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© National Library of Australia 2012
National Library of Australia
Annual report / National Library of Australia.—8th (1967/68)—
Canberra: NLA, 1968–—v.; 25 cm.
Annual.
Continues: National Library of Australia. Council. Annual report of the Council =
ISSN 0069-0082.
Report year ends 30 June.
ISSN 0313-1971 = Annual report—National Library of Australia.
1. National Library of Australia—Periodicals.
027.594
Prepared by the Executive and Public Programs Division
The images throughout this report are of the National Library of Australia’s Treasures Gallery or of items on display in the Treasures Gallery.

This year has been one of culmination and of planning. It was a year of assessment of the successful implementation of the Library’s Strategic Directions 2009–11 and of deliberation and promulgation of Strategic Directions 2012–14.
After many years of planning and development, the Library opened its permanent Treasures Gallery and the adjoining Exhibition Gallery. The Treasures Gallery, for the first time, highlights our national heritage from the permanent collection. The Exhibition Gallery opened to universal acclaim, with Handwritten: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Treasures from Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin succeeded by an equally well-received Australian exhibition to mark the centenary of the birth of Patrick White.
The Library’s 14-year campaign to extend the statutory requirement for the deposit of published material beyond print to encompass e-publications and public websites, to which I referred in last year’s Annual Report, reached a critical stage. In February, the Attorney-General released the consultation paper, Extending Legal Deposit. The paper invites public submissions on how best to preserve Australia’s digital heritage. Every year of delay has meant that part of the heritage has been lost forever. The Library looks forward to the successful culmination of this project.
The transition to a digital information environment is the great challenge facing libraries throughout the world. The success of the Library’s discovery and access service, Trove, which builds on collaboration with Australia’s state libraries and other cultural organisations, was manifest in widespread praise and increased usage over the course of the year. There is, however, a long way to go.
In the absence of new funding for digitising the permanent collection, the amount of additional material made accessible each year to readers and researchers throughout Australia, not just those who live in or who can visit Canberra, is limited. Therefore, the Library welcomed the provision of additional funding in the 2012 Commonwealth Budget to assist the Library to make its collection more accessible over the next few years. The Library has taken steps to place itself in a position to undertake the transition to a National Digital Library of Australia by redirecting resources to a five-year Digital Library Infrastructure Replacement project, which will replace existing electronic systems and provide the tools needed to acquire, preserve, deliver and give access to the nation’s existing and future digital information.
The three-year program, set out in Strategic Directions 2012–14, reflects the enhanced priority given to digital collecting. Some difficult decisions have been made, particularly to reduce the extent to which overseas printed material is collected. The Library has commenced a transition from print to digital for some forms of overseas collecting.
I will retire as Chair as and from 30 June 2012. I do so because of my new responsibilities as Chair of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. My association with the Library has been exceptionally rewarding, which I attribute to the professionalism and skill of the staff and the dedication of my fellow Council members.
The Hon. James. J. Spigelman AC
The National Library of Australia’s Strategic Directions 2012–14, which the Chair has noted, recognises that continuity and change characterise the work of the Library. In 2011–12, the Library has seen significant achievements in planning and preparing for change and in pursuing long-term goals.
The Library’s strategic thinking has been informed by trends in use, information seeking and publishing. We have also referred to consultation papers and reviews, such as the National Cultural Policy Discussion Paper, the Book Industry Strategy Group’s Final Report, the review of philanthropy, the development of the 2011 Strategic Roadmap for Australian Research Infrastructure and the review of Australia’s engagement in Asia.
If the Library is to succeed in the digital world, it is vital that it has the capacity to acquire, manage, preserve and provide access to petabyte-level information. The alternative is a significant and growing gap in Australia’s documentary memory. In the short term, the Library will meet its essential minimum requirements by redirecting internal resources, including IT resources, to focus on the Digital Library Infrastructure Replacement (DLIR) project.
The DLIR project commenced in early 2011 and runs over five financial years. It will replace existing systems that form the backbone of the Library’s digital library infrastructure and will deliver capabilities for digital preservation and online deposit, as well as the ability to support an extended range of digital formats.
Central to the project is an open approach to the market, with the aim of purchasing existing software or services to deliver the software, supplemented by in-house development activities to implement components that cannot be purchased. Formal project governance and management processes have been established and the procurement process almost completed. The implementation phase will commence in the new financial year.
Over the last decade, in response to the dramatic effect of digital technology on information dissemination, the Library has advocated for change to the legal deposit provisions of the Copyright Act 1968 (section 201). The Library advocates the inclusion of publications, such as CD-ROMs, DVDs, websites, blogs and electronic books, journals, magazines and newspapers, in the requirement that a copy of material published in Australia be delivered to the Library.
In early 2011, the Library welcomed the Attorney-General’s establishment of a working group to consider the Library’s legal deposit requirements and to prepare a public consultation paper on the issue. The paper, Extending Legal Deposit, was issued by the Attorney-General on 7 March 2012. It presented a model for how an extended scheme would apply to both online and offline e-publications on a physical carrier.
Last financial year, the Library began a review of its collecting of books and journals published overseas. It assessed options for reducing the cost associated with acquiring and processing overseas materials, taking into account the needs of researchers and trends and developments in information dissemination, such as e-publishing and mass digitisation. The review was completed in August 2011 and the Library has begun implementing the recommendations. This includes immediate work to make processes more efficient and a long-term strategy to shift the Library’s largely print collecting model to a digital collecting and access model over the next five years. This means that, where possible, the Library will collect e-books and e-journals and it will provide access to freely available digital content hosted elsewhere, instead of collecting print versions. In addition, the Library will reduce its total expenditure on overseas resources, in order to release funds for strategic priorities, such as digitising more of the Australian Collection. As a consequence, the range of overseas resources accessible from the Library will decrease and a significant number of print journal subscriptions and electronic services will be cancelled. This will be reflected in a revised Collection Development Policy, which will be developed early next financial year. The Library will continue to give priority to both print and digital publications in Asian languages.
Over the course of the year, the Library initiated and completed some 20 projects aimed at advancing digital readiness and services. These are outlined in the Report of Operations.
The knowledge, expertise and skills of Library staff are vital to the advancement of the Library’s work, particularly as we seek to strengthen our digital capacity. In developing the Strategic Workforce Plan (2012–14), the Library has placed a premium on building expertise, skills and confidence to work in the digital world.
On 6 October 2011, the Treasures Gallery was opened by the Governor-General, Ms Quentin Bryce AC CVO, marking the culmination of many years of planning. The gallery provides the Library with a world-class space in which to display its treasures. Over 95,000 visitors have enjoyed the gallery since its opening. Treasure Explorer, the website developed for primary school children (http://treasure-explorer.nla.gov.au), and new education programs centred on the gallery are extending the appreciation of the Library’s collection and the stories it reveals about Australian history and culture. The Treasures Gallery Family Day attracted 2,500 people to a wide variety of activities, including lectures, behind-the-scenes tours and craft programs.
The opening of the Treasures Gallery marked the successful conclusion of the major capital fundraising campaign led by the Development Council. To build on this success, the National Library of Australia Foundation Board was established to consolidate and further the work of the Development Council in seeking support for the Library’s priorities.
In association with the completion of the Treasures Gallery, other major works were completed on the Ground Floor. A new entrance was created for the Main Reading Room, with a new service desk, an improved display of new collection items and an informal area for group work. The Library’s Bookshop, which specialises in Australian publications, was also refurbished. Visitors have welcomed the improved Bookshop and sales of exhibition-related merchandise have been particularly strong.
In November 2011, Nobel Laureate Professor Brian Schmidt launched Handwritten: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Treasures from Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, the inaugural exhibition in the Library’s new Exhibition Gallery. Handwritten was a highly successful international collaboration, with government and corporate support valued at over $800,000. The public response was enthusiastic—73,000 visitors viewed the works of some of the most significant contributors to the development of Western thought and creativity, including Copernicus, Galileo, Dante, Einstein, Mozart and Beethoven.
The reporting year has seen excellent progress in the Library’s fundamental work on developing the national collection, promoting access and engaging audiences, collaboration and leadership, and achieving organisational excellence. The Library’s success in collection building is reported in Appendix J, which features acquisition highlights.
Digitisation activities remain an important priority for the Library. Collaborative projects undertaken this year have included:
On 2 November 2011, the Library marked the 30th anniversary of the Australian National Bibliographic Database, which lies at the heart of Trove. Twelve hundred libraries across Australia currently contribute catalogue records, describing books, journals, websites, pictures, maps, manuscripts, audiovisual materials and local history collections. The database enables efficiency in local cataloguing operations and makes collections discoverable by all Australians.
Trove continues to be central to accessing the collections of the Library and of Australian collecting institutions of all kinds. More than 50,000 people use the service daily, many of them on mobile devices. Scholars particularly value Trove’s digitised content, which has revolutionised their research and opened new possibilities for enquiry. Thousands of users engage enthusiastically with Trove—annotating, tagging and correcting computer-generated newspaper text or adding their own digital content to the service. Since April 2012, individuals and agencies have been able to use new functionality to engage further with Trove records—tags and comments can now be retrieved using an application programming interface, opening new possibilities for displaying Trove content in other services. In October 2011, Trove again attracted international recognition, when it was nominated in the European Digital Heritage Awards as one of the top-five global crowd-sourcing projects.
Highlights of the Library’s events program included the Ray Mathew Lecture ‘Prodigal Daughter’, delivered by writer Susan Johnson, and the Seymour Biography Lecture ‘Pushing against the Dark: Writing about the Hidden Self’, presented by author Robert Dessaix. The Library was also the venue for two significant national events: the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards 2011 and the launch of the National Year of Reading 2012, an initiative of the library profession to improve Australian literacy rates by encouraging Australians to become a nation of readers.
The Friends of the Library hosted a strong program of events for its 2,000 members. The two major events—the celebration of Australian author Alex Miller and the Kenneth Myer Lecture
‘Why Did I Do That? A Fresh Look at the Psychology of Human Motivation’, delivered by Hugh Mackay—attracted good audiences.
Social media is playing an increasingly important role in the Library’s communication, promotion, development and delivery of services and the collection. The Library’s Facebook and Twitter accounts have 9,000 followers collectively. Social media helps the Library to reach new audiences. For example, on 2 March 2012, a tweet relating to a Dr Seuss sketch in the Library’s collection was retweeted over 650 times, reaching an additional 50,000 Twitter users, and the link to the item was viewed 3,233 times. The Trove Twitter account provides followers with topical links to related historical newspaper and other content, and is an ideal channel to communicate new service developments and for Trove users to communicate with the Library and with each other. In September 2011, there was an equally strong response to the release on Flickr Commons of images from the Library’s collection; within a few hours the images had been viewed over 10,000 times. The Library will continue to explore and exploit the potential of new social media channels.
The Library has continued its efforts to achieve Reimagining Libraries, the vision of National and State Libraries Australasia (NSLA). Library staff have led and contributed actively to NSLA groups, working on a range of strategic priorities to improve and harmonise public access to collections and services.
As a result of Reimagining Libraries activities, Australians can experience consistent approaches to services across all NSLA libraries. Registered patrons of the National Library and of Australian state and territory libraries can access a core set of e-resources, with most products available
for offsite use in homes, schools and offices. Articles from some licensed resources can be
accessed via Trove. To enable their patrons to access resources which are not available in digital form, NSLA libraries are collaborating to streamline and align document delivery services.
NSLA groups will also continue to work on important physical and digital infrastructure issues which will benefit library users for generations to come. Groups working on collaborative collecting, storage for physical collections and the challenges of collecting, preserving and providing access to digital heritage are all focused on efficient long-term access to Australia’s documentary heritage.
As it enters its eighteenth year, the Community Heritage Grants program continues to be an important source of support for community groups. The program is managed by the Library on behalf of funding partners, including the Department of Regional Australia, Local Government, Arts and Sport Office for the Arts, the National Archives of Australia, the National Museum of Australia and the National Film and Sound Archive. Grants of up to $15,000 are awarded to libraries, archives, museums, genealogical and historical societies and multicultural and Indigenous groups. In 2011, $409,000 was distributed to 82 organisations, half of the recipients being in regional and remote Australia. Following a concerted awareness campaign, it is pleasing to note that almost ten per cent of recipients are Indigenous organisations. The 2012 grant round closed on 4 May and received 181 applications.
Staff voted in favor of a new Enterprise Agreement, which became operational on 30 November 2011. The negotiations resulted in greater engagement between staff and management.
The Library has continued to prioritise improving workplace health and safety. As well as implementing stronger governance regimes linked to the Work Health and Safety Act 2011, there has been a focus on training and awareness of issues, including work–life balance, stress management and resilience, risk management, dealing with hazardous substances, working with contractors and first aid.
On 30 June 2012, the Hon. James J. Spigelman AC relinquished the Chair of the National Library of Australia Council. Over the last two years he has been a formidable advocate for the Library, advancing its work in several vital areas. The Library shall be the poorer for his departure.
This report provides me with a welcome opportunity to thank the Library’s volunteers, Friends, members of the Development Council (now the Foundation Board), donors and partners. The generosity with which they deploy their time, energy, goodwill and expertise on behalf of the Library is inspiring.
It is with gratitude I note that the counsel received from colleagues in the Office for the Arts was, as always, immensely useful.
Staff of the National Library take pride in advancing the institution’s role in supporting learning, scholarship, curiosity and cultural life. They respond to change and pursue vital long-term goals with industry, innovation and intelligence, conscious of the extraordinary legacy of which they are stewards. The pages ahead tell the story.
In the coming year, the Library will advance its strategic directions, appreciative that it will benefit from the measure announced in the 2012–13 Commonwealth Budget that provides supplementation for national collecting institutions and grateful to be among the cultural institutions exempted from the application of an additional efficiency dividend of 2.5 per cent.
To ensure that Australians can access, enjoy and learn from a national collection that documents Australian life and society, the Library seeks to accelerate digitising the collection, to focus on digital collecting and preservation, to improve reading-room facilities for special collections and to commemorate the Centenary of Canberra.
Anne-Marie Schwirtlich
During 2011–12, income, including revenue from government, amounted to $66.616 million and expenses were $76.440 million, resulting in a deficit of $9.824 million. From an income-statement perspective, the Library does not receive appropriation funding for depreciation of the national collection (totalling $12.024 million), which forms part of operating expenses. Government funding for the purchase of collection material is provided through an equity injection totalling $9.779 million.
The total income of $66.616 million for 2011–12 was $3.761 million above budget and compares to total actual income of $64.418 million for 2010–11. Figure 1.1 shows a comparison of income across items against budget for 2011–12 and 2010–11.
