About us

Libraries Australia is a resource sharing service hosted by the National Library of Australia for Australian libraries and their users. It is used for reference, collection development, cataloguing and interlibrary lending. The heart of Libraries Australia is the Australian National Bibliographic Database (ANBD), which records the location details of over 42 million items held in most Australian academic, research, national, state, public and special libraries.

The Libraries Australia service replaces earlier systems and the Australian Bibliographic Network (ABN) - which was created in 1981 to foster resource sharing by Australian libraries.

Libraries have a proud history of working together in order to share resources and information as a way to serve their users. Libraries Australia helps libraries to be more efficient in a number of ways, including:

Libraries Australia is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Contact the Help Desk for assistance.

Libraries Australia is a subscription based service. For information see our charging schedule.

Accredited Training Service Providers schedule training on Libraries Australia services in most capital cities and some regional centres. Libraries Australia also produces manuals and guides and online help to assist people to use its services.

State User Groups

Libraries Australia State User Groups (SUGs) are held at regular intervals around the country and are attended by users of Libraries Australia services. These meetings provide a forum to discuss workflows and issues, including those which relate to Libraries Australia services and other issues which impact the library community. SUGs are active in all states and territories.

Browser Compatibility

Libraries Australia operates most efficiently with Netscape 6, Safari, Firefox 1.0 or higher and Internet Explorer 6 or higher on the Windows operating system for PCs.

Libraries Australia does not function on Netscape 7.0 and Internet Explorer 5.2 or earlier for the Mac computer.


Page last updated: 10 November 2009