Guidelines for Contributing Metadata to the National Library of Australia for Resource Discovery

Metadata : a national resource

These Guidelines are intended to provide assistance across a range of sectors. They are designed to help creators of Australian electronic resources in the government, academic and commercial sectors to share their metadata with the National Library of Australia for inclusion in the Australian National Bibliographic Database and other resource discovery services. Metadata is simply "data about data". It is the description of electronic resources. For example, a book contains information, but there is also information about that book such as the author and publisher - this is the metadata.

Australian publishers of information began to move to electronic and online media in the 1990's and this has accelerated in the new millennium. There is a rapidly growing trend towards online publishing, as shown by an increase of over 900% in records for online Australian government publications since 2000. Records added to the Australian National Bibliographic Database in 2003 for Australian government publications consisted of approximately 6000 new titles, of which almost 3000 were digital material.

Simply providing Internet access to a publication is not enough. There are many Internet search engines, some index some publications and others index others. It can be confusing to a searcher to know where to look and it can also be confusing to a publisher to know how to provide access. Even if a searcher knows which site to search, it is often hard to locate the appropriate publication, particularly if the site is large and complex.

An important responsibility of government is to provide the Australian people with information on government policy, business and activities. Government publications form part of the documentary heritage and intellectual capital of Australia. They have an enduring value and significance as a vital source of evidence of government activities and decisions and are an important source of corporate memory for the Government and the people. Government agencies are democratically and legally accountable for the information they publish on their Web sites. This accountability persists long after the currency of the online information expires.

The National Library's role is to: "provide rapid and easy access to the wealth of information resources that reside in libraries and other cultural institutions and to break down barriers that work against this" (Directions for 2003-2005, http://www.nla.gov.au/library/directions.html).

The Library's services providing access to online publications include:

The Australian National Bibliographic Database is the premier service providing access to information and contains over 12.8 million records. The purpose of including records describing Australian digital publications in the Australian National Bibliographic Database is to make them available to the public and the Australian library community. It will also facilitate the permanent archiving of the publications which may otherwise not survive long in the volatile environment of the Internet. Records for Australian online publications contributed to the ANBD will be forwarded to PANDORA and, with the publisher's permission, the publications themselves may be copied into the Archive for long-term preservation.

Including metadata for electronically published works will enable the public to use a single search point to find any publications of interest regardless of their published format. Additionally the online publication may be accessed directly through the hypertext link in the metadata record and the print publication can be requested by inter-library loan.

Metadata is a shareable national resource which enables direct access to publications across the national information infrastructure by its creation, use, storage and sharing. It is also important to contribute such metadata to union catalogues such as the Australian National Bibliographic Database for further distribution to other databases reaching far outside their originally limited realm of distribution. The real value of metadata lies in its distribution because this enables information about publications to be available at many different access points; the wider the distribution, the greater the value.
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What is a publication?

To enable greater access to your publications, data can be contributed to the National Library. However not all items to which Australian organisations attach metadata are publications.

According to Keeping government publications online: a guide for Commonwealth Agencies (2002) which can be found at http://www.nla.gov.au/guidelines/govpubs.pdf, a publication is information, regardless of its format, that is made available to the general public, or to an identified public, either free or for a fee.

Types of publications in-scope

This list has been prepared as a guide to the types of resources for which metadata could be contributed to the National Library:

This is not an exclusive list and your organisation may have other kinds of publications which it is important to describe and give access. This list is a guide and we understand that new categories of information formats not currently listed have been or will be developed. It is not our intention to limit the reporting of those other categories where an organisation views them as a relevant publication to report to the National Library.
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Contributing your metadata

Metadata presented in a standard way can be sent to or collected by the National Library through a regular automated process (harvester). Please contact us for further details of what is required to set up one of these processes.

Metadata workflow diagram

You send to us
Organisations may wish to send metadata to the National Library directly.

Online
Organisations whose libraries are members of the Libraries Australia Service can contribute metadata records online directly to the Australian National Bibliographic Database.

Batch load
These organisations may also choose to send their metadata files via Libraries Australia's LA Record Import Service service for batch loading to the Australian National Bibliographic Database.

We collect from you
Organisations may wish to make metadata on publications available for harvesting separately from their other more general metadata, either by a file stored on an Open Archives Initiative (OAI) ( http://www.openarchives.org ) server, or via a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server, or in the case of Government agencies by way of a specific Harvest Control List (HCL).

Any metadata records for publications that are not identified in the Agency's HCL or collected in their file will not be harvested by the National Library's harvester. Agencies are urged to ensure that all metadata records that have been created to describe their publications are listed in their HCL or collected in their file.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
The full metadata for all of an agency's publications may also be held as a file on an FTP server. The National Library can schedule the collection of nominated files from your FTP server.

Open Archives Initiative (OAI)
The full metadata for all of an agency's publications may also be held as a file on an OAI server. The National Library can schedule the incremental collection of data (i.e. just new or changed data) from your OAI server. The data can be in a number of formats, including Dublin Core, MODS (Metadata Object Description Schema), AGLS, MARCXML, and agencies can define specific groupings, or "sets" of data to be collected.