Figure 1.1: Income, 2011–12 and 2010–11
Note: A logarithmic scale is used.
| Actual 2011–12 | Budget 2011–12 | Actual 2010–11 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue from government | 48.989 | 48.989 | 49.105 |
| Sales of goods and services | 8.907 | 8.038 | 7.780 |
| Interest | 2.988 | 2.280 | 3.333 |
| All other income | 5.732 | 3.548 | 4.200 |
| Total | 66.616 | 62.855 | 64.418 |
The major variations between financial years relate to increases in the sales of goods and services ($1.127 million), largely due to an increase in revenue received from digitising other library collections, increased sales through the Bookshop and sponsorship revenue associated with the Library’s exhibition program; increases in other revenue ($1.613 million), largely due to increased grant and donation revenue; and reductions in interest revenue ($0.345 million) and revenue from government ($0.116 million). The decline in interest revenue is primarily the result of reduced deposit rates received during 2011–12.
The total expenses of $76.440 million for 2011–12 were $0.216 million above budget and $4.458 million more than 2010–11. Figure 1.2 shows a comparison of expenditure across items and against budget for 2011–12 and 2010–11.
Figure 1.2: Expenses, 2011–12 and 2010–11
Note: A logarithmic scale is used.
| Actual 2011–12 | Budget 2011–12 | Actual 2010–11 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Employees | 39.182 | 37.016 | 36.016 |
| Suppliers | 17.100 | 17.401 | 16.214 |
| Depreciation and amortisation | 19.392 | 21.214 | 19.029 |
| Other | 0.766 | 0.593 | 0.723 |
| Total | 76.440 | 76.224 | 71.982 |
Employee expenses were $3.166 million more than 2010–11. This is the result of a combination of factors, including a net increase in leave expenses ($1.842 million), of which $1.254 million is due to the movements in the long-term bond rate during 2011–12, which has the effect of increasing the value of the liability; reduced capitalisation of staff time ($0.401 million) associated with the production of internally developed software and with the digitising of collection material, which has the effect of increasing salary expenditure; and base salary increases and a small productivity payment provided to staff under the Library’s Enterprise Agreement and partially offset by a small reduction in staff numbers (8.9 average staffing level).
Supplier expenses were higher ($0.886 million) than 2010–11, largely due to increased cost of goods sold ($0.193 million), primarily as a result of increased sales through the Library’s Bookshop, and increased promotional expenses ($0.585 million), largely associated with the opening of the Library’s Treasures Gallery and the exhibition, Handwritten: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Treasures from Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. Much of the additional expenditure associated with the exhibition was funded by the receipt of sponsorship revenue.
Depreciation and amortisation expenses were $0.363 million higher than 2010–11. The primary reason for the variation is increased depreciation of plant and equipment ($0.242 million),
largely the result of the replacement of existing assets.
In 2011–12, the Library’s total equity increased by $86.766 million to $1,776.531 million. The net increase is a result of an equity injection for collection acquisitions ($9.779 million), a net revaluation increment ($86.811 million) following the revaluation of the Library’s collection, land and buildings, and the net operating result ($9.824 million) for 2011–12.
Figure 1.3 shows that the total value of the Library’s assets increased by $86.339 million to $1,793.712 million in 2011–12.
Figure 1.3: Total Assets, 2011–12 and 2010–11
Note: A logarithmic scale is used.
| Actual 30 June 2012 | Actual 30 June 2011 | |
|---|---|---|
| Financial assets | 54.366m | 56.194m |
| Inventories and other | 3.840m | 3.893m |
| Intangibles—software | 4.102m | 4.663m |
| The National Collection | 1,516.170m | 1,435.175m |
| Plant and equipment | 13.289m | 12.937m |
| Land and buildings | 201.945m | 194.511m |
| Total | 1,793.712m | 1,707.373m |
The increase in non-financial assets ($88.167 million) is largely the result of the revaluation of the Library’s collections, land and buildings (a net increment of $86.811 million) and the net difference between current-year assets acquisitions, disposals and current-year depreciation expenses ($1.409 million). In addition, there was an increase in the value of inventories ($0.089 million) and a reduction in the value of prepaid supplier expenses ($0.142 million). The decrease in financial assets ($1.828 million) relates primarily to a reduction in receivables ($0.676 million), a reduction in cash at bank ($0.781 million) and a reduction in investments ($0.579 million).
As Figure 1.4 shows, the Library’s total liabilities reduced by $0.427 million from last financial year to $17.181 million.
Figure 1.4: Total Liabilities, 2011–12 and 2010–11
Note: A logarithmic scale is used.
| Actual 30 June 2012 | Actual 30 June 2011 | |
|---|---|---|
| Employee provisions | 12.279m | 11.001m |
| Payable | 4.902m | 6.607m |
| Total | 17.181m | 17.608m |
The changes in liabilities relate to a reduction in supplier payables ($1.971 million) and increases in grants payable ($0.007 million), employee provisions ($1.278 million) and other payables ($0.259 million).
In 2011–12 there was a reduction in the Library’s cash balance, which decreased by $0.781 million to $5.443 million as at 30 June 2012. Figure 1.5 shows a comparison of cash flow items for 2011–12 and 2010–11.
Figure 1.5: Net Cash Flow, 2011–12 and 2010–11
| Actual 30 June 2012 | Actual 30 June 2011 | |
|---|---|---|
| Net operating | 8.259m | 10.625m |
| Net investing | -18.819m | -18.280m |
| Net financing | 9.779m | 9.743m |
| Total | -0.781m | 2.088m |
The decrease in net cash from operating activities ($2.366 million) reflects the comments under ‘Income’ and ‘Expenses’. The increase in net cash used by investing activities ($0.539 million) primarily reflects the net movement of funds from investments to cash at bank between years ($4.391 million), a decrease in the investment in property, plant and equipment and intangibles ($4.452 million) and a decrease in proceeds from the sales of property, plant and equipment as a consequence of the sale in 2010–11 of an apartment gifted to the Library ($0.600 million). The decrease in the investment in property, plant and equipment and intangibles is largely the result of increased building expenditure during 2010–11 as a result of the construction of the new Treasures Gallery. There was a minor increase in net cash from financing activities between financial years ($0.036 million), as a result of the Library’s equity injection provided by government to fund collection acquisitions being slightly increased.
The functions of the Library are set out in of the National Library Act 1960 (section 6). They are:
The Library is one of several agencies within the Regional Australia, Local Government, Arts and Sport portfolio with responsibilities for collecting Australian cultural heritage materials and making them available to the Australian public. The Library was part of the Prime Minister and Cabinet portfolio until 14 December 2012. The Minister for the Arts, the Hon. Simon Crean MP, has responsibility for the Library. The affairs of the Library are conducted by the National Library Council, with the Director-General as the executive officer.
The Library was established by the National Library Act 1960, which defines the Library’s role, corporate governance and financial management framework. As a Commonwealth statutory authority, the Library is subject to the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997 (CAC Act), which provides the reporting and accountability framework.
The Library’s senior management structure comprises the Director-General and six Assistant Directors-General.
Figure 2.1 shows the Library’s organisational and senior management structure.

Figure 2.2 shows the key elements of the Library’s corporate governance structure.

The National Library Act 1960 provides that a council shall conduct the affairs of the Library. The Council has 12 members, including the Director-General, one senator elected by the Senate and one member of the House of Representatives elected by the House.
At 30 June 2012, there was one vacancy on Council. Appendix A lists Council members and their attendance at Council meetings.
In 2011–12, in addition to general administrative compliance and financial matters, Council considered a range of matters, including:
The Council has two advisory committees: the Audit Committee and the Corporate Governance Committee .
The role of the Audit Committee is to:
The Audit Committee comprises a minimum of three non-executive Council members. If required, Council may appoint external members to the Audit Committee. The Council Chair and Director-General also attend meetings. Details of Audit Committee members and meeting attendance can be found at Appendix A.
In 2011–12, the Audit Committee considered a range of matters, including:
The role of the Corporate Governance Committee is to:
The Corporate Governance Committee comprises three non-executive Council members—the Chair, the Deputy Chair and the Chair of the Audit Committee—and has the authority to coopt non-executive Council members.
Appendix A lists the Corporate Governance Committee members. In February 2012, the Corporate Governance Committee met to consider a Council evaluation and, in June 2012,
it met to discuss the Director-General’s performance .
The Corporate Management Group (CMG), consisting of the Director-General and the six senior executive service (SES) staff, provides strategic and operational leadership for the Library.In particular, it monitors the achievement of objectives and strategies, oversees budget matters, develops policy, coordinates activities across the organisation and oversees a range of operational issues. CMG meets weekly.
A number of cross-organisational committees advise CMG in key areas, such as workforce planning, asset management, building works, collection development and management, events and education, exhibitions and publications.
The Balanced Scorecard continues to be the Library’s principal planning support system, facilitating the integration of strategic, operational and budget planning. Since its introduction in 2000–01, the Balanced Scorecard has proven to be a successful performance management tool accepted by staff and other stakeholders. All scorecard achievements, initiatives and targets are reviewed regularly as part of strategic management planning and monitoring processes.
The Library’s Risk Management Framework continues to provide effective tools for the identification and evaluation of and response to risks that may affect the collection, core business functions and resources and/or strategic decision making. The Library’s Risk Management Register, which is subject to annual review, is central to this framework. The register lists risks to the Library, as well as risk-reduction strategies. These strategies are managed through established procedures and plans, such as the Collection Disaster Plan, the IT Disaster Recovery Plan, the Business Contingency Plan for Critical Building Systems and the Business Continuity Plan.
Risk management within the Library is overseen by the Library’s Emergency Planning Committee, which is chaired by the Assistant Director-General, Corporate Services, and includes SES staff representing all business areas. The committee provides a clear control structure to identify, monitor, respond to and mitigate risks that may affect the Library.
Following completion of Strategic Directions 2012–14, the Library undertook a legal risk-management review to help safeguard the organisation against high-level risks associated with reputation, litigation and professional exposure. Although no major residual risks were discerned, the review was useful for both Trove and the Digital Library Infrastructure Replacement project.
The Library’s Audit Committee met three times to consider external and internal audit reports.
Australian National Audit Office reports containing Auditor-General recommendations implemented by the Library during 2011–12 were:
The Audit Committee considered a number of internal audit reports, as listed on page 23.
The Library made a submission responding to the Attorney-General’s public consultation
paper, Extending Legal Deposit, and a submission responding to the National Cultural Policy Discussion Paper.
Under section 48A of the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997 (CAC Act), the Minister for Finance and Deregulation (Finance Minister) may make a General Policy Order specifying an Australian Government general policy applicable to the Library, provided the Finance Minister is satisfied the Minister for the Arts has consulted the Library on the application of the policy. No General Policy Orders applying to the Library were made in 2011–12, although Council provided input into a General Policy Order proposing that the Commonwealth Fraud Control Guidelines apply to agencies operating under the CAC Act. The Australian Government general policies that apply to the Library under section 28 of the CAC Act are:
A claim that was lodged in the ACT Supreme Court in 2003 on behalf of Wagdy Hanna and Associates Pty Ltd, seeking damages for an alleged disclosure of information in respect of a 1996 tender process for one of the Library’s offsite storage facilities, remains outstanding. The court proceedings were held in December 2008, with Justice Richard Refshauge reserving his decision. The Library is awaiting the judgment.
During 2011–12, no issues relating to the Library were referred to the Commonwealth Ombudsman.
A visitor has lodged a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission alleging that the Library indirectly discriminated against the person on the grounds of disability. The Library is defending the claim and its actions, asserting there has been no unlawful discrimination.
The Library received and granted access to two requests under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act) and a third was received on 30 June 2012.
In December 2011, the Library was advised that the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner had closed an application for a review of a Library FOI decision in 2010–11. The commissioner advised that the application was invalid and the matter is finalised.
Agencies subject to the FOI Act are required to publish information to the public as part of the Information Publication Scheme (IPS). This requirement is in Part II of the FOI Act and has replaced the former requirement to publish a section 8 statement in an annual report. Each agency must display on its website a plan showing what information it publishes in accordance with IPS requirements. The Library complies with IPS requirements and a link to the scheme is provided on the Library’s website (nla.gov.au/corporate-documents/information-publication-scheme).
The premiums under the Library’s insurance coverage with Comcover encompass general liability, directors’ and officers’ indemnity, property loss, damage or destruction, business interruption and consequential loss, motor vehicles, personal accidents and official
overseas travel.
The Library’s insurance premium received an 8.8 per cent discount as a result of its performance measured by Comcover’s Risk Management Benchmarking Survey. Under the terms of the insurance schedule of cover, the Library may not disclose its insurance premium price.
The Library continued to be represented at the Insurance and Risk Management Corporate Insurance Forum of cultural agencies, which holds regular meetings with Comcover to discuss insurance issues.
The Library serves a culturally and socially diverse community and aims to make its collection accessible to all. The Library’s collection includes material in over 300 languages. Its programs and services are developed with an emphasis on public accessibility and adhere to the principles outlined in the Australian Government’s Charter of Public Service in a Culturally Diverse Community. The Library is conscientiously implementing the charter and seeks to provide all Australians with the opportunity to access documentary resources of national significance. In particular, during 2011–12 the Library:
The Library’s Service Charter sets out its commitment to users, the standards of service
that users can expect and the mechanisms for providing feedback or making a complaint. Revised in 2011–12, the Service Charter is available online (nla.gov.au/service-charter) and
as a print publication.
During 2011–12, the Service Charter standards were met as follows:
The Library welcomes feedback and suggestions for service improvements. Feedback forms are placed throughout the Library and on the website (nla.gov.au/feedback). In 2011–12, 258 formal compliments and 126 formal complaints were received from users, as indicated in Tables 2.1 and 2.2.
| Subject | Number | Nature |
|---|---|---|
Information and | 220 |
|
Public Programs activities | 35 |
|
Facilities and support | 3 |
|
Total | 258 |
|
In addition, several hundred informal compliments were received from users of the Library’s Trove, Australian Newspapers and Copies Direct services.
| Subject | Number | Nature |
|---|---|---|
The collection | 14 |
|
Information and online services to individuals | 46 |
|
Public Programs activities | 28 |
|
Facilities and support | 38 |
|
Total | 126 |
|
The Library provided explanations and/or apologies in response to all complaints and undertook remedial action to address them as appropriate. Complaints relating to car parking were referred to the National Capital Authority as the responsible body.
The Library entered into 31 new consultancy contracts during 2011–12, at a total actual expenditure of $741,491 (inclusive of GST). Major new consultancies involved the development of software for the Integrated Library Management System interface, the redesign of the Foyer and an energy review of lighting throughout the main building. Appendix E lists the new consultancies with an individual value of $10,000 or more. In addition, 16 ongoing consultancy contracts were active during the same period, involving total actual expenditure of $592,545.
Advertising and market research in excess of $11,000 for non-recruitment and non-tender services amounted to $72,000 (inclusive of GST), contracted to Adcorp Australia Ltd for newspaper advertising promoting the Library.
