What we collect
Electronic resources
See also: Find electronic resources | Using the collection
As part of its national documentary heritage role the Library collects a selection of Australian online electronic publications.
For Australian online publications the Library is cooperating with State libraries and other collecting bodies to develop a distributed national collection of electronic publications. This collection will be cooperatively maintained, and reflect the wide range of digital publishing in Australia and the diversity of Australian cultural, intellectual and creative life. A cooperative approach is necessary because of the volume of online publishing and the high costs involved in electronic resource discovery, maintenance and long-term preservation.
An online document is considered published by the Library if, as far as can be judged, it has been put up on the Internet to be made widely available to the public, and this is its primary purpose. Such publications may be available free of charge or at a cost. Documents that are created for internal use in the course of the business of an agency or organisation are considered to be organisational records and beyond the scope of selection. Items such as personal email messages and closed discussion lists are excluded from selection. At present the Library is not selecting online publications where there is an exact print equivalent.
The quality of Internet publishing is variable, and for many titles there is none of the quality control provided by editors and publishers in the traditional print publishing model. As a consequence, a much wider range of material is appearing on the Internet than ever appeared in print. The Library aims for a representative collection of online publishing. In the context of online publications, collecting means the ability of the Library to gather online publications from the Internet using gathering software and the placement of those online publications in the Librarys PANDORA archive.
The Library collects online Commonwealth government publications for which it has a primary role and responsibility. Important and significant online State government publications may also be selected. Other online resources are selected if they are about Australia or are on a subject of social, political, cultural, scientific or economic significance and relevance to Australia and written by an Australian author. Factors such as informational content, research value, topicality or interest as an innovative or outstanding example of its type, are factors in the selection process. Sampling is used to collect many other types of online publication such as personal home pages, promotional sites, advertising and vanity publishing. Drafts and works in progress are not selected. This decision to be selective does not preclude the taking of snapshots of the Australian Internet domain on a regular basis.
