Preserving Australian Physical Format Electronic Publications – Selection Guidelines

Introduction

The National Library collects physical format electronic publications in accordance with the Collection Development Policy. Physical format electronic publications such as CDs and DVDs are a small but regular component of the Australian intake. Their machine dependent nature requires special attention to ensure they remain accessible.

In recognition of the work involved and resource intensive nature of preserving electronic materials, and acknowledging that this is still an area of development, only items deemed to be of significant research value will be selected for preservation. All material, whether selected for preservation or not, will be viewed and checked on arrival, rehoused where necessary and stored in secure conditions. However no other active steps will be taken to reformat or otherwise preserve non-selected material in the future.

These guidelines have been developed to assist staff to select publications from the Library’s collection for preservation and thereby to ensure long-term access. It is recognised that the guidelines may need further refinement and particularly so when legal deposit provisions are expanded to encompass electronic publications.

Primary responsibility for applying the selection guidelines for preservation rests with collection development staff in Technical Services at the point of adding new items to the collection. However Digital Preservation staff may also be involved, as some critical factors may not be identified until the publication is loaded and reviewed on a computer.

Scope of selection guidelines

These guidelines apply to:

  • all Australian physical format electronic material, except for materials collected by the Maps and Manuscript sections (separate guidelines cover this material).
  • physical format material whether it accompanies print material or not
  • both monograph and serial publications
  • hybrid publications that have both physical format and Internet components

Preservation intentions

When an item is selected for preservation, it is the information content that will be preserved rather than the actual physical item. The physical item will be retained and housed in the appropriate stack location with other physical format materials.

Where information contained within a physical format publication also exists in a print version, the Library does not intend to preserve the physical format publication except where additional flexibility of use is provided by the electronic version. Where both online and physical format versions of a publication are available, the Library prefers to preserve the online version. Where there are significant differences between the versions, both or all will be preserved.

Guidelines for selection

The publications selected represent the most important physical format publications collected by the Library. To be selected a publication must fall into the categories below:

  • have long-term research value and have either Australian content or authorship, and
  • the authors/publishers of the publications are considered to be authoritative in their field, or
  • the information content is substantial and significant to Australian research and is not generally available in any other format.

Types of publications that may be selected for preservation in this category include:

  • Academic publications and reports from research institutes
  • Commonwealth and Australian Capital Territory government publications
  • Collections of full-text papers from conferences held by major Australian academic bodies, professional associations and institutes. The proceedings of international conferences that are affiliated with an Australian body and that are held in Australia may also be selected if they include relevant Australian content
  • Works about significant social and cultural developments and achievements. This may include publications selected for the collection as part of targeted, intensive collecting activity on topics designated by the Manager, Australian Collection Development (eg. the Olympics, the gun debate, Aboriginal issues, ethnic publishing).

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