Corporate management activities within the Library aim to maximise service to clients through the realisation of the full potential of staff and other available resources. In 2011–12, activities were focused on the development of requisite people skills, effective management supported by a range of tools and a safe, healthy and sustainable working environment. A major focus has been the main building, which is required to meet access and storage demands associated with a large and diverse national collection and public facility. Through participation in the Corporate Management Forum, the Library also played a part in corporate management across other collecting and portfolio agencies, displaying a supportive, collaborative and cooperative working style to other organisations.
Last financial year, it was planned that a new Enterprise Agreement (EA) would be in place by mid-2011. A ‘No‘ vote from staff on a draft EA meant that negotiations continued for some additional months. By the end of 2011, the Library had secured an EA that was strongly endorsed by staff and formally approved. The new EA has a nominal duration until mid-2014 and includes a Christmas operations and closedown provision (traded off against a slightly longer working day). The Library also implemented some affordable, modest steps to improve the pay relativity of staff and, importantly, undertook some significant projects to enhance the Library’s effectiveness and efficiency, resulting in the payment of a one-off productivity dividend to staff in June 2012.
To complement the Library’s strategic directions, a Strategic Workforce Plan is developed triennially. In this reporting period, the three-year plan for 2009–11 concluded and a new plan for 2012–14 was developed.
The Strategic Workforce Plan (2012–14) identifies three priorities aimed at focusing the Library’s decisions and resources on the increasing workforce demand for digital competencies and technological confidence. They are:
The focus in the final year of the former plan had been on finalising the development and use of consistent selection criteria in recruitment processes, improving workforce diversity, implementing an employment brand for the Library and increasing competency training in web technologies.
As in previous years, the Library’s Workforce Planning Committee met quarterly to review and monitor the relevance and effectiveness of the Strategic Workforce Plan and of particular initiatives. The Library’s Council also considers annually a report on workforce planning and paid particular attention to the progress of the Strategic Workforce Plan, scrutinising the workforce profile data and examining the Library’s employee data in comparison with other Australian Public Service (APS) agencies.
The comparative APS data arises from Library staff who participated in the annual APS Commission State of the Service employee survey. Overall, the results reflected a positive work environment. The results are also monitored by the Workforce Planning Committee and used to inform decisions about Library staffing matters. This year, it was noted that staff showed a high level of job satisfaction, satisfaction with Library management and a strong sense of pride in working at the Library.
The Library’s Consultative Committee continues to play an important role, as highlighted during the EA negotiations. The committee monitored the EA’s option to pay a productivity payment to staff upon substantial completion of some strategic positioning projects. Other major issues that the committee considered included:
In accordance with the Australian Government’s regime for Principal Executive Officers, the Council determines the Director-General’s remuneration. At 30 June 2012, terms and conditions of employment, such as non-salary benefits including access to motor vehicles and mobile phones for senior executive service (SES) staff, continued under common law contract.
At 30 June 2012, ten non-SES staff had enhanced benefits through Individual Flexibility Arrangements.
Table 2.3 shows the salary ranges for classifications below SES level and the number of employees at each level.
| Classification | Salary range ($) | Number of employees | |
|---|---|---|---|
EL2 | 112,508–137,785 | 26 |
|
EL 1 | 91,316–114,972 | 70 |
|
APS 6 | 72,861–91,281 | 85 |
|
APS 5 | 64,555–68,813 | 81 |
|
APS 4 | 58,012–62,639 | 89 |
|
Graduate | 52,816–62,639 | 1 |
|
APS 3 | 52,816–57,047 | 75 |
|
APS 2 | 45,612–51,714 | 53 |
|
APS 1 | 39,688–43,865 | 0 |
|
Cadet | 13,572–39,688 | 1 |
|
As in previous years, all ongoing and long-term non-ongoing staff were required to participate in the Library’s Performance Management Framework, with pay-point progression subject to achieving a satisfactory performance rating.
The Library is committed to the prevention of fraud and takes all reasonable measures to minimise the incidence of fraud in the workplace.
The Library is required to examine and update its Fraud Risk Assessment and Fraud Control Plan every two years: this review was completed in 2011–12. In accordance with the Library’s Fraud Management Policy, staff must be aware of their responsibilities in relation to fraud against the Commonwealth. Fraud awareness training is required to be undertaken by all Library staff and, during 2011–12, training sessions were made available to new staff and to staff who had not attended such training in the past four years.
Fraud prevention, detection, investigation, reporting and data collection procedures are in place which, along with the Fraud Risk Assessment and Fraud Control Plan, meet the Library’s needs and comply with Commonwealth Fraud Control Guidelines.
The Library promotes and endorses the ethical behaviour of its employees by informing staff of their responsibilities and reinforcing compliance with APS Values and Code of Conduct. This is undertaken through:
In addition to the usual reinforcement activities, in 2011–12 the Library offered the workshop, ‘Governance for Senior Leaders’. The Library also invited Annwyn Godwin, Merit Protection Commissioner, to deliver a staff presentation as part of the ‘Focus on Leadership’ seminar series.
The Library remains committed to the principles of the National Disability Strategy and continues to focus on improving access for people with disabilities to employment, programs, services and facilities.
To integrate disability access issues into existing strategic and business planning processes, the Library has developed a Disability Framework. The key elements of the framework include:
These elements provide the platform for continuing developments in reader and visitor services, collections management and building and security services.
In 2011–12, the Library advanced the Disability Framework by developing three sub-plans that focus on employment, procurement and services. Each sub-plan contains strategies and actions that support the Library’s objective of improving access for people with disabilities to employment, programs, services and facilities. The sub-plans will also be used for future reporting.
During the reporting period, the Library has taken steps to improve workforce participation in the specific diversity sectors of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and people with disabilities. A working group has been established to identify and examine initiatives related to the employment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. The Library also participated in the APS Commission’s Pathways program, which has resulted in a modest increase in the number of staff from Indigenous backgrounds.
A campaign to encourage disclosure of a known disability and the identification of workplace assistance was also undertaken. The campaign resulted in a measurable increase in the Library’s workforce participation rate. An element of this initiative was to encourage staff to seek the Library’s assistance, with reasonable adjustment, contributing to the organisation being a respectful and inclusive workplace.
The Library continued to promote the Mature Age Staff Strategy and encouraged retirement planning and transition-to-retirement strategies as valid choices for staff. Presentations on how to discuss retirement options were undertaken with senior leader groups and an invitation for all staff to consider their transition to retirement options was circulated.
As at 30 June 2012, 71 per cent of staff were female and 24 per cent identified as being from a culturally and linguistically diverse background.
This year saw the concentrated efforts of Council and CMG to fulfill the Library’s obligations under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 and related regulations. In planning for the anticipated new laws, the Library established a Work Health and Safety (WHS) Action Plan based on a legislative compliance review undertaken in May 2011. The plan was used to develop and implement a WHS Management System for the Library. In May 2012, a desktop review by a WHS specialist measured and tested the new WHS Management System. A revised WHS Action Plan for 2012–13 is being developed.
In order to gauge performance against the WHS Management System, the Library reports to Council on a bi-monthly basis and provides a comprehensive annual report at the October meeting.
CMG was briefed on the new WHS legislation and its due-diligence obligations. A comprehensive report was subsequently provided to Council and the Audit Committee. Staff were provided with the opportunity to attend training in relation to their roles and responsibilities under the new WHS legislation. A comprehensive review of WHS policies was undertaken as a necessary component to establish the WHS Management System within the Library, with a particular focus on risk management, confined space, hazardous substances, plant, contractors and first aid. This resulted in the development of policies and procedures for each of these elements for the Library.
The Library’s online system for reporting hazards was enhanced to include incident reporting. The arrangement provides an efficient and effective workflow to meet Comcare’s reporting requirements and to report data and trends to Council, CMG and the WHS Committee. Material Safety Data Sheet software was also implemented to enhance the assessment and control of risks associated with hazardous substances and dangerous goods. The Library’s WHS risk-management processes were revised in response to the extension of the legislative definition of ‘workers’ to include volunteers, contractors and work experience students. An online WHS induction program was introduced. New terms of reference were also introduced for the quarterly meetings of the WHS and First Aid committees.
Training courses that were offered included:
The offer of in-house influenza vaccination was taken up by 150 staff and 120 staff elected to participate in a health assessment.
The Library continued to offer staff and their families confidential counselling through the Employee Assistance Program. Regular presentations were offered on issues, including finding the right balance in life, retirement, stress management and resilience, to complement and promote this program.
Section 38 occurrences | Notification and reporting of notifiable incidents | There were two notifications |
|
Section 198 directions | Power to direct that workplace etc. not be disturbed | No directions were issued |
|
Section 95 notices | Provisional improvement notices | No notices were issued |
|
Section 160 investigations | Investigations addressing | There were no investigations |
|
Section 195 notices | Power to issue prohibition notices | No notices were issued |
|
Section 191 notices | Power to issue improvement notices | No notices were issued |
|
Note: The sections of the Act referred to in this table relate to the Work Health and Safety Act 2011.
During 2011–12, there were no injuries or illnesses that resulted in a claim for workers compensation. This continues the decreasing premium trend evident in 2010–11 and reflected in the declining premium rates as set out in Table 2.5.
| Premium rates | 2009–10 | 2010–11 | 2011–12 | 2012–13 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Latest premium rates for the Library* | 1.12 | 0.71 | 0.53 | 0.41 |
Premium rates for all agencies combined (for comparison) | 1.25 | 1.20 | 1.41 | 1.77 |
Library premium rates as a percentage of all agencies | 89.60 | 59.17 | 37.58 | 23.16 |
* As amended retrospectively by Comcare
The collection is the Library’s major asset, on which many of its services are based. The total value of the collection is $1.516 billion.
The Asset Management Committee oversees the Library’s strategic asset management plan and coordinates operational asset acquisition programs. It also develops and monitors a four-year forward asset acquisition program for strategic planning purposes and an asset disposal program for items reaching the end of their working life. Major asset acquisitions in 2011–12 included the purchase of IT equipment and infrastructure, shelving and equipment and showcases for the Treasures Gallery.
The total value of plant and equipment at 30 June 2012 was $13.289 million.
The total value of software at 30 June 2012 was $4.102 million.
The total value of the Library’s land and buildings has been assessed at $201.945 million, including the main building in Parkes and the repository in Hume. The strategic direction for
the management of the Library’s facilities is guided by the Building Works Coordinating Committee. A 15-year Strategic Management Plan is used to set directions for building works, including an annual maintenance plan and a five-year capital works program, which are reviewed each year by Council.
A Strategic Building Master Plan ensures that building works are consistent with the long-term strategic direction of the Library and underpins Library facility planning and budgeting. The plan was reviewed this year to ensure it adequately reflects the Library’s future strategic directions.
In 2011–12, a number of significant capital expenditure building projects were undertaken, including:
A number of other capital works projects were finalised, including:
The Library is listed on the Commonwealth Heritage List (2004) and is committed to the conservation of the Commonwealth heritage values of the main building. This includes undertaking consultation with recognised heritage specialists prior to undertaking building works in heritage-sensitive areas. In 2011–12, successful projects following consultation included the redesign of the Bookshop and the construction of the Treasures and Exhibition galleries and the new entrance to the Main Reading Room.
A review of the Library’s heritage furniture was undertaken, which provided an updated Heritage Furniture Register. The resulting report provides the Library with recommendations for the future use and management of the heritage furniture collection throughout the main building. Throughout the year, 24 items of heritage furniture were restored by approved restoration contractors.
In compliance with the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, the Library’s Conservation Management Plan has been reviewed and will undergo a public consultation process in preparation for submission in the second half of 2012 to the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities.
The Library’s Heritage Strategy was reviewed and amended this year, with a report on performance against the strategy to be submitted to the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities next financial year.
The Library’s Emergency Planning Committee oversees all aspects of protective security and business continuity planning. It comprises senior staff with responsibility for corporate communications and the security of staff, the collection, buildings and other assets.
During 2011–12, business continuity policies and procedures were reviewed to ensure their compliance with Australian Standard AS 3745-2010: Planning for Emergencies in Facilities.
The Library has almost completed an update of security procedures for the additional requirements of the recent Commonwealth Protective Security Policy Framework.
The Library is committed to improving its environmental performance across all areas of its operations. To do so, it has devised an Environmental Policy and an Environmental Action
Plan (EAP), which determines the Library’s targets for environmental performance. The Environmental Management System helps to set, implement and review these environmental objectives and targets.
In August 2011, to further enhance performance and awareness, the Environment Management Committee was established to coordinate and achieve the Library’s sustainability aims and targets. The committee meets quarterly to discuss, propose and implement a wide range of environmental initiatives across the Library, as well as to track performance against the EAP. Reports on environmental targets and performance are provided annually to Council.
The Library also aims to incorporate ecologically sustainable development principles into major projects. For example, the office refurbishment on Level 1 incorporated new workstations purchased from a company that aims to reuse, recycle or resell its products at end of life. Additionally, old carpet removed from the site was recycled and new carpets were purchased from a company that offers a take-back scheme at end of life.
In 2011–12, the Library has undertaken a number of initiatives which are expected to result in better waste management, energy savings and a reduction in the carbon footprint, including:
In comparison to the previous year (May 2010 to May 2011), the Library has reduced gas consumption by 15 per cent to 4,805,293 MJ per annum and electricity consumption by two per cent to 6,720,587 kWh per annum. The Library’s water consumption has increased by seven per cent to 15,660 kL per annum. The increase is believed to relate to the high level of building works undertaken during the period.
Recycling at the Library has also increased significantly. Cardboard recycling has increased by seven per cent to 22,020 kg and paper recycling has increased by six per cent to 38,405 kg per annum. Significantly, commingle recycling has increased by 55 per cent to 10,580 kg per annum, as a result of incorporating more waste into the commingle stream. Organic recycling commenced at the end of the year, with 267 kg being recycled during the trial period.
The Library maintained a focus on cost-effective contract management and procurement practices that are consistent with the Commonwealth Procurement Guidelines and supplemented by the Library’s guidelines. The Library utilised the Australian National Audit Office’s Better Practice Guide: Developing and Managing Contracts (February 2012) to assess and update its processes and for guidance. Procurement and contract templates were reviewed to ensure they continue to meet government good practice and are simple and straightforward to use. The revised templates took particular heed of the new WHS legislative responsibilities.
The major procurement activity undertaken by the Library during the year related to the Digital Library Infrastructure Replacement project and involved a two-stage approach: firstly, releasing an open Request for Proposal to inform the marketplace about the nature and scope of the Library’s requirements, to encourage innovative solutions, to clarify the Library’s expectations and to eliminate inappropriate bids; and secondly, providing a select Request for Tender to the bidders shortlisted from the first stage. The procurement drew interest from both domestic and international suppliers.
Other large purchasing activities involved the acquisition of motorised mobile shelving units, the refurbishment of a staffing area on Level 1 and the tender for cleaning, recycling and labour. The Library did not enter into contracts of $100,000 or more that did not provide for the Auditor-General to have access to the contractor’s premises.
In 2011–12, the Library operated nine grant programs.
