National Library of Australia


The Australian National Bibliographic Database

Through the efforts of the Australian library community, the Australian National Bibliographic Database (or ANBD) has been compiled since 1981 and hosted by the National Library of Australia. This national union catalogue records the collections of over 850 Australian libraries and is accessible via the Libraries Australia service (formerly known as Kinetica and ABN, or the Australian Bibliographic Network).

The ANBD consists of bibliographic records from several sources: national cataloguing agency records from Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, Vietnam and the United States; original cataloguing contributed online and offline by Australian libraries; retrospective catalogue files from Libraries Australia users; original cataloguing contributed to the New Zealand Bibliographic Network by its members; and projects undertaken by the union cataloguing agencies to add their files to the ANBD. These bibliographic records are supplemented by location information supplied by Australian libraries. It is these records which are the source of data for the union catalogues published by the National Library.

In addition to providing data for published union catalogues, online access to the ANBD plays a major part in Australian interlibrary loan activities. It is the most widely available online source of location information for interlibrary loan items, with over 1100 libraries contributing their holdings information to it, and over 1,500 libraries accessing it for information. In June 2005, the database contained information about the location of 40 million books, journal titles and other items held in Australian library collections.

Australian libraries can reveal the extent to which they contribute information about their collections to the ANBD from within their Australian Libraries Gateway (ALG) entries. Use the 'Advanced search' option to quickly discover those libraries who contribute to the ANBD or a summary of the percentage of collections recorded on the NBD from a national survey is available.

It is possible to use the ANBD to discover the existence of a particular item (through a search by subject, author or other terms) and to determine which libraries have holdings. The ANBD is searchable on a fee-for-service basis and can currently be searched through a library's Libraries Australia account. The National Library is investigating methods of providing access to academics, students and the general public through the Libraries Australia search interface.

By providing location information online about impending purchases, the ANBD assists libraries with their co-operative acquisition and cancellation programs. It is particularly valuable in the field of serials cancellation, where holdings can be checked to establish whether a potential cancellation is the last subscription in the region, state or country. Intention to cancel can also be notified on the ANBD.

NB* ALG also includes information about uncatalogued Australian library collections.

The Libraries Australia CJK Service provides the NBD with records for Chinese, Japanese and Korean script materials - books, journals and other library materials.

Last modified: November 23 2007.