TOWARDS FEDERATION 2001: Linking Australians with Their Heritage Review Meeting 1993

Progress Reports 1994-1996

Section A - A: Collecting Issues


RA1 That ACLIS, in consultation with other relevant organisations (e.g. Australian Council of Archives, Heritage Collections Committee, etc.) complete statements on the scope and nature of, and priorities within the distributed national collection of Australia's documentary heritage and on the concept of significance as applied to documentary heritage materials.

1994 - 1996

The draft report of the ACLIS Task Force on Documentary Heritage was completed and circulated to ACLIS State and Territory Committees, and other interested parties, in December 1993, for comment. ACLIS National Council will consider future action at their meeting on August 19 1994.

Following receipt of comments from interested parties, a final version of the report of the Task Force was produced by ACLIS in March 1995. Copies are available at no charge from the ACLIS Secretariat.

Action on this resolution has now been completed.

RA2 That the National Library of Australia work with ACLIS to collect and analyse information on existing collection development policies, and develop a strategy and guidelines to encourage and assist other institutions to prepare policies.

AUGUST 1994

A number of libraries have already deposited collection development policies with the Distributed National Collection (DNC) Office in the National Library of Australia. These have been catalogued onto the National Bibliographic Database (NBD). and are available for interlibrary loan. A full list of collection development policies held is available from the DNC Office.

JUNE 1995

A list of the collection development policies held in the DNC Clearinghouse is mounted on the National Library Webserver with hypertext links to electronic policies. Analyses of collection development policies were undertaken by the DNC Office for preparation of the Status Report on collection strengths in Asian library materials in Australian libraries and the Status report on collection strengths in music in Australian libraries. Information on the preparation of collection development policies has been supplied to a number of libraries.

JUNE 1996

The DNC Office will be working on revising the ACLIS guidelines for collection development policies during 1996/97.
RA3 That the National Library of Australia, in cooperation with ACLIS and other relevant organisations, develop a strategy and plan for the implementation of formal collecting, access and preservation agreements covering all formats.

1994 - 1996

Copies of collecting agreements held by the DNC Office have been mounted on the National Library Webserver. The ACLIS guidelines for collecting agreements are also available through the National Library Webserver. The DNC Office is actively collecting information on both formal and informal collecting agreements.

The DNC Office has been involved in a number of meetings focusing on subject collecting agreements. At these meetings a number of resolutions have been passed relating to the implementation of collecting agreements and associated collection management and bibliographic issues. Subject areas covered include Asia, Korea, South Asia, and Music.

RA4(a) That the National Library, in consultation with other heritage collecting institutions, develop and put forward to the Commonwealth Government, proposals for changes to Commonwealth legal deposit provisions, including the coverage of a wider range of materials.

AUGUST 1994

The National Library of Australia has prepared a draft paper on required changes to legal deposit within the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. This was considered by the Corporate Management Group of the Library in August 1994. A formal submission will be made to the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department by December.

JUNE 1995

The National Library of Australia has set up a Working Group to work with the National Film and Sound Archive on issues associated with multi-media formats. Once these issues and respective roles are clarified, the National Library will proceed with the submission to the Attorney-General's Department.

JUNE 1996

The National Film and Sound Archive and the National Library of Australia prepared and submitted a paper to the Copyright Law Review Committee in September 1995. The paper argues for the extension of the Commonwealth legal deposit provisions to cover "microforms, audio-visual materials of all kinds and electronic publications... and all formats yet to be developed, in addition to the print-based publications currently included." The paper also argues the principle of selection by the depository institution.

RA4(b) That the Council of Australian State Libraries request its Collection Management Group to identify all issues associated with extending legal deposit coverage to all formats of material, especially those related to new technologies, and to develop guidelines to facilitate a common approach to dealing with the issues.

AUGUST 1994

The Council of Australian State Libraries (CASL) is investigating the implications of claiming, collecting, preserving and providing future access to all formats of material.

JUNE 1995

The CASL Collection Management Group is considering a draft issues paper on the issues involved in extending legal deposit to a wider range of formats. A revised version of this paper, for wider distribution, will be completed by the end of June.

JUNE 1996

The CASL Collection Management Group continued to pursue this as a project in 1995/96. An issues paper was prepared by Derek Whitehead for the second National Preservation Office Conference in November 1995 and revised paper will be prepared for 1996. The focus of the CASL project has narrowed to the Legal Deposit of Electronic Publications, which continues to be a CASL project under the leadership of Derek Whitehead.

RA5 That State and Territory libraries accept responsibility for ensuring that all local government publications from their State or Territory that are 'in scope' in terms of the agreed ACLIS Statement on the distributed national collection of Australia's documentary heritage, are collected somewhere in their State or Territory.

1994 - 1996

The State Library of Queensland is pursuing the collection of local government publications.

In the ACT, the ACT Reference Library will collect the published output of the ACT government. This will be done as part of the acquisition process of collections form the ACT Reference Library.

The Library and Information Service of Western Australia have included local government publications in their collection development policy. The Battye Library of West Australian History aims to collect all local government publications and is reasonably successful in this aim.

The State Library of Tasmania collects local government publications under legal deposit arrangements and they are actively pursued

State Library of New South Wales accepts responsibility for collecting local government publications as part of current Legal Deposit provisions, but it is clear that the collection in this area is not comprehensive. Dialogue concerning collecting and making local government publications accessible has been opened with a number of public libraries, and a Local Studies Collecting Agreement has been drafted in consultation with local studies librarians. A number of strategies are being pursued to investigate how effectively local government publications are being collected by public libraries and to document activity in this sphere, prior to considering collecting agreements. During 1995-96 the State Library of New South Wales has continued its consultation with public library staff to begin to document the role of public libraries in collecting local publications including publications of local government. A Local Studies Collecting Policy has been drafted and will be used to further consultative activity. Dialogue is underway regarding local publications received by the State Library of New South Wales which may also be appropriately held in public libraries.

The State Library of Victoria accepts responsibility for doing this, and does not delegate it. All local government publications are sought and retained by the Library. They have completed actions in regard to this resolution.

Northern Territory Library accepts responsibility for collection such material.

RA6 That Council of Australian State Libraries, in consultation with public libraries and the Federal Libraries Information Network, determine the best ways of ensuring an adequate level of access to major Commonwealth and to State and Territory government publications.

AUGUST 1994

Council of Australian State Libraries Collection Management Group have requested information from the viewpoint of state government on schemes, existing or planned, to deposit material in public libraries. Discussions are also taking place on the future of the government publications exchange scheme.

JUNE 1995

Since 1994, a major development has been the development of government WWW servers, and growth in the amount of networked government information available. Most notably, libraries provide the main government WWW pages at the Commonwealth level (http://www.nla.gov.au/oz/gov/), and also in Victoria.

CASL, through its Collection Management Group, will monitor this situation, and in the light of the growth in government publishing, determine the best ways of ensuring an adequate level of access to major Commonwealth and to State and Territory publications

JUNE 1996

The AGPS/ACLIS Liaison committee met on in May 1996. AGPS is moving to provide many publications and finding tools on-line. Increasingly it will focus on information management rather than physical production. Extension of the deposit scheme to public libraries will need to be based on identification of core materials available on-line and determination of what access should be provided to libraries. the possibility of using the US Federal Depository Library Program as a possible model for Australia was put forward.


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Last updated 20 July 1998