The Library awarded 82 grants of up to $15,000 each to assist community organisations to preserve and manage nationally significant cultural heritage collections. Financial support and assistance for this grants program were received from the Department of Regional Australia, Local Government, Arts and Sport Office for the Arts, the National Archives of Australia, the National Film and Sound Archive and the National Museum of Australia.
The Library funded seven fellowships for established writers and researchers to spend up to six months at the Library researching collection material in their areas ofexpertise. Fellowships were awarded to Associate Professor Chi-Kong Lai, Professor Jim Davidson, Dr Lyn Gallacher, Dr Luke Keogh, Dr Anthony Lawrence, Professor Satendra Nandan and Dr Tim Sherratt. Honorary Fellowships were awarded to Dr Andrew Selth, Dr Mary Eagle and Professor Craig Reynolds.
Awarded to established scholars and writers to spend up to six months at the Library researching Japanese collection material, the fellowships are funded through the Harold S. Williams Trust. One fellowship was awarded to Dr Gary Hickey.
Funded through the Harold S. Williams Trust, these grants support scholars in Japanese studies who live outside Canberra to undertake research in the Library’s Japanese and western languages collections for up to four weeks. Grants were awarded to Ms Kumiko Kawashima, Dr Chiaki Ajioka and Dr Miyume Tanji.
With assistance from the National Folk Festival, the Library funded a four-week residency for Ms Emma Nixon and Mr Chris Stone to research original source material and to prepare a festival performance.
Funded by Mrs Pat McCann, the Library awarded three scholarships of six weeks to young Australian postgraduate students Ms Michelle De Stefani, Ms Alexandra Dellios and Mr Jon Piccini to undertake research on topics in Australian history or literature. Due to the generosity of an anonymous donor, the Library was able to offer an additional scholarship, which was awarded to Ms Fiona Scotney.
Funded by Dr John and Mrs Heather Seymour, this scholarship of six weeks supports research, preferably in biography, by a young Australian postgraduate student. The scholarship was awarded to Mr Robert O’Shea.
Funded by Mrs Alison Sanchez to commemorate her father, Kenneth Binns, Chief Librarian of the Commonwealth National Library from 1928 to 1947, the fellowship supports travel for professional development by Library staff in the early stages of their career. The 2012 fellowship was awarded to Ms Erika Mordek.
Funded by the Friends of the National Library of Australia, the fellowship provides a significant professional development opportunity for a Library staff member. The 2012 fellowship was awarded to Ms Anne Xu.
The Corporate Management Forum consists of senior executives with corporate management responsibilities from agencies in the Regional Australia, Local Government, Arts and Sport portfolio and a small number of non-profit agencies. The forum considers issues in the areas of human resource management, financial management, procurement, IT and facilities management, with a view to achieving economies of scale, sharing experience and encouraging best practice.
The forum met four times during 2011–12. The matters considered by the forum included:
Information technology (IT) is used by the Library to facilitate and support the development of new online services and to ensure that these services are cost-effective, reliable and responsive. A focus of recent years has been on developing software to support collections held in Australian libraries and other collecting institutions through the Library’s discovery and access service, Trove. The Library has also commenced a major project to replace systems used to build, preserve and deliver its digital collections. The Library uses IT to support its website and other web-publishing activities. The required IT and communication infrastructure is provided in-house.
In 2011–12, the Library released an application programming interface (API) for Trove. The API provides an efficient mechanism for others to reuse the almost 300 million information resources for research and analysis and to build new online services. The Library also completed a project, funded by the Australian National Data Service, to extend Trove’s infrastructure, thereby improving the discovery of researchers and research organisations and the data they produce and manage. In 2011, The Australian Women’s Weekly spotlight site was released. The site is a trial interface for searching and browsing The Australian Women’s Weekly in Trove.
The Library also undertook a range of IT development activities aimed at improving its services and operations. These included changes to Copies Direct, which introduced a shopping-cart facility for users ordering copies of collection items, and an updated service providing online access to time-coded oral history transcripts, audio and summaries.
During 2011–12, social networking and mobile computing were areas of active innovation at the Library, including:
In 2011–12, the Library’s digital collection increased in size by approximately 24 per cent and has now exceeded 1.5 petabytes of storage (see Figure 2.3). The major contributor to storage growth was the digitisation of Australian newspapers (see Figure 2.4). Australian newspapers (65 per cent) dominate the storage requirements, followed by archived web pages (19 per cent) and oral history recordings (7 per cent).
Figure 2.3: Growth in Digital Collection Storage, January 2003 to June 2012

| Month/Year | Terabytes |
|---|---|
| Jan 03 | 13 |
| Jun 03 | 16 |
| Jan 04 | 23 |
| Jun 04 | 32 |
| Jan 05 | 45 |
| Jun 05 | 51 |
| Jan 06 | 71 |
| Jun 06 | 77 |
| Jan 07 | 116 |
| Jun 07 | 122 |
| Jan 08 | 230 |
| Jun 08 | 305 |
| Jan 09 | 503 |
| Jun 09 | 572 |
| Jan 10 | 759 |
| Jun 10 | 917 |
| Jan 11 | 1184 |
| Jun 11 | 1266 |
| Jan 12 | 1475 |
| Jun 12 | 1566 |
Figure 2.4: Digital Collection Storage by Material, 30 June 2012

| Material | Percent (%) |
|---|---|
| Maps | 1% |
| Sheet Music | 1% |
| Other | 2% |
| Pictures | 2% |
| Manuscripts | 3% |
| Oral history | 7% |
| Web archive | 19% |
| Australian newspapers | 65% |
The Library also supports substantial infrastructure to enable the discovery of, and access to, its own and other collections. Figure 2.5 shows the growth in use of the Library’s webservices since 2000. Driven by the use of digitised Australian newspapers, Trove continues to experience strong growth in web activity.
Figure 2.5: Use of Web Services, 2000–11

| Webserver | Requests | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | |
| Trove | 31078611 | 843248140 | 2584501330 | ||||||||||
| Australian Newspapers | 124199247 | 530680534 | 925111641 | 52829364 | |||||||||
| Catalogue | 213801157 | 530680534 | 925111641 | 52829364 | |||||||||
| Australian Research | 46699678 | 37279335 | 33690754 | 1796652 | |||||||||
| NLA Wiki | 1380067 | 12094765 | 10307014 | 5702626 | 3740663 | 3850650 | |||||||
| Libraries Australia | 1409183 | 35227438 | 156141581 | 195239839 | 213358983 | 264255337 | 246316177 | 290817167 | |||||
| Digital Objects | 5512896 | 11813381 | 21984999 | 31656145 | 52759845 | 69216620 | 88580428 | 169505931 | 178137380 | 222568807 | |||
| Music Australia | 166367 | 845963 | 966585 | 12210879 | 14873097 | 27295302 | 116581813 | 146540662 | 98034935 | 84738262 | |||
| Picture Australia | 5122304 | 11899241 | 19885036 | 29543021 | 48973346 | 48520975 | 93952734 | 128941316 | 81320018 | 59963210 | 60062576 | 94532898 | |
| PANDORA | 26059087 | 27487824 | 60764097 | 54577585 | 61604220 | 29012068 | 33306760 | 31474045 | 43378795 | 41724615 | |||
| Library website | 29044968 | 79275403 | 127625128 | 177199968 | 215584053 | 224246870 | 269718229 | 281328169 | 295036959 | 380569508 | 438628282 | 559229937 | |
In accordance with the Australian Government’s Web Accessibility National Transition Strategy, Trove underwent an accessibility audit by Vision Australia. Following the successful completion of this work, Trove meets Level AA Success Criteria of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, thereby allowing more users to fully engage and participate with the service.
Reliable IT infrastructure is essential to the Library’s digital storage and access services. Table 2.6 shows the year’s average availability of nine key service areas. The target availability of 99.5 per cent was met for all services, except Libraries Australia, which experienced outages due to performance issues with the software component licensed by the Library and also because of storage system problems. A project to replace the software module has commenced and the storage system will be replaced in 2012.
| Service | Availability (%) | |
|---|---|---|
Network | 99.7 |
|
File and print | 99.9 |
|
99.9 |
| |
Website | 99.9 |
|
ILMS | 99.6 |
|
Digital Library | 99.5 |
|
Corporate Systems | 100.0 |
|
Document Supply | 99.8 |
|
Libraries Australia | 99.3 |
|
Trove | 99.5 |
|
Under its asset management program, the Library continued to replace and upgrade IT infrastructure.
Important developments in the reporting period included:
An energy sustainability review of the Library’s computer room identified a number of energy reduction measures that can be implemented in subsequent years.
Performance reporting in this chapter is based on the Library’s outcome and program structure set out in the Portfolio Budget Statement 2011–12. The Library has one outcome.
In 2011–12, the Library achieved this outcome through three strategies:
During 2011–12, income, including revenue from government, amounted to $66.616 million and expenses were $76.440 million, resulting in a deficit of $9.824 million. From an income-statement perspective, the Library does not receive appropriation funding for depreciation of the national collection (totalling $12.024 million), which forms part of operating expenses. Government funding for the purchase of collection material is provided through an equity injection totalling $9.779 million.
The total income of $66.616 million for 2011–12 was $3.761 million above budget and compares to total actual income of $64.418 million for 2010–11. Figure 1.1 shows a comparison of income across items against budget for 2011–12 and 2010–11.
Figure 1.1: Income, 2011–12 and 2010–11
Note: A logarithmic scale is used.
Figure 1.1: Income, 2011–12 and 2010–11 Data in Table Format
| Actual 2011–12 | Budget 2011–12 | Actual 2010–11 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue from government | 48.989 | 48.989 | 49.105 |
| Sales of goods and services | 8.907 | 8.038 | 7.780 |
| Interest | 2.988 | 2.280 | 3.333 |
| All other income | 5.732 | 3.548 | 4.200 |
| Total | 66.616 | 62.855 | 64.418 |
The major variations between financial years relate to increases in the sales of goods and services ($1.127 million), largely due to an increase in revenue received from digitising other library collections, increased sales through the Bookshop and sponsorship revenue associated with the Library’s exhibition program; increases in other revenue ($1.613 million), largely due to increased grant and donation revenue; and reductions in interest revenue ($0.345 million) and revenue from government ($0.116 million). The decline in interest revenue is primarily the result of reduced deposit rates received during 2011–12.
The total expenses of $76.440 million for 2011–12 were $0.216 million above budget and $4.458 million more than 2010–11. Figure 1.2 shows a comparison of expenditure across items and against budget for 2011–12 and 2010–11.
Figure 1.2: Expenses, 2011–12 and 2010–11
Note: A logarithmic scale is used.
Figure 1.2: Expenses, 2011–12 and 2010–11 Data in Table Format
| Actual 2011–12 | Budget 2011–12 | Actual 2010–11 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Employees | 39.182 | 37.016 | 36.016 |
| Suppliers | 17.100 | 17.401 | 16.214 |
| Depreciation and amortisation | 19.392 | 21.214 | 19.029 |
| Other | 0.766 | 0.593 | 0.723 |
| Total | 76.440 | 76.224 | 71.982 |
Employee expenses were $3.166 million more than 2010–11. This is the result of a combination of factors, including a net increase in leave expenses ($1.842 million), of which $1.254 million is due to the movements in the long-term bond rate during 2011–12, which has the effect of increasing the value of the liability; reduced capitalisation of staff time ($0.401 million) associated with the production of internally developed software and with the digitising of collection material, which has the effect of increasing salary expenditure; and base salary increases and a small productivity payment provided to staff under the Library’s Enterprise Agreement and partially offset by a small reduction in staff numbers (8.9 average staffing level).
Supplier expenses were higher ($0.886 million) than 2010–11, largely due to increased cost of goods sold ($0.193 million), primarily as a result of increased sales through the Library’s Bookshop, and increased promotional expenses ($0.585 million), largely associated with the opening of the Library’s Treasures Gallery and the exhibition, Handwritten: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Treasures from Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. Much of the additional expenditure associated with the exhibition was funded by the receipt of sponsorship revenue.
Depreciation and amortisation expenses were $0.363 million higher than 2010–11. The primary reason for the variation is increased depreciation of plant and equipment ($0.242 million),
largely the result of the replacement of existing assets.
In 2011–12, the Library’s total equity increased by $86.766 million to $1,776.531 million. The net increase is a result of an equity injection for collection acquisitions ($9.779 million), a net revaluation increment ($86.811 million) following the revaluation of the Library’s collection, land and buildings, and the net operating result ($9.824 million) for 2011–12.
Figure 1.3 shows that the total value of the Library’s assets increased by $86.339 million to $1,793.712 million in 2011–12.
Figure 1.3: Total Assets, 2011–12 and 2010–11
Note: A logarithmic scale is used.
Figure 1.3: Total Assets, 2011–12 and 2010–11 Data in Table Format
| Actual 30 June 2012 | Actual 30 June 2011 | |
|---|---|---|
| Financial assets | 54.366m | 56.194m |
| Inventories and other | 3.840m | 3.893m |
| Intangibles—software | 4.102m | 4.663m |
| The National Collection | 1,516.170m | 1,435.175m |
| Plant and equipment | 13.289m | 12.937m |
| Land and buildings | 201.945m | 194.511m |
| Total | 1,793.712m | 1,707.373m |
The increase in non-financial assets ($88.167 million) is largely the result of the revaluation of the Library’s collections, land and buildings (a net increment of $86.811 million) and the net difference between current-year assets acquisitions, disposals and current-year depreciation expenses ($1.409 million). In addition, there was an increase in the value of inventories ($0.089 million) and a reduction in the value of prepaid supplier expenses ($0.142 million). The decrease in financial assets ($1.828 million) relates primarily to a reduction in receivables ($0.676 million), a reduction in cash at bank ($0.781 million) and a reduction in investments ($0.579 million).
As Figure 1.4 shows, the Library’s total liabilities reduced by $0.427 million from last financial year to $17.181 million.
Figure 1.4: Total Liabilities, 2011–12 and 2010–11
Note: A logarithmic scale is used.
Figure 1.4: Total Liabilities, 2011–12 and 2010–11 Data in Table Format
| Actual 30 June 2012 | Actual 30 June 2011 | |
|---|---|---|
| Employee provisions | 12.279m | 11.001m |
| Payable | 4.902m | 6.607m |
| Total | 17.181m | 17.608m |
The changes in liabilities relate to a reduction in supplier payables ($1.971 million) and increases in grants payable ($0.007 million), employee provisions ($1.278 million) and other payables ($0.259 million).
In 2011–12 there was a reduction in the Library’s cash balance, which decreased by $0.781 million to $5.443 million as at 30 June 2012. Figure 1.5 shows a comparison of cash flow items for 2011–12 and 2010–11.
