National Library of Australia
Annual Report 2001-2002
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Director General's Review
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Did You Know?

  • Treasures from the World’s Great Libraries—this exhibition included 168 loans from 38 institutions in 24 countries. A record 115 000 visitors attended, with demand so great that the exhibition was, in its final weeks, open for 22 hours each day. The Treasures web site won the Australian Publishers Association’s award for Best Designed Literary or Publishing Website. For the first time, Library exhibitions visited all States and Territories during the year.
  • As well as legal deposit, purchase, and exchange, Library collections grew through gift and donation. During the year, and as part of its centenary celebrations, the Library launched BookSearch, appealing to the public for a number of items or categories of material missing from its collections. A generous response enabled the Library to fill many gaps.
  • Over 100 000 items from the Library’s Collection have been digitised and made available on the Web. Collection digitisation is now a routine activity.
  • The National Bibliographic Database, offered through the Kinetica service, remains the key bibliographic support service within the Australian library sector. Coverage of the National Bibliographic Database was significantly extended with 1.6 million new Australian library holdings recorded this year, taking the total to 35 million collection items recorded on the database. The growth in the National Bibliographic Database indicates the continuing commitment by Australian libraries to resource sharing.  The National Bibliographic Database is complemented by the more specialised National Chinese, Japanese and Korean Service which provides information on collections held in Australian libraries in these languages.

  • Participation in the PictureAustralia service, which provides over 600 000 pictorial images on the Web relating to Australia, continued to grow with the addition of image collections from Museum Victoria, the Campbelltown City Library (in collaboration with the Campbelltown and Airds Historical Society), the ACT Heritage Library, the Northern Territory Library and Information Service, and the National Gallery of Australia. These collections enhance the geographic and subject coverage of the service. There are now 18 participating organisations, with several other organisations scheduled to join the service next year.  In addition to the Australian participant organisations, the National Library of New Zealand, and the Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network became overseas contributors of Australian image content.  Use of PictureAustralia grew by 28 per cent this year, with approximately 372 000 user sessions recorded.

  • The Library extended its Web-based PADI (Preserving Access to Digital Information) service, the major international source of information on digital preservation initiatives, through collaborative agreements with the Council on Library and Information Resources in the United States, and the Digital Preservation Coalition in the United Kingdom.
  • The four-year Bringing Them Home Oral History Project, one of the outcomes of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families, concluded at the end of the year. During the project, 310 interviews were held with Indigenous Australians and others. Preparation began on a book based on the interviews, due for publication in late 2002.
  • The Library undertook a national benchmarking study on interlibrary loan/document delivery. This study involved 97 Australian libraries in all sectors, including higher education, government, public, special and State libraries. Many Australian libraries have made changes to their document delivery operations based on the study results. Also, an Interlending and Document Delivery Best Practice Course has been developed and is being offered throughout Australia.
  • The Library, in association with the Council of Australian State Libraries, is undertaking a pilot project to develop an interactive digital reference service. The service will enable users to co-browse electronic information resources and simultaneously chat online with a reference librarian. The nine participating libraries will staff the service on a time-share basis, taking advantage of national time zones. The service will be made available from the web sites of the National, State and Territory libraries. The Library continued its active participation in the Collaborative Digital Reference Service pilot coordinated by the Library of Congress. As a result of the pilot, a new subscription-based service has commenced—QuestionPoint—which provides a worldwide reference service.

  • The National Library is leading a collaborative research project to develop a proof-of-concept prototype to deliver digital music objects in a range of formats and from a range of institutions. The MusicAustralia pilot, in which the National Library and ScreenSound Australia are joint partners, is testing the requirements for a production service to deliver digitised sheet music, digital audio-files, ‘born digital’ music scores, and a range of relevant images and electronic text. Key Australian music stakeholders, including the Australian Music Centre and the Australia Council’s New Australian Music Online initiative, are participating in the development.
  • During the year the National Archives of Australia became a partner with the Library and the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts in the Community Heritage Grants program. Funding and training in preservation techniques was given to 45 community organisations to assist with preserving nationally significant documentary heritage material in their care. This represented an increase of 40 per cent on the number of grants awarded in the previous year.

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