics policy, planning and operations.

B) What kinds of resources are catalogued?

Contributors to www.rolibrary.com include industry organisations; local, state and federal government departments and agencies; and university and independent researchers from across Australia.

• A range of compostable organic materials including: residual food, garden organics, wood and timber, agricultural and biosolids;
• Materials composition studies, characterisations and audits;
• The collection, management, processing of compostable organic materials;
• Quality assurance, and the marketing and use of recycled organic products;
• Regulations and standards;
• Research and development;
• Management plans and strategies.

The www.rolibrary.com covers recent and archived publications, software and audiovisual materials.

• How to information on home composting and worm farming;
• trade journal articles;
• advertising material for processors, products, and consultants;
• promotional brochures.

C) Benefits to library users

Save money
Access to www.rolibrary.com is completely free.

Save time
This library compiles resources from public sector and private departments and organisations into a single interface. Many of these resources were previously available only within individual departments or organizations.

Locate quality information
Search results can be used to quickly cross reference and determine the authority of given resources.

Discover standard terminology
Retrieve catalogue records more accurately and efficiently by using the online Recycled Organics Dictionary and Thesaurus, developed by and for the recycled organics sector in Australia.

The Search function is designed to incorporate standard terminology and compatibility with "Australian Government Locator Service” standards.

Obtain resources quickly
www.rolibrary.com hosts or links users directly to downloadable publications and resources where available. Catalogue search results give contact information that can be used to obtain complete copies of digital and non-digital resources.

Avoid duplication
www.rolibrary.com is informed by a framework of consistent terminology and quality standards. These fundamentals support regional diversity and avoid duplication of effort across the sector.

D) Benefits to library contributors

It’s free
Catalogue entries, site administration, and document hosting are free services.

Promote your work
Your catalogue entries provides access to a professional portfo lio of your work, promoting your expertise to potential clients that are interested in extending knowledge and capabilities without re-inventing the wheel.

All submissions to the library are screened for quality and relevance. Join over 50 Australian key stakeholders in the sector by contributing your work to this targeted source of information.

Control access to Intellectual Property
The catalogue entry is just a summary, not the complete resource itself. As a Contributor, you choose the basis of availability of the complete resource. The catalogue can link to the entire publication, if it is freely available and published on-line. Alternatively, it can link to a portion of the publication or provide details on how to purchase resources.

Archive your work online
The www.rolibrary.com provides free hosting for softcopy publications at www.rolibrary.com. It is an efficient and timesaving referral option for information requests.

Keep up to date
Contributors receive free quarterly email updates of the latest reports and resources uploaded on www.rolibrary.com

It’s quick and easy
Submit each resource in half an hour by following these steps.

E) Search engine design principles

Search engines can be used to locate items of relevance but as the number and range of catalogue entries increases, search engines become correspondingly less useful as increasingly large amounts of material are retrieved and the precision and relevance of retrieval is lost.

Although some search engines apply automatic criteria for weighting the sites retrieved, results are often neither comprehensive nor precise and the searcher is presented with large sets of irrelevant information.

To provide a systematic way of describing information resources to facilitate their discovery, metadata - data that describes the information resources - can be embedded within a document, or stored externally in a database.

One of the most highly developed metadata schemes is the Dublin Core, which has been developed through an international collaboration of librarians, computer scientists and subject specialists. The Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) is an adaptation of Dublin Core to suit Australian conditions and is has been adopted by all governments across Australia.

AGLS uses 19 elements to describe a resource. An important aspect of AGLS for the recycled organics sector is the subject, topics and key word elements for which a thesaurus can be developed.

Through a collaborative process, key stakeholders can create a list of terms and synonyms of words used in the sector. Whereas the word 'organic' can have many different meanings dependent on your background, in the context Recycled Organics Dictionary and Thesaurus it has a predefined meaning.

Not only is this key to returning a meaningful search, a properly constructed dictionary and thesaurus acts as a common language between all stakeholders.
The metadata search engine works with AGLS to search against these predefined keywords (thesaurus) ensuring that your query retrieves exactly the information you are after.

Because a metadata search engine only searches the metadata and not the full text of the document (unlike other search engines, e.g. Altavista), misleading words in the full text do not confuse the search results.

Furthermore, because metadata is in a consistent format (AGLS), there is no need to use different search types for each company or department. AGLS combined with a metadata search engine enables a very powerful, precise and comprehensive search to be done in a single query.

Field descriptions used in this catalogue are standard from the AGLS/Dublin Core System, and are not always self explanatory. For example, the author in this system is referred to as ‘Creator’. This table describes each of the Field descriptions used by www.rolibrary.com.

F) Disclaimer

Information hosted on www.rolibrary.com is for information purposes only. The Recycled Organics Unit is not responsible for the content made available in the database, and disclaims all liability arising from the use or misuse of such information.