Figure 1.5: Net Cash Flow, 2011–12 and 2010–11
Figure 1.5: Net Cash Flow, 2011–12 and 2010–11 Data in Table Format
| Actual 30 June 2012 | Actual 30 June 2011 | |
|---|---|---|
| Net operating | 8.259m | 10.625m |
| Net investing | -18.819m | -18.280m |
| Net financing | 9.779m | 9.743m |
| Total | -0.781m | 2.088m |
The decrease in net cash from operating activities ($2.366 million) reflects the comments under ‘Income’ and ‘Expenses’. The increase in net cash used by investing activities ($0.539 million) primarily reflects the net movement of funds from investments to cash at bank between years ($4.391 million), a decrease in the investment in property, plant and equipment and intangibles ($4.452 million) and a decrease in proceeds from the sales of property, plant and equipment as a consequence of the sale in 2010–11 of an apartment gifted to the Library ($0.600 million). The decrease in the investment in property, plant and equipment and intangibles is largely the result of increased building expenditure during 2010–11 as a result of the construction of the new Treasures Gallery. There was a minor increase in net cash from financing activities between financial years ($0.036 million), as a result of the Library’s equity injection provided by government to fund collection acquisitions being slightly increased.
The Library provides access to its collection to all Australians through services to users in the main building and nationally through online information services. The Library provides reference and lending services to both onsite users and to those outside Canberra, via online services and the digitisation of selected resources from the Australian Collection. The Library also delivers a diverse annual program of exhibitions and events.
In 2011–12, the Library will:
Many of the Library’s greatest treasures, from James Cook’s Endeavour Journal to Edward Koiki Mabo’s papers and the original draft of Waltzing Matilda, are on permanent display in the new Treasures Gallery. A diverse selection from the Library’s overseas collections is also showcased.
The successful opening was a significant moment in the Library’s history and was the culmination of over ten years of work. It would have been impossible without the support of
the Australian Government and the generosity of supporters, who helped the Library to raise over $3 million to fund the building of the gallery.
In June 2011, following completion of renovations in the Main Reading Room associated with the construction of the Treasures Gallery, the next stage of reading room improvements was planned to be the integration of the Newspapers and Microforms Reading Room, moving it from the current location on Lower Ground 1 to the Main Reading Room. After further consideration, it has been decided instead to prioritise integration of special collections reading rooms. As a first stage, in October 2011, the Pictures and Manuscripts reading rooms were integrated into a renovated reading room, providing a single service point on Level 2 for access to these collections. In January 2012, work began on the feasibility of developing an enlarged integrated reading room for access to rare and special collection materials, including manuscripts, pictures, maps, rare books, sheet music, ephemera and oral history recordings. The decision was taken to locate the new reading room on Level 1, in compliance with the provisions of the Strategic Building Master Plan. A design brief for the new reading room has been completed.
A major project to redevelop Copies Direct, the online requesting service for clients wishing to order copies of collection material, was undertaken. The redeveloped service is easy to use, has improved functionality, including a shopping-cart facility for multiple item orders, and better security for online payment. The redevelopment has also improved workflow processes for staff. Since the redevelopment, almost 10,000 Copies Direct orders have been placed and the new service has received an overwhelmingly positive response from users.
A major project to transfer pre-2010 Australian print collections into separate sequences for monographs and journals was completed, resulting in compaction of collections and more efficient use of available onsite storage space. The project has created enough additional storage space in the main building to defer the requirement for an extension to the Library’s offsite facility in Hume until at least 2015.
A quality assurance review of the Ask a Librarian enquiry service showed strong adherence to the Library’s performance guidelines, with 98 per cent of the responses judged as using ‘excellent or good’ language and tone, 95 per cent providing an ‘excellent or good’ answer, 94 per cent meeting the one-hour time limit for preparing responses and 96 per cent being answered within a week (exceeding the Service Charter guideline of 90 per cent). These results suggest that users benefit from a consistent-quality service delivered from staff answering research and information enquiries in different branches across the Library.
A new inventory management system was implemented in the Bookshop and Sales and Promotion sections. The Library Bookshop refurbishment and upgrade of the online shop has contributed to an increase in sales over the previous year.
The Library published 23 new titles promoting the Library’s collection. The titles are sold through more than 1,650 outlets in Australia and New Zealand and online. The book accompanying the exhibition, Handwritten: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Treasures from Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, was represented in the weekly Nielsen Top 20 sales list for Independent Booksellers on six occasions and the print run of 5,000 sold out. Two previously published titles received national recognition:
The Library’s Volunteer Program expanded with the opening of the Treasures Gallery and the Exhibition Gallery in late 2011. Volunteers assist the Library by providing daily gallery tours, as well as behind-the-scenes and building-art tours, providing front-of-house assistance on weekends and public holidays and working on a range of other projects.
Volunteers make a significant contribution to improving access to the collection. In 2011–12, for example, a volunteer with specialist aviation experience completed a data spreadsheet of over 70,000 aerial photographs, enabling the information to be accessed through the Library’s catalogue. Through this and other volunteer projects, the Library can now provide catalogue access to over 800,000 Australian, Papuan and Antarctic aerial images, exposing previously hidden collection material and resulting in higher use of the collection.
Some 30 projects aimed at improving access to the collection and streamlining workflows were carried out during the year, with the assistance of one-off project funding. These included:
All the projects achieved their aims and enabled important progress in priority areas of activity.
The completion of projects to catalogue several large collections improved access for users. Completed projects included the Riley Collection of material about the Australian labour movement from the 1890s to the 1960s, the Symphony Australia Collection of Australian musical works from 1912 to the 1970s and the Marcie Muir Collection of Australian children’s literature.
As part of the ongoing program to improve workflows and processes that support collection processing and cataloguing, the Library has started to use publisher-generated bibliographic data, instead of recreating this data. Publishers and distributors produce data routinely to manage stock. The data is compliant with ONIX (Online Information eXchange), an international standard for representing and communicating book industry product information in electronic form. A number of Australian publishers have agreed to provide ONIX records for forthcoming publications for use in the Library’s catalogues. The Library will seek to broaden the program to include more publishers, as it offers productivity savings and is an efficient way to collaborate with the publishing sector.
Through the Australian Newspaper Digitisation Program, the Library has digitised over seven million newspaper pages, consisting of almost 70 million articles. This year, the number and range of regional newspaper titles has been greatly expanded to include titles such as The Singleton Argus and The Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate (NSW); The Zeehan and Dundas Herald (Tas.); The Darling Downs Gazette and General Advertiser and Charleville Times (Qld); Warrnambool Standard and The Colac Herald (Vic.); Border Watch (SA) and The Daily News (WA). Two hundred and eighty individual newspaper titles have now been digitised and are feely available for all Australians to search online.
The number of organisations that contribute funding towards digitising local newspapers continues to grow. In 2011–12, a consortium of 11 New South Wales public libraries contributed funding, in addition to:
A statement of acknowledgment is made available from every related page and article view in Trove.
During 2011–12, the Library undertook a focused project to trial the digitisation of non-English-speaking community newspapers. The following titles were selected:
Following a community led online fundraising campaign, on International Women’s Day (8 March 2012), the Library launched digitised issues of The Dawn: A Journal for Australian Women, Australia’s first feminist journal.
Throughout the year, 16,236 items were digitised, drawn from pictures, maps, manuscripts, music and printed material. Significant items included:
The Library acquired many interesting and significant materials during the year. A selection of notable acquisitions is listed in Appendix J.
| Measure | Target | Achieved | |
|---|---|---|---|
Deliverables | Physical collection items delivered to users [#] | 240,000 | 210,297 |
| Website access—pageviews [#] (millions) | 364 | 352 |
Key performance indicators | Collection access—Service Charter [%] | 100.0 | 100.0 |
| National collection delivered [% growth] | 0 | -16.0 |
| Website access—pageviews [% growth] | 7.0 | 4.0 |
Figure 3.3: Number of Physical Collection Items Delivered to Users

| Year | Target | Achieved |
|---|---|---|
| 2008-2009 | 256,000 | 295,511 |
| 2009-2010 | 265,000 | 285,138 |
| 2010-2011 | 270,000 | 250,195 |
| 2011-2012 | 240,000 | 210,297 |
| 2012-2013 | 241,000 | |
| 2013-2014 | 242,000 |
The target was not met. A matching increase in use of online resources suggests users prefer the immediacy and convenience of digital collections. Increased charges for inter-library loans and document supply also contributed to this decline.
| Achieved | Achieved | Target | Target | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2008–09 | 2009–10 | 2009–11 | 2011–12 |
| 2012–13 | 2013–14 | 2014–15 |
10.1 | -3.5 | -12.3 | -16.0 | 0 | 1.0 | 1.0 | 1.0 |
The target was not met.
| Achieved | Achieved | Target | Target | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2008–09 | 2009–10 | 2009–11 | 2011–12 | 2012–13 | 2013–14 | 2014–15 | |
100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 |
The Service Charter standards for reference enquiries responded to, collection delivery and website availability were achieved.
Figure 3.4: Website Access—Number of Pageviews

| Year | Target | Achieved |
|---|---|---|
| 2008-2009 | 102,520,000 | 156,495,200 |
| 2009-2010 | 143,000,000 | 279,000,000 |
| 2010-2011 | 260,000,000 | 339,039,103 |
| 2011-2012 | 364,000,000 | 352,000,000 |
| 2012-2013 | 389,000,000 | |
| 2013-2014 | 416,000,000 |
The target was not met. While the use of the Library’s website has not declined, for the first time the projected annual growth (seven per cent) in access to the Library’s online services through the website was not achieved. The reduced overall growth is a result of a substantial reduction (approximately 40 per cent) in internet search engine referrals to the Library catalogue. The Library continues to see strong growth in the use of Trove (up some 30 per cent) and generally steady growth in other online services. Modest growth of seven per cent has been forecast for the next few years and it should be noted that the Library’s website is heavily used compared to those of other libraries and government departments.
| Achieved | Achieved | Target | Target | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2008–09 | 2009–10 | 2009–11 | 2011–12 | 2012–13 | 2013–14 | 2014–15 | |
63.3 | 78.1 | 22.0 | 4.0 | 7.0 | 7.0 | 7.0 | 7.0 |
The target was not met.
The Library aims to collaborate nationally and internationally to ensure that Australians have access to the information resources they need on a professional and personal level to undertake their research, study and lifelong learning and to understand and appreciate Australia’s history and culture. The Library’s services are designed so that they are accessible to all Australians.
The Library works in partnership with other collecting institutions to improve online services and to develop common standards, sharing expertise and knowledge. In addition, the Library represents the interests of the Australian library sector nationally and internationally.
In 2011–12, the Library will:
The Library produced a second edition of Guidelines for Library Staff Assisting Donors to Prepare Their Personal Digital Archives for Transfer to NSLA Libraries. The revised version incorporates valuable feedback from member institutions, assisting libraries to liaise with donors about preparing and managing personal digital archives. The guidelines are a useful starting kit for conversations with potential donors—in 2012 it was the most-downloaded publication from the NSLA website.
In another project, an electronic accessioning costing tool for manuscripts was developed to assist NSLA libraries to cost and better understand each of the tasks which comprise the processing workflow. Staff record the time taken for each task (such as receipt, registration, rehousing and cataloguing) into the spreadsheet, which automatically calculates the cost of the activity according to staff level. Results are providing a more precise understanding of the complexities involved in accessioning and are creating opportunities for potential efficiencies.
The Library also commenced a project to reinvigorate the approach to collecting significant Australian websites for inclusion in PANDORA: Australia’s Web Archive. Over the next few years, the aim will be to implement more sophisticated and flexible software to support more efficient collecting and user-friendly delivery options for presenting search results. As well as continuing to select individual websites and conducting larger-scale collecting by type of publication, such as government websites, a new collaborative approach to selecting important websites on contemporary issues, such as the Australian mining boom, will be pursued and the results presented as curated collections. In March 2012, the Library held a successful workshop attended by representatives from NSLA libraries to discuss the implementation of the revised collecting strategy.
Scoping work commenced on options to allow Trove users to reach copy order services offered by NSLA libraries. This project builds on the Library’s successful redevelopment of its Copies Direct service (and exposure of the Copies Direct option in Trove) and the lightweight approach to e-resource authentication, which allows Australian libraries to add data to their ‘profile’ on Australian Libraries Gateway, affecting what can be viewed and accessed via Trove.
The interviewing stage of the project is drawing to a close, with 230 interviews commissioned and 172 interviews completed so far. Where interviewees have granted permission, 104 interviews have been made available in full online. The interviews document a diverse range of experiences of being in out-of-home care and of the complexities of the lifelong effect of those childhood experiences. Interviews were also commissioned with welfare professionals, employees in homes, politicians and advocates, providing context and insights into the policies and systems of care. Interviewees were selected to represent a range of demographic factors and experiences and interviews were conducted across Australia. The project has also resulted in the addition of significant archival collections, self-published autobiographies and ephemera.
Almost 300 million resources are now available through Trove. Many of these resources are high-quality journal articles included in licensed datasets. Trove users who are members of libraries subscribing to these datasets can access individual articles via Trove at their local libraries or by including their library membership details in their Trove profile.
The Library’s program for integrating its successful format-specific discovery services into Trove is now complete. Picture Australia, which provided an indispensable starting point for Australians seeking online images of their country and its culture, was decommissioned as a separate service in June 2012, as was Music Australia, which provided a ‘one-stop shop’ for users interested in Australian musicians and printed and recorded music. All Picture Australia and Music Australia content is now available through Trove. The consolidation of these and other format-specific services, such as the Register of Australian Archives and Manuscripts and Australia’s Research Online, allows the Library to concentrate its resources in a single service, ensuring that new service developments are available to all users, regardless of their field of interest.
In a major achievement, the Library developed an application programming interface that allows NSLA and other libraries, researchers and vendors to copy Trove records to include in their own services. A state library, for example, can request all Trove user annotations and comments on an item held in its collection and display them in its local discovery services. Trove newspaper articles or digitised pictures relating to a particular state, region or locality can be retrieved and displayed in local systems to contextualise collections held locally. Researchers can interrogate the vast body of newspaper text to determine trends in the use of particular words or groups of words indicating themes or concerns. Data can be ‘mashed’ with other sources, such as geospatial data. This development means that Trove now acts as a truly interactive web space, where users can find resources, learn how to access them directly and comment on, interact with and re-use them for their own ‘boutique’ developments.
Following an intensive review of the Libraries Australia business environment—including a survey to which more than 360 member institutions responded about their local priorities and workflows—the Libraries Australia Search Redevelopment project commenced, with the specifications phase completed during the financial year. Search is central to the Libraries Australia service array and is used daily by over 1,000 libraries. During 2011–12, the current software supporting the service reached capacity and the redeveloped service, due to be delivered in 2013, will offer Libraries Australia members significant workflow and timeliness improvements. The redeveloped Search service will leverage existing Trove infrastructure, further consolidating the Library’s development effort and maximising returns on Trove investment.
The Director-General attended the annual congress of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) and the annual Conference of Directors of National Libraries (CDNL), held in Puerto Rico in August 2011. The Director-General participated in meetings of the IFLA National Libraries Section and discussion groups within CDNL on issues of mutual interest to national libraries, including the collecting and management of digital collections.
