Our Nation's Album: Link to home page
From the Bush to Beyond
Birth of a Library
Bush Capital Pioneers
A Great Public Library
Our Heritage Revealed
From the Bush to Beyond
Housing the Collection


A central issue for the Library over the past 100 years has been the geographical isolation of Canberra from much of Australia. The country’s vast distances have denied many Australians the opportunity of visiting the Library. In recent years, however, new developments in technology have seen the Library generate more and more national services, facilitating collaboration between libraries and cultural institutions and through this, providing the nation beyond Canberra with access to the Library’s collections. Over the past 30 years innovative technologies have advanced the Library's commitment to service the research needs of the nation.

National Library of Australia Catalogue/Bibliography Room 1970s

Producing catalogue cards for the National Library of Australia Catalogue c.1960s

enlarge imageMax Dupain (1911–1992)
National Library of Australia Catalogue/Bibliography Room 1970s
photograph
Pictorial Collection
enlarge image
Photographer, National Library of Australia
Producing catalogue cards for the National Library of Australia Catalogue c.1960s
Pictorial Collection

Computer-connected or online technologies have been used by the Library since the mid-1970s, when it first began looking at overseas models for an online cataloguing system. By 1981 the Library was ready to launch the Australian Bibliographical Network (ABN), an online system connecting libraries computerised catalogues around Australia to the newly formed National Bibliographic Database (NBD) set up at the National Library.

Fancom M200 computer installed in the Library in 1984 to support ABN operations
OPAC (Online Public Access Catalogue) terminals, Main Reading Room
enlarge imagePhotographer, National Library of Australia
Fancom M200 computer installed in the Library in 1984 to support ABN operations
Pictorial Collection
enlarge image

Photographer, National Library of Australia
OPAC (Online Public Access Catalogue) terminals, Main Reading Room
Pictorial Collection

For researchers and scholars the benefits from the creation of the ABN and NBD have been enormous. A shared bibliographic database, or ‘union catalogue’, has meant that people can access library holdings without travelling to the Library. Shared resources and fast and effective methods of communicating between libraries have also sped up the process of inter-library loans. By 1985, 90 Australian libraries were using the National Library's Australian Bibliographic Network to locate items from the National Bibliographic Database for inter-library loan. By 1999, over 1100 libraries were using the service. Later that year, however, the Australian Bibliographic Network was replaced by Kinetica, a more sophisticated and interactive system, that enables libraries to contribute their own cataloguing details through Kinetica to the National Bibliographic Database.

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