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.
Return to Section A: Final Progress Report on Resolutions
Last updated 20 July 1998