In August 2011, the Assistant Director-General, Collections Management, participated in a meeting of the Committee of Principals, the international library body responsible for overseeing development of Resource Description and Access, the new descriptive cataloguing rules.
Trove use is almost two-thirds higher than last financial year, with just under 50,000 user visits per day; Trove traffic now accounts for almost 60 per cent of the Library’s total bandwidth. Use of mobile devices to access Trove has quadrupled. With seven per cent (and rapidly rising) of all searches now conducted on smartphones and other mobile devices, optimising Trove services for these devices is a high development priority. Trove users continue to embrace the many Web 2.0 and social media options that allow them to interact with Trove content. Users routinely correct more than 100,000 lines of text daily—two dedicated individuals have each corrected over one million lines of text—and new Trove lists are being created in their hundreds each month. Trove’s Twitter followers have quadrupled over the course of the year, with more than 2,100 individuals following Trove’s tweets, which connect current events with Trove collection items, especially historical newspaper articles. Recent tweets have encompassed subjects ranging from the deaths of Margaret Whitlam, Murray Rose and Jimmy Little, to the trials that formed the basis of the ABC’s popular Australia on Trial series, to stories of hardy women giving birth in uncongenial circumstances.
The coverage and quality of the Australian National Bibliographic Database (ANBD) were substantially improved during the year. Several state and university libraries added large batch loads of records or provided large files to refresh information on their library holdings. It was particularly pleasing to see a large number of records, generated partly as a result of the Reimagining Libraries Description and Cataloguing Project, start to flow through to the ANBD. Combined with inclusion of large datasets from publishers and international libraries, such as the Library of Congress, this significantly improved Australian libraries’ access to high-quality records to support their collection management and other workflows. Data quality was enhanced using duplicate detection software against a number of different match keys; almost 500,000 duplicate records were removed in a 12-month period.
The NSLA Consortium achieved the first stage of its core set vision. Eight high-quality e-resources are available to all registered patrons of NSLA libraries, both onsite and from the place of their choice, and good progress is being made on adding products to the core set. In a sign of the value that NSLA libraries place on the consortium, members agreed to substantially increase their contribution to the Library’s administration costs, ensuring the consortium’s long-term sustainability.
The Executive Committee of the Electronic Resources Australia (ERA) Consortium undertook a review of the consortium and sought feedback from Australian libraries on its findings and recommendations. The review was valuable in informing consideration of ER A’ s purpose, values and sustainability.
Table 3.8 shows deliverables and key performance indicators in relation to providing and supporting collaborative projects and services in 2011–12.
| Measure | Target | Achieved | |
|---|---|---|---|
Deliverables | Agencies subscribing to key collaborative services [#] | 2,310 | 2,437 |
| Records/items contributed by subscribing agencies [#] (millions) | 15.059 | 26.645 |
Key performance indicators | Collaborative services standards and timeframes [%] | 97.0 | 98.0 |
Figure 3.5: Number of Agencies Subscribing to Key Collaborative Services

| Year | Target | Achieved |
|---|---|---|
| 2008-2009 | 2,080 | 2,057 |
| 2009-2010 | 2,071 | 2,090 |
| 2010-2011 | 2,280 | 2,339 |
| 2011-2012 | 2,310 | 2,437 |
| 2012-2013 | 2,355 | |
| 2013-2014 | 2,390 |
The target was exceeded due to an increase in the number of subscribers to ERA.
Figure 3.6: Number of Records and Items Contributed by Subscribing Agencies

| Year | Target | Achieved |
|---|---|---|
| 2008-2009 | 2,396,000 | 3,498,740 |
| 2009-2010 | 2,561,000 | 4,474,130 |
| 2010-2011 | 17,205,000 | 32,303,179 |
| 2011-2012 | 15,058,650 | 26,644,539 |
| 2012-2013 | 16,659,000 | |
| 2013-2014 | 16,659,000 |
The increase in the number of items that were contributed by subscribing agencies is the result of a significant increase in the number of newspaper articles contributed to Trove and to several large batch loads of records added to the ANBD.
2008–09 | 2009–10 | 2009–11 | 2012–13 | 2013–14 | 2014–15 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
99.0 | 97.8 | 96.6 | 98.0 | 97.0 | 97.0 | 97.0 | 97.0 |
Service standards and timeframes were exceeded, due largely to completion of a project to review and renew Libraries Australia help pages, with a resulting reduction in Libraries Australia enquiries.
The Hon. James J. Spigelman AC, BA (Hons) (Sydney), LLB (Hons) (Sydney)
Non-executive member, New South Wales
Chair, Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Appointed on 29 June 2010 for a three-year term until 28 June 2013
Resigned from the Council with effect from 30 June 2012
Attended six of six meetings
Professor John Hay AC, BA (Hons) (WA & Cambridge), MA (Cambridge), PhD (WA), LLD (Qld), DU (QUT), LittD (Deakin), DLitt (WA), FAIM, FAHA, FACE, FQA
Non-executive member, Queensland
Chair, Australian Learning and Teaching Council
Chair, Board of Trustees, Queensland Art Gallery
Chair, Martin Institute
Chair, Queensland Institute for Medical Research
Reappointed on 15 May 2011 for a three-year term until 14 May 2014
Resigned from the Council with effect from 30 June 2012
Attended three of six meetings
The Hon. Dick Adams MP
Non-executive member, Tasmania
Federal Member for Lyons
Elected by the House of Representatives on 13 May 2011 for a three-year term until 12 May 2014
Attended five of six meetings
Mr Richard Eccles BA (ANU), MA (NSW)
Non-executive member, Australian Capital Territory
Deputy Secretary, Department of Regional Australia, Local Government, Arts and Sport
Appointed on 29 September 2011 for a three-year term until 28 September 2014
Attended three of five eligible meetings
Ms Jane Hemstritch BSc (Hons) (London), FCA, FAICD
Non-executive member, Victoria
Non-executive Director, Victorian Opera
Non-executive Director, Santos Ltd
Non-executive Director, Tabcorp Holdings Ltd
Non-executive Director, Commonwealth Bank of Australia
Non-executive Director and Deputy Chairman, The Global Foundation
Appointed on 29 June 2010 for a three-year term until 28 June 2013
Attended four of six meetings
Senator Gary Humphries BA, LLB (ANU)
Non-executive member, Australian Capital Territory
Senator for the Australian Capital Territory
Elected by the Senate on 1 July 2011 for a three-year term until 30 June 2014
Attended three of six meetings
Ms Mary Kostakidis BA, Dip. Ed. (Sydney)
Non-executive member, New South Wales
Member, Sydney Peace Foundation Advisory Panel
Board member, Sydney Theatre Company
ResMed Foundation
Appointed on 12 November 2009 for a three-year term until 11 November 2012
Attended five of six meetings
Mr Brian Long FCA
Non-executive member, New South Wales
Deputy Chairman, Network Ten Holdings Ltd
Non-executive Director, Commonwealth Bank of Australia
Chairman, Audit Committee and Member of the Council of the
University of NSW
Chairman, United Way Australia
Director, Cantarella Brothers Pty Ltd
Reappointed on 12 November 2009 for a third three-year term until 11 November 2012
Attended four of six meetings
Mr Kevin McCann AM, BA, LLB (Hons) (Sydney), LLM (Harvard), FAICD
Non-executive member, New South Wales
Chair, National Library of Australia Foundation Board
Member, University of Sydney Senate
President (NSW) and Board member, Australian Institute of Company Directors
Member, Corporate Governance Committee, Australian Institute of Company Directors
Member, Evans and Partners Advisory Board
Chairman, Origin Energy Limited
Chairman, Macquarie Group Limited and Macquarie Bank Limited
Director, BlueScope Steel Limited
Reappointed on 15 December 2008 for a second three-year term until 14 December 2011
Attended three of three eligible meetings
Dr Nonja Peters BA (Hons), PhD (WA)
Non-executive member, Western Australia
Senior Lecturer and Director, History of Migration Experiences Centre, Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute
Appointed on 20 May 2010 for a three-year term until 19 May 2013
Attended six of six meetings
Ms Deborah Thomas Dip. Fine Art (Monash), MAICD
Non-executive member, New South Wales
Director, Media, Public Affairs and Brand Development, ACP Magazines Pty Ltd
Board member, Surf Life Saving Foundation
Board member, Taronga Conservation Society Australia
Member, Cancer Australia Advisory Committee
Reappointed on 12 November 2009 for a second three-year term until 11 November 2012
Attended six of six meetings
Ms Anne-Marie Schwirtlich, BA (Hons)(Macquarie), Dip. Information Management (NSW)
Director-General and executive member, Australian Capital Territory
Appointed on 9 February 2011 and commenced on 11 March 2011 for a five-year term until 8 February 2016
Attended six of six meetings
Council met on:
Mr Brian Long
Non-executive member of Council
Appointed to the Committee 6 June 2003
Reappointed as Chair and member of the Committee 5 February 2010
Attended three of three meetings
Professor John Hay AC
Deputy Chair of Council
Appointed to the Committee 5 June 2009 and reappointed 5 February 2010
Attended two of three meetings
Ms Deborah Thomas
Non-executive member of Council
Appointed to the Committee 5 February 2010
Attended three of three meetings
Ms Jane Hemstritch
Appointed to the Committee
2 December 2011
Attended nil of one eligible meeting
Mr Geoff Knuckey
External member
Appointed to the Committee 1 May 2012
Attended nil of nil eligible meetings
Other Council members attended meetings as follows:
The Audit Committee’s terms of reference are to:
The Audit Committee met on:
Professor John Hay AC
Deputy Chair of Council
Attended one of two meetings
The Hon. James J. Spigelman AC
Chair of Council
Attended two of two meetings
Mr Brian Long
Chair of Audit Committee
Attended two of two meetings
Ms Deborah Thomas
Non-executive member of Council
Attended two of two meetings
The Corporate Governance Committee’s terms of reference are to:
The Corporate Governance Committee met on:
Mr Kevin McCann AM
Ms Jasmine Cameron
National Library of Australia
Ms Doreen Mellor (until 1 May 2012)
National Library of Australia
Mrs Cathy Pilgrim (from 2 May 2012)
National Library of Australia
Ms Anne-Marie Schwirtlich
National Library of Australia
Ms Deborah Thomas
National Library of Australia Council
The Lady Ebury
Ms Lorraine Elliott
Ms Julia King
Ms Janet McDonald AO
Development Office
National Library of Australia
At the 2 December 2011 meeting, Council endorsed changing the name of the Development Council to the Foundation Board and also agreed to revised terms of reference, as follows:
Council also agreed that the Foundation Board will continue its close association with Council through regular reporting and through a member of Council being either a member or Chair of the Foundation Board. The number of Foundation Board members was increased to provide scope for a range of advocacy approaches to optimise the level of support generated, including:
Three committees provide advice to the Library:
Ms Anne Horn
Deakin University
Ms Liz Burke
Murdoch University
Dr Alex Byrne (from February 2012)
State Library of New South Wales
Mr Peter Conlon (from February 2012)
Queanbeyan City Library
Ms Pamela Gatenby
National Library of Australia
Ms Noelle Nelson (until December 2011)
State Library of New South Wales
Mr Ben O’Carroll (from February 2012)
Queensland Department of Premier and Cabinet
Ms Ann Ritchie
Australian Library Journal
Ms Anne-Marie Schwirtlich
National Library of Australia
Ms Rosa Serratore
National Meteorological Library
Mr Geoff Strempel
Public Library Services (South Australia)
Ms Monika Szunejko (until December 2011)
State Library of Western Australia
Mr Chris Taylor (until December 2011)
University of Queensland
Mr Andrew Wells
University of New South Wales
Resource Sharing Division
National Library of Australia
The Libraries Australia Advisory Committee provides advice on strategic and policy issues affecting the delivery of the Libraries Australia service, the broad direction of service development and changes occurring in the library community that are likely to affect services.
Professor John Hay AC, FAHA
National Library of Australia Council
Professor Graeme Clarke AO, FAHA
Australian Academy of the Humanities
Dr Patricia Clarke OAM, FAHA
Australian Society of Authors
Ms Anne-Marie Schwirtlich
National Library of Australia
Emeritus Professor Rod Home AM, FAHA
Australian Academy of Science
Professor Julie Marcus
Independent Scholars Association of Australia
Professor Pat Jalland FASSA
Australian Academy of the Social Sciences
Professor Joyce Kirk
Australian Library and Information Association
Australian Collections and Reader Services Division
National Library of Australia
The Fellowships Advisory Committee’s terms of reference are to make recommendations to the Council on the award and administration of fellowships and scholarships.
Ms Jasmine Cameron
National Library of Australia
Ms Kim Brunoro
Department of Regional Australia, Local Government, Arts and Sport
Ms Helen Walker
National Archives of Australia
Ms Helen Kon
National Museum of Australia
Ms Meg Labrum
National Film and Sound Archive
Ms Dianne Dahlitz
National Library of Australia
Ms Rosemary Turner
National Library of Australia
Executive and Public Programs Division
National Library of Australia
The Community Heritage Grants Steering Committee provides advice and direction on matters associated with the Community Heritage Grants program, including policy and administration. It also facilitates the exchange of information about the program between the Library and funding partners.
Information about the Library’s functions, objectives, policies and activities can be found in the documents listed below. Most policy documents are available on the Library’s website.
Commonwealth Authorities and Companies
Act 1997
National Library Act 1960
National Library Regulations (1994)
Portfolio Budget Statement
Public Service Act 1999
Balanced Scorecard
Building Long Term Strategic Management
Plan (2009)
Business Continuity Framework (2012)
IT Strategic Plan (2012–15)
Risk Management Register (2011)
Social Media Policy (2010–12)
Strategic Directions 2012–14
Strategic Workforce Plan (2012–14)
Collection Development Policy (2008)
Cataloguing Authority Control Policy (2011)
Cataloguing Policy (2011)
Acceptable Use of Information and Communications Technology Policy (2011)
Collection Digitisation Policy (2009)
Collection Disaster Plan (2012)
Digital Preservation Policy (2012)
Policy on Participation in Cooperative Microfilming Projects with Other
Institutions (2010)
Policy on Preservation Copying of Collection Materials (2007)
Preservation Policy (2009)
Policy on Handling Complaints and Other User Feedback (2011)
Service Charter (2011)
Code of Conduct for Readers and Visitors (2011)
Information and Research Services Policy (2011)
Disability Framework (2011)
Enterprise Agreement (2011–14)
Environmental Management System (2011)
Fraud Control Plan (2012–13)
Protective Security Policy and Procedures (2006)
User Charging Policy (2011)
Events Policy (2011)
Exhibitions Loans Policy (2011)
Exhibitions Policy (2011)
Learning Policy (2011)
Policy on Sponsorship and Fundraising (2006)
Publications Policy (2012)
Volunteer Program Policy (2010)
The following table shows new consultancy services with an individual value of $10,000 or more that were let in 2011–12, the nature of the consultancy, its value or estimated value, the selection process and justification of the decision to use the consultancy.
