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This article details the outcomes of the 'National Learning and Teaching Resource Audit and Classification' project, commissioned by the Australian Government's Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT). The project used a range of methodologies to reorganise the OLT's Resource Library (http://www.olt.gov.au/resource-library), constructing and selecting an optimal set of metadata elements, along with certain vocabularies for these elements, and then reindexing the content of the Resource Library utilising the new schema and vocabularies. This paper reports on a before-and-after evaluation of the Resource Library's search performance through an information retrieval experiment based on searches logged by the repository's content management system. It was found that the reindexing produced a significant increase in average recall from 25.1 to 37.1% and a significant increase in average precision from 37.6 to 50.4%. The paper also describes the construction of a new controlled vocabulary for the 'resource type' element and confirms the importance of clarity, conciseness, structure and scope in research report summaries for accurate document selection. Further, the paper outlines the audit of the OLT collection based on the frequency of particular Australian Thesaurus of Education Descriptors and Australian Standard Classifications of Education used in the reindexing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Makerspaces are more than just places to make things; a makerspace is ‘a physical location where people gather to share resources and knowledge, work on projects, network, and build’. TheNMC Horizon Report: 2015 Higher Education Editionlists the time-to-adoption of makerspaces within the higher education context, as two to three years. While there is a push to include makerspaces in universities, little is known about the experience of establishing makerspaces on academic campuses. This paper provides an exploratory look at makerspaces within universities and aims to specifically address the research question: What are the experiences of Australian universities with makerspaces? A qualitative approach to data collection was undertaken by reviewing Australian university websites. Makerspaces are noted in 12 of 43 Australian universities websites (October 2015). Typically, these makerspaces employ specialist staff, contain 3D printers and laser cutters, and offer facilities to conduct coursework, personal and collaborative projects. Finally, pop-up makerspaces have been employed by some universities as an exploratory stage to gauge interest in makerspaces before implementing a permanent space. Surveying key stakeholders associated with Australian academic makerspaces is recommended as a next step. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Australian Federal Government's Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT) has built an important collection of learning and teaching resources for the higher education (HE) sector, a product of the many projects OLT and its precursors, including the Australian Learning and Teaching Council and the Carrick Institute, have funded over the past two decades. Although these resources are freely available on its website, the OLT considers them underutilised. Hence it has commissioned a project to reorganise the collection using more accurate and consistent metadata. This paper presents the results of the initial phase of the project, in which a new metadata schema for the OLT's repository was developed through a systematic analysis of the collection, users' and prospective users' search needs, and the domain of HE learning and teaching. While the methods used to develop controlled vocabularies, such as subject thesauri, are well established, there has been far less discussion about how schemas for describing particular kinds of information resource should be constructed. This article contributes to this discussion by showing how methods used to build controlled vocabularies can be applied, and combined, to the development of a schema used to support effective access to a scholarly repository of national importance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]