Harvest Control List (HCL)
This can be either an index of links to the publications that have complete AGLS metadata embedded within them or the index can contain the full AGLS metadata for each publication on the agency's website. The HCL must be written in XML. You can index your publications in a separate HCL to separate them out for collection by the National Library harvester. Generally the National Library would prefer you to use a sub-directory called 'meta/pubs/' within the home directory of the relevant site Instructions on the creation, location and naming of the HCL are located in the Commonwealth Implementation Manual: AGLS Metadata Version 1.1 which can be found at http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/gov_online/agls/cim/cim_manual.html.

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What is required in your metadata?

After agency files have been harvested by the National Library, they will be converted to an international standard format, common to the library and information sector. Any mandatory codes or fields required for loading the data will be added by the National Library to enrich your data and improve resource discovery.

Record standards
The National Library's minimum record standard for metadata records for Australian organisations' publications is the same as that set out in the Commonwealth Implementation Manual: AGLS Metadata Version 1.1 which can be found at http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/gov_online/agls/cim/cim_manual.html.

Details of metadata element content description and XML and HTTP 4.0 record structure can be found in: Guidelines for the Creation of Content for Resource Discovery Metadata / prepared by the National Library of Australia and the State Library of Tasmania (http://www.nla.gov.au/guidelines/metaguide.html ) This publication contains useful principles and examples of usage.

AGLS Metadata Element Set Part 2: Usage Guide (http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/gov_online/agls/metadata_element_set.html ) This publication contains many useful examples of usage.

Does my publication need an ISBN, ISSN or ISMN?
ISBNs, ISSNs or ISMNs should be used where applicable.

ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers) are issued for use on all monograph publications, regardless of their media format. ISBNs are distributed in Australia by Thorpe-Bowker at: http://www.thorpe.com.au/isbn.

ISSNs (International Standard Serial Numbers) are issued for use on continuing resources which are issued in a succession of discrete issues or parts with no predetermined conclusion. They may be issued in any medium. ISSNs are distributed in Australia by the Australian ISSN Agency at: http://www.nla.gov.au/services/issn.html.

ISMNs (International Standard Music Numbers) are distributed in Australia by the Australian International Standard Music Number Agency at: http://www.nla.gov.au/ismn.

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Ensuring continued access to your publication

Having your organisation's metadata for online publications in the Australian National Bibliographic Database and other resource discovery services is only useful insofar as the publications described by the metadata continue to be accessible.

How should I ensure that my publication remains accessible?
Your electronic publications might go out of print, or be removed from your website or have their access URL changed. For advice on providing long term access to up to date and accurate metadata records see the following publications:

Safeguarding Australia's Web Resources: Guidelines for Creators and Publishers (2002) which can be found at http://www.nla.gov.au/guidelines/webresources.html.

Keeping government publications online: a guide for Commonwealth Agencies (2002) which can be found at http://www.nla.gov.au/guidelines/govpubs.pdf.

Managing Web Resources for Persistent Access (2002) which can be found at http://www.nla.gov.au/guidelines/persistence.html .

How do I arrange for my publications to be archived?
Your publications may meet the selection guidelines for archiving in the PANDORA service. Titles suggested for archiving will be considered against PANDORA's selection guidelines before a decision to archive is made. The selection guidelines are located at http://pandora.nla.gov.au/selectionguidelines.html. Publications archived in PANDORA are preserved and will help to ensure that your publications remain available to all Australians into the future. Requests for archiving may be made via an online registration form located at http://pandora.nla.gov.au/registration_form.html.

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How we provide access to online publications

Sharing your metadata will enable your publications to be found through the following services, and accessed via the hypertext link in the metadata record.

Libraries Australia screen shot Libraries Australia (http://librariesaustralia.nla.gov.au)
accesses records in the Australian National Bibliographic Database and other associated databases. Searchers can specifically target online Australian Government publications.
 
NLA catalogue screen shot Local Australian library catalogues
including the National Library catalogue (http://catalogue.nla.gov.au). Records are downloaded from the Australian National Bibliographic Database making those resources directly available to local library patrons.
 
RAP screen shot Recent Australian Publications (http://www.nla.gov.au/librariesaustralia/rap.html)
a free monthly reference service listing Australia's recent publishing output. Each publication has been published during the current or previous two years. Works are either published in Australia, written by Australians, or have Australian content.
 
Information Australia screen shot Information Australia (http://www.nla.gov.au/informationaustralia/)
is a collaborative pilot project of five Australian public libraries and the National Library of Australia. There are over 36 million resources held in Australian institutions available via the portal including electronic full-text journal articles, pictures, music and many other printed materials which can be ordered using an online interlibrary loan form.
 
Pandora screen shot PANDORA (http://pandora.nla.gov.au/index.html)
(Preserving and Accessing Networked DOcumentary Resources of Australia) is a selective archive, which is publicly available free of charge via the Web. The National Library and each of its partners selects publications for archiving based on selection guidelines.

Internet search engines and portals such as Google (http://www.google.com.au) regularly index the Recent Australian Publications and other government agency web sites and will include information from metadata records in their indexes.

Australian Government Portal (http://www.australia.gov.au) regularly includes metadata from government departments and agencies on its site.
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