Consultant | Purpose | Contract price ($)* | Selection process | Justification (see above note) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
AdminIntelligence Pty Ltd | Review human resource system configuration and provide advice on and develop enhancements to existing processes | $11,000 | Direct sourcing | B |
Ashurst (formerly Blake Dawson) | General legal advice | $44,383 | Open tender | B |
Bendelta Pty Ltd | Assist in the development of the Strategic Workforce Plan (2012–14) | $32,115 | Direct sourcing | A&B |
Clayton Utz | General legal advice | $99,925 | Open tender | B |
Cunningham Martyn Design Pty Ltd | Design services for Foyer, amenities, cloak room and | $156,860 | Direct sourcing | B |
Dimension Data Aust Pty Ltd | IT Data Centre energy assessment | $16,056 | Direct sourcing | B |
GHD Pty Ltd | Assessment of the marble facade of the main building | $21,912 | Open tender | B |
Interiors Australia | Fitout design services for the Level 1 office space | $64,350 | Open tender | B |
Jakeman Business Solutions Pty Ltd | Review of the Library’s Protective Security Policy | $21,340 | Direct sourcing | B |
Jillian Adams | Development of post–Forgotten Australians project | $10,000 | Direct sourcing | A&B |
John Raineri and Associates | Review of lighting in the main building | $97,000 | Select tender | B |
Leo Monus | Development of software for Android mobile | $22,000 | Direct sourcing | B |
Norman Disney and Young | Mechanical investigation of chiller plant | $10,000 | Open tender | B |
Oxide Interactive Pty Ltd | Tailoring of a customer relationship management system | $12,298 | Direct sourcing | B |
Paul Tilse Architects | Architectural services for new storage area | $13,866 | Direct sourcing | B |
Risk and Continuity Management Pty Ltd | Review of the Library’s Business Continuity Plan | $18,634 | Select tender | B |
Steven McPhillips | Analyse and develop aspects of Voyager and ILMS | $51,650 | Direct sourcing | A&B |
Teaspoon Consulting Pty Ltd | Analyse and develop aspects of Voyager and ILMS | $48,950 | Direct sourcing | A&B |
Terri Janke and Co. | Legal advice on copyright, licensing and Indigenous | $21,233 | Direct sourcing | B |
ValueEdge Consulting Pty Ltd | Undertake a value review of two management units | $35,905 | Direct sourcing | B |
Total |
| $809,477 |
|
|
The following justifications are the rationales for the decisions to undertake consultancies:
A-—skills currently unavailable within organisation
B-—need for specialised or professional skills
C-—need for independent research or assessment.
*Values are GST inclusive
With the exception of the Director-General, all Library staff are employed under the Public Service Act 1999. Conditions of employment for staff below the Senior Executive Service (SES) level are contained in the Library’s Enterprise Agreement 2011–14. Some staff received enhanced benefits through an Individual Flexibility Arrangement. At 30 June 2012, the Library had 398 full-time and part-time ongoing staff, 66 full-time and part-time non-ongoing staff and 24 casual staff. Refer to Table F.1 for more details.The average full-time equivalent staffing level for 2011–12 was 429, compared to 438 in 2010–11.
| Division | Ongoing | Non-ongoing | Total 2011–12 | Total 2010–11 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full time | Part time | Full time | Part time | Casual | |||
| Collections Management | 128 | 27 | 5 | 8 | 13 | 181 | 172 |
| Australian Collections and Reader Services | 79 | 21 | 12 | 16 | 7 | 135 | 122 |
| Resource Sharing | 27 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 29 | 33 |
| Information Technology | 35 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 45 | 42 |
| Executive and Public Programs | 33 | 11 | 9 | 3 | 1 | 57 | 52 |
| Corporate Services | 28 | 3 | 6 | 2 | 2 | 41 | 40 |
| Total | 330 | 68 | 36 | 30 | 24 | 488 | 461 |
| Classification | Ongoing | Non-ongoing | Total 2011–12 | Total 2010–11 | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full time | Part time | Full time | Part time | Casual | ||||||||||
| M | F | M | F | M | F | M | F | M | F | M | F | M | F | |
| Statutory office holder | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| SES Band 1 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 4 |
| EL 2 | 11 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 15 | 13 | 14 |
| EL 1 | 30 | 29 | 3 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 34 | 36 | 33 | 39 |
| APS 6 | 17 | 42 | 1 | 17 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 20 | 65 | 19 | 57 |
| APS 5 | 17 | 36 | 1 | 14 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 0 | 1 | 23 | 58 | 20 | 51 |
| APS 4 | 17 | 49 | 0 | 12 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 19 | 70 | 17 | 63 |
| Graduate | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| APS 3 | 13 | 38 | 0 | 9 | 0 | 9 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 15 | 60 | 16 | 57 |
| APS 2 | 1 | 7 | 0 | 6 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 10 | 7 | 9 | 16 | 37 | 12 | 40 |
| APS 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Cadet | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 108 | 222 | 5 | 63 | 9 | 27 | 7 | 23 | 11 | 13 | 140 | 348 | 133 | 328 |
| Grand total | 330 | 68 | 36 | 30 | 24 | 488 | 461 | |||||||
Note: Table is based on paid employees. Employees on long-term leave for more than 12 weeks are not included.
Dr Marie-Louise Ayres was promoted to Assistant Director-General, Resource Sharing, on 29 August 2011.
Dr Warwick Cathro, Assistant Director-General, Resource Sharing and Innovation, retired 15 March 2012. Dr Cathro had been on extended leave since 14 June 2011.
| Classification | Male | Female | Total | Indigenous peoples | People with disabilities | Culturally and linguistically diverse background |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Statutory office holder | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| SES Band 1 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| EL 2 | 11 | 15 | 26 | 0 | 1 | 4 |
| EL 1 | 34 | 36 | 70 | 0 | 3 | 11 |
| APS 6 | 20 | 65 | 85 | 0 | 4 | 14 |
| APS 5 | 23 | 58 | 81 | 2 | 0 | 18 |
| APS 4 | 19 | 70 | 89 | 0 | 4 | 25 |
| Graduate | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| APS 3 | 15 | 60 | 75 | 1 | 6 | 25 |
| APS 2 | 16 | 37 | 53 | 0 | 0 | 17 |
| APS 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Cadet | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 140 | 348 | 488 | 5 | 19 | 115 |
Note: Data for equal employment opportunity groups are based on information supplied voluntarily by staff.
The Library develops an annual Staff Training Plan.
The plan is developed through consultation with all areas of the Library and includes priorities identified through the Library’s Strategic Workforce Plan, division business plans and the individual performance development plans of staff.
Staff undertook development opportunities via internal and external programs, including seminars, workshops and on-the-job training and placements. Training opportunities covered Library technical skills, such as cataloguing, digital publications and preservation, as well as capability development in oral communication and management skills, procurement, writing and strategic planning. Diversity training was also undertaken, including disability confidence and Indigenous cultural awareness training.
The Library continues to use an e-learning induction activity for new staff and developed a new online module in 2011–12 to assist staff in understanding the Library’s work health and safety (WHS) environment. The online induction modules complement the Library’s face-to-face induction sessions and strengthen important messages about the Library’s workplace and APS Values.
In 2011–12, there was a strong focus on WHS training for staff and managers. The training covered the new framework, the responsibilities of all stakeholders and how they relate to the workplace. Health and wellbeing activities focused on psychological health and how to build personal resilience. Designated staff updated or received certification to be officers in first aid, WHS and workplace harassment.
The total training and development expenditure, excluding staff time, was $389,415. The number of training days undertaken by staff is set out in Table F.4.
| Classification | Male | Female | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| SES | 15 | 14 | 29 |
| EL 1–2 | 161 | 208 | 369 |
| APS 5–6 | 143 | 317 | 460 |
| APS 1–4 | 80 | 424 | 504 |
| Total | 399 | 963 | 1,362 |
Ms Robyn Archer AO
Professor David Armstrong AO
Ms Elizabeth Bates
Ms Jane Campion
Mrs Julie Carver
Dr Patricia Clarke OAM
Lady Anna Cowen
The family of Sir James and Lady Margaret Darling
Ms Merrell Davis OAM
Professor Niki Ellis
Dr Andrew Ford
Sir James Gobbo AC
Professor Alexander Grishin
Dr Jamie Kassler
Dr Michael Kassler
Mr Lou Klepac OAM
Dr Phillip Law AC
Mr Roger McDonald
Mr Ian Mason
Ms Penelope Mlakar
Mr Alan Moir
Mr George Ogilvie AM
Ms Jacqueline Pascarl
Mr Geoffrey Pryor
Ms Diane Romney
Ms Jane Sullivan
Mr Gareth Thomas
Ms Josephine Wittenburg
Department of Regional Australia, Local Government, Arts and Sport Office for the Arts
National Archives of Australia
National Cultural Heritage Account
National Film and Sound Archive
National Museum of Australia
Australian Capital Tourism (Handwritten: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Treasures from Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin)
The Brassey of Canberra
Dataflex (Handwritten: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Treasures from Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin)
Etihad Airways (Handwritten: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Treasures from Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin)
Faber-Castell (Australia) Pty Ltd (Handwritten: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Treasures from Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin)
Forrest Hotel and Apartments
Leighton Holdings Limited (Handwritten: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Treasures from Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin)
McCormick Foods Australia (Treasures Gallery)
The Estate of Dr H.C. Coombs
The Estate of Mr John Anthony (Tony) Gilbert
The Estate of Mr Harold S. Williams
Support a Book Program
Dr Diana Carroll
Friends of the National Library of Australia (Friends of the National Library Travelling Fellowship)
Mrs Pat McCann (Norman McCann Summer Scholarship)
Mrs Alison Sanchez (Kenneth Binns Travelling Fellowship)
Dr John Seymour and Dr Heather Seymour AO (Seymour Summer Scholarship)
Australian Capital Tourism (ENLIGHTEN)
Mr John B. Fairfax AO (The Canberra Times digitisation)
Friends of the National Library of Australia (The Canberra Times digitisation)
Dr Stephen Holt (The Canberra Times digitisation)
Mr Kevin McCann AM (Mapping Our World: Terra Incognita to Australia)
Origin Foundation (Mapping Our World: Terra Incognita to Australia)
Questacon (The Canberra Times digitisation)
Mrs Alison Sanchez (Kenneth Binns Lecture)
Mr Stephen Yorke (The Canberra Times digitisation)
The National Library of Australia Fund, launched in 2009, helps the Library to manage, describe, preserve, digitise and deliver our documentary heritage collections to the widest possible audience, both online and from the main building.
National Library of Australia Fund donors are acknowledged at the following gift levels:
The Library gratefully acknowledges the generosity and support of patrons and donors.
Listed below are patrons who have given to the fund since its inception in 2009 and donors who have given during 2011–12.
Dr Ron Houghton DFC and Mrs Nanette Houghton
One supporter has donated anonymously at this level
Associate Professor Noel Dan AM and Mrs Adrienne Dan
Ms Jane Hemstritch
One supporter has donated anonymously at this level.
Dr Marion Amies
Arkajon Communications Pty Ltd
Mr Sam Bartone
Mrs Jennifer Batrouney SC
Mrs Phoebe Bischoff OAM
Mrs Josephine Calaby
Emeritus Professor David Carment AM
Dr Patricia Clarke OAM
Mr Victor Crittenden OAM
Ms Lauraine Diggins
The Lady Ebury
Dr Suzanne Falkiner
Mr Andrew Freeman
Ms Jan Fullerton AO
Ms Christina Goode PSM
Mrs Claudia Hyles
Ms Anna Katzmann
Dr Terry Kirk and Professor Joyce Kirk
Ms Marjorie Lindenmayer
Dr Jan Lyall PSM
Ms Janet Manuell SC
Mrs Vacharin McFadden
Mr Peter McGovern AM
Capt. Paul J. McKay
Ms Fiona McLeod SC
Dr Kenneth Moss AM and Mrs Glennis Moss
Ms Jane Needham SC
Mr John Oliver and Mrs Libby Oliver
Dr Melissa A. Perry QC
Mrs Pamela Pickering
Professor Alan Robson AM
Miss Kay Rodda
Professor Michael Roe
Ms Chris Ronalds AM, SC
Mrs Margaret S. Ross AM
Rotru Investments Pty Ltd for Mrs Eve Mahlab AO
Ms Anne-Marie Schwirtlich and Mr Stephen Yorke
The Reverend Garth Shaw
Mr William Thorn and Mrs Angela Thorn
Mr John Ulm and Mrs Valda Ulm
Mr Gerald Walsh MA
Ms Lucille Warth
Ms Laura Wells
Mrs Joy Wheatley
Mr A.G.D White OAM
Dr Michael W. Young
Five supporters have donated anonymously at this level
Alexandra Club, Melbourne
Mr Kim Allen
Mrs Patricia Allen
Mrs Margaret Astbury
Ms Virginia Berger
Ms Baiba Berzins
Mr Udai N. Bhati
Mr Richard Blavins
Ms Emily Booker
Mr John Brook
Ms Allison Brouwer
Mr William Brown
Mr David Burke OAM
Associate Professor John Carmody
Ms Jennifer Carrington
Ms Marianne Cavanagh
Mr John Chapman
Mr Joseph Clarke
Dr Diana Wood Conroy
Mrs Mary Crean
Mr B.R. Crisp
Mr Edward Crook
Ms Debra Cunningham
Ms Merl Cuzens
Mr J.W. de B. Persse
Dr Bronwen Douglas
The Hon. Robert J. Ellicott QC
Dr Neville Exon
Mrs Helen Ferber
Mr Dennis Forte
Ms Saw Gaik Khong
Ms Milena Gates
Mrs Elizabeth Gilchrist
Ms Sylvia Glanville
Mr Harry Gordon CMG, AM
Dr Tom Griffiths
Mrs Sarah Guest
Justice Roger V. Gyles AO
Mrs Isobel E. Hamilton
Professor Margaret Harris
Mr Brian Hickey
Ms Sara Hood
Mrs Jill Hutson
Mr Paul Jones
Ms Joan Kennedy
Mr Peter Kennedy
Mr David Kennemore
Dr James S. Kerr AM
Dr Ruth Kerr OAM
Mr Gordon Kerry
Professor Wallace Kirsop
Ms Bron Kolano
Mr Geoff Ledger DSC
Ms Elizabeth MacDonald
Mrs Svetlana Manns
Mr Robert B. Mark JP
Mrs Margaret J Mashford
Emeritus Professor Isabel McBryde AO
Dr Ken McCracken
Dr Donald F. McMichael AM
Dr Stephen McNamara
Mr Rob Milliken
Mrs Mary Mitchell
Ms Marion Newman
Mr Robert K. O’Connor QC
Mr F K Overheu and Mrs Helen Overheu
Mrs Elaine Pearson
Ms M.E. Phillips
Mrs Cathy Pilgrim and Mr Steven Anderson
Mrs Winsome Plumb
Dr Peter Pockley
Mr Bryce Ponsford
Mr Chester Porter QC
Ms Gillian Pratt
Mrs Dorothy Prescott OAM and Mr Victor Prescott
Professor Emeritus Wilfrid Prest
Mrs Anne S. Prins
Dr Peter J. Puszet
Mr John Quaid
Emeritus Professor John Ramsland OAM
Mrs Elizabeth Richardson OAM
Ms Katherine R. Rivett
Mr William Rutledge and Mrs Julia Rutledge
Mrs Florine Simon
Mrs Aileen Sproule
Mr Peter Spyropoulos and Mrs Maria Spyropoulos
Mrs Helene Stead
Dr Jennifer Strauss AM
Mr Charles Stuart and Mrs Gay Stuart
Mrs Rhonda Thiele
Mrs Doris Thompson
Mr Sam Ure-Smith OAM
Mrs Sheila Waters
Ms Margaret Watts
Mr Kerry Webb and Mrs Judith Webb
Ms Mary-Louise Weight
Dr Auriol Weigold
Mr Doug Wickens
The Reverend Dr Robert S.M. Withycombe
Ms Helen White
Miss Helen Woodger
Twenty-two supporters have donated anonymously at this level
The generosity and support of many individuals and organisations has made possible a new permanent exhibition space within the Library. The Treasures Gallery, which opened in October 2011, showcases selections from the Library’s significant, rare and often surprising collections. Early maps and atlases, books, manuscripts, paintings, drawings, photographs and objects all feature in the Treasures Gallery—from James Cook’s Endeavour journal to William Bligh’s list of mutineers, from Patrick White’s glasses to an original manuscript for Waltzing Matilda. Since opening, the Treasures Gallery has quickly become an important part of Australia’s cultural life.
Treasures Gallery Partners are acknowledged at the following gift levels:
The individuals and organisations listed below have collectively contributed more than $3 million to the Treasures Gallery Appeal since it commenced in 2001. Many other individual supporters also contributed generously through the Exhibitions Donation Box. The Library gratefully acknowledges and appreciates their generosity and vision. With the opening of the Treasures Gallery in 2011, this appeal is now closed.
The Ian Potter Foundation
AAMI Limited
John T. Reid Charitable Trusts
Sidney Myer Fund
ActewAGL*
Dr James Bettison and Ms Helen James
Professor Henry Ergas
Harold Mitchell Foundation
Macquarie Group Foundation
Mr Kevin McCann AM
Thyne Reid Foundation
Friends of the National Library of Australia
Mr James Bain AM and Mrs Janette Bain
Mr Victor Crittenden OAM
Mr James O. Fairfax AC
F. and J. Ryan Foundation
Mr Philip Flood AO and Mrs Carole Flood
GHD Pty Ltd*
Dr Kenneth Moss AM and Mrs Glennis Moss
Jade Treasures Gallery Partners
Ms Cynthia Anderson
Dr Desmond Bright and Dr Ruth Bright AM
Mr Michael Heard and Mrs Mary Heard
Mr Robert Hill-Ling AO and Mrs Rosemary Hill-Ling OAM
Mrs Claudia Hyles
Mr Baillieu Myer AC and Mrs Sarah Myer
Miss Kay Rodda
Mrs Mary Louise Simpson
Mr John Uhrig AC and Mrs Shirley Uhrig
One supporter donated anonymously at this level
Mr Karl Alderson
Dr Marion Amies
Ms Nolene Baker
Mr Shane Baker and Ms Linda Pearson
Ms Lucy Bantermalis
Mr and Mrs R.N. Barnett
Dr Pamela Bell OAM
Mrs Jessie Bennett
Mrs Maree Bentley and Mr Geoffrey Bentley
Ms Wendy Bertony
Ms Baiba Berzins
Mr Udai N. Bhati
Mrs Phoebe Bischoff OAM
Mrs Rita M. Bishop
Ashurst (formerly Blake Dawson Waldron)
Mr Kevin J. Blank
Mr Warwick Bradney
Mrs Mary Brennan
Sir Ron Brierley
Mr John H. Brook
Ms Megan Brown
Dr Robert Brown
Dr Thomas Brown AM
Dr Geoffrey A. Burkhardt
Ms Sheila Byard
Mr Graeme Camage and Mrs Elaine Camage
Mr Clyde Cameron AO
Mrs Jennie Cameron
Dr John J. Carmody
Ms Jennifer Carrington
Dr Diana Carroll
Dr Patricia Clarke OAM, FAHA
Mr G. Colson
Dr Veronica Condon
Ms Barbara Connell
Dr Russell Cope PSM
Professor James Cotton
CRA International
Mr Brian R. Crisp
Ms Debra Cunningham
Mr Brian Davidson
Dr Mary Dickenson
Mr Norman Dickins
Ms Rita Dodson
Ms Naomi Doessel
Ms Chris Dormer
Ms Melanie Drake
Mr Ian Dudgeon and Mrs Kay Stoquart
Mr Peter Duffy
Ms Jeanette Dunkley
Ms Kristen Durran
Ms Ennis Easton
Mr Greg Ellway
Mrs Pauline Fanning ISO, MBE
Professor Frank Fenner AC, CMG, MBE
Mrs Shirley Fisher
Mr Anthony Francombe and Mrs Roma Francombe
Dr Donald Gibson
Mr Ross Gibson and Mrs Rellie Gibson
Ms Margot Girle
Ms Sylvia Glanville
Ms Erica Gray
Ms Sue Gray
Mr Jacob Grossbard
Ms K.E. Halfpenny
Mr and Mrs Warren Harding
Mr John Hawkins and Mrs Robyn Hawkins
Ms Marion Hicks
Ms Tracey Hind
Mrs Janet Holmes à Court AO
Dr Stephen Holt
Mrs J.M. Hooper
Mr Neville Horne and Mrs Noreen Horne
Dr Ron Houghton DFC and Mrs Nanette Houghton
Dr Anthea Hyslop
In memory of Mr Reginald Fox and Mrs Phyllis Fox
In memory of Mr Noel Potter
Mr Ashton Johnston
Ms Ruth S. Kerr
Ms A.J. Kitchin
Ms Kaye Lawrence
Mr Paul Legge-Wilkinson and Mrs Beryl Legge-Wilkinson
Mr Andrew Ligertwood and Mrs Virginia Ligertwood
Ms Nina Loder
Ms Louise Luscombe
Mr Donald McDonald AC and Mrs Janet McDonald AO
Dr Rosemary McKenna
Mr G. Meldrum
Mrs Denyse Merchant
Mrs Eveline K. Milne
Mrs Mary Mitchell
Ms G. Morrison
Mr Claude Neumann
Ms Michelle Nichols
Ms Margaret Nixon
Mr John Oliver and Mrs Libby Oliver
Mrs Janette Owen
Mr Angus Paltridge and Mrs Gwen Paltridge
Ms Penny Pardoe-Matthews
Mr J.W. de B. Persse
Lady Joyce Price
Qantas Airways Limited
The Hon. Margaret Reid AO
Mr Chris Richardson and Mrs Cathy Richardson
Mrs Elizabeth Richardson OAM
Mr Jack Ritch and Mrs Diana Ritch
Ms Colleen Rivers
Mrs Patricia Roberts
Mrs Pamela Robinson
Professor Alan Robson AM
Mr Alan Rose AO and Mrs Helen Rose
Ms Jane Sandilands
Ms Jude Savage
Mr Graham Scully
Mrs Florine Simon
Ms Jill Smith
Mrs Jane Smyth
Mr Gavin Souter AO and Mrs Ngaire Souter
Mr David Sparrow
Mr Peter Spyropoulos
Mrs Elinor Swan
Mr Jack Taylor and Mrs Jess Taylor
Mr K. Temperley
Mrs Dossie Thompson
Mr Bill Thorn and Mrs Angela Thorn
Mrs Helen Todd
Mr Anthony Triado
Mrs Geraldine Triffitt
Ms Lisa Turner
Mr J. Visione
Mr Brian Wall and Mrs Margaret Wall
Dr John O. Ward
Ms Kylie Waring and Mr Tim Dyke
Ms Lucille Warth
Mr Sam Weiss and Mrs Judy Weiss
Ms Eve White
Mr Richard White
Professor Robin Woods AM
Words Discussion Group
Four supporters donated anonymously at this level
* Indicates contributors who supplied goods and/or services
Individuals and organisations who contribute to the Treasures Gallery Support Fund help the Library to put Australians in touch with Australia’s greatest treasures and the story of our nation’s journey. The fund enables the Library to produce imaginative access programs, provide opportunities for exploring the Treasures Gallery online and respond to inquiring young minds by developing education initiatives based on the gallery.
In 2011–12, the following people generously assisted the Library to achieve these goals:
Dr Marion Amies
Mr Udai N. Bhati
Dr Desmond Bright and Dr Ruth Bright AM
Mr Robert Hill-Ling AO and Mrs Rosemary Hill-Ling OAM
Mrs J.M. Hooper
Ms Katherine Hunter
Dr Ruth S. Kerr OAM
Mrs Pamela Robinson
Dr Maxine Rochester
Mr Alan Rose AO and Mrs Helen Rose
Mrs Nea Storey
Ms Mary-Louise Weight
One supporter donated anonymously to this fund.
In 2011–12, the Library continued an active program of acquiring Australian and overseas publications in print and digital form.
In April 2012, the second bulk harvest of Australian Government websites, conducted under whole-of-government information and communication technology arrangements to collect
freely available government web content, was completed. The harvest collected approximately 800 website domains, which will be accessible through PANDORA: Australia’s Web Archive.
A collaborative project with PANDORA partners commenced to develop collections of websites relating to Australia’s early twenty first century resources boom and to the Murray–Darling Basin. This ongoing project aims to represent the political, social, economic and cultural issues associated with the collecting themes and will be accessible to researchers as curated collections via PANDORA.
A copy of Australian Folk Songs and Bush Ballads Enhanced E-book PART ONE was purchased to assist with understanding the issues associated with collecting and providing access to complex e-publications. The publication includes video content and comes in a number of different versions, each presenting different issues on how to manage ongoing access.
A number of interesting older and rare publications were acquired during the year, in addition to contemporary overseas publications and mainstream Australian publications acquired under legal deposit provisions. Highlights included:
The Library continued to provide online access to key historical resources, including:
Acquisitions for the Manuscripts Collection included:
Highlights of the acquisitions for the Pictures Collection included:
Many notable Australians were interviewed for the Oral History Collection, including entertainer Julie Anthony, climate scientist Barrie Pittock, politicians Carmen Lawrence, Amanda Vanstone and Bob Hawke, Paralympian swimmer Anne Brunell, adventurer and explorer Colin Putt, 1967 Referendum activist Uncle Ray Peckham and Chief Justice Murray Gleeson.
Australian Generations, a four-year oral history project funded by the Australian Research Council, documented attitudes in Australian society and extended the Library’s partnering and data-sharing capabilities. A new project was commissioned to elicit opinions and views of people affected by coal seam gas mining.
Noteworthy acquisitions for the Maps Collection included:
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Balanced Scorecard | A strategic management tool |
| gigabyte | 1,000 megabytes of data storage capacity |
| Libraries Australia | A service providing information about items held by Australian libraries, used by Australian libraries for automated cataloguing and inter-lending; see librariesaustralia.nla.gov.au |
| logarithmic scaling | A scale of measurement in which equal distances on the scale represent equal ratios of increase (for example, with logarithmic scale to the base of 10, the numbers 10, 100 and 1,000 are shown separately by equal distances on the graph) |
| outcomes | The results, impacts or consequences of actions by the Australian Government on the Australian community |
| PANDORA: Australia’s Web Archive | A web archive established by the Library in 1996; see pandora. nla.gov.au |
| performance | The proficiency of an agency or authority in acquiring resources economically and using those resources efficiently and effectively in achieving planned outcomes |
| performance targets | Quantifiable performance levels or changes in level to be attained by a specific date |
| petabyte | 1,000 terabytes |
| quality | Relates to the characteristics by which customers or stakeholders judge an organisation, product or service |
| reference service | Services provided by the Library that assist users to understand and navigate the information environment to pursue independent self-directed research |
| Reimagining Libraries | An initiative of National and State Libraries Australasia, in which the Library is working with the state and territory libraries and the National Library of New Zealand to transform its library services to better meet user needs in the digital age |
| terabyte | 1,000 gigabytes of data storage capacity |
| Trove | A national discovery service implemented by the Library in November 2009, providing a single point of access to a wide range of traditional and digital content from Australian collections and global information sources |
| Abbreviation | Term |
|---|---|
| AASB | Australian Accounting Standards Board |
| ANBD | Australian National Bibliographic Database |
| API | application programming interface |
| APS | Australian Public Service |
| CAC Act | Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997 |
| CSS | Commonwealth Superannuation Scheme |
| CDNL | Conference of Directors of National Libraries |
| CMG | Corporate Management Group |
| DLIR | Digital Library Infrastructure Replacement |
| EA | Enterprise Agreement |
| EAP | Environmental Action Plan |
| ERA | Electronic Resources Australia |
| FBT | fringe benefits tax |
| FMOs | Finance Minister’s Orders |
| FOI Act | Freedom of Information Act 1982 |
| GST | goods and services tax |
| IFLA | International Federation of Library Associations |
| ILMS | Integrated Library Management System |
| IPS | Information Publication Scheme |
| IT | information technology |
| NLA | National Library of Australia |
| NSLA | National and State Libraries Australasia |
| ONIX | Online Information eXchange |
| PSS | Public Sector Superannuation Scheme |
| PSSap | PSS accumulation plan |
| RDA | Resource Description and Access |
| SES | senior executive staff |
| WHS | work health and safety |
This report complies with the Commonwealth Authorities (Annual Reporting) Orders 2011 issued by the Minister for Finance and Deregulation on 22 September 2011.
| Requirement | Page |
|---|---|
| Enabling legislation | 19 |
| Responsible Minister | 19 |
| Ministerial directions | 26 |
Other statutory requirements:
| 31 41 36–38 |
| Information about directors | 125–127 |
| Organisational structure | 20 |
| Statement on governance | 21–24 |
| Key activities and changes affecting the authority | 5–9 |
| Judicial decisions and reviews by outside bodies | 26 |
| Indemnities and insurance premiums for officers | 27 |
While not required of statutory authorities, this report also selectively complies with the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet’s Requirements for Annual Reports approved on 28 June 2012 by the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit under subsections 63(2) and 70(2) of the Public Service Act 1999.
| Requirement | Page |
|---|---|
| Asset management | 39–40 |
| Commonwealth Fraud Control Guidelines | 34 |
| Consultants | 31, 134–135 |
| Financial statements | 72–120 |
| Freedom of information | 26–27 |
| Grant programs | 42–43 |
| Purchasing | 42 |
| WHS | 36–38 |