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ISSN 1443-0568 | no. 39 | June 1999


The collections

Building the Australian collection

The National Library’s Australian collections have been described as its finest achievement. The Library’s collections of printed materials are built largely on the legal deposit provisions of the Copyright Act 1968 which require publishers of material printed in Australia to deposit a copy with the National Library, and the relevant State library.

However, National Library staff members who work with Australian printed materials still need to spend much of their time seeking out material, which might otherwise go uncollected. Each year specific categories of material or material related to individual events are identified for special attention and collecting effort.

During the next year, the National Library will be spending particular time and resources on making sure that the Australian printed collections are as comprehensive as possible in the following areas:

Olympics 2000
The Library has been concentrating on collecting material related to the Sydney 2000 Olympics and associated events for several years and, during the lead up to the Games, will continue to pursue its collecting in this area.

State and Territory government publications
Regular surveys designed to identify gaps in the Library’s holdings of State and Territory government monographs, and to claim missing monographs, have been undertaken for a number of Australian States. These will continue.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander publications
A project designed to improve the Library’s holdings of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander material has been under way for several years. This has involved visits to bodies in the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia. It has also included attendance at the ATSILRN (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Library Resource Network) Annual Conference and surveys of bibliographies and the holdings of other libraries such as IATSIS (Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies). The Library will continue to be represented at ATSILRN conferences, but has now changed this collecting activity from special project status to that of regular acquisition activity.

Australian printed music
There has been a drop in the amount of Australian printed music material being deposited with the Library. This, together with a suspected decline in the amount of music being published in Australia, led to talks in 1998 with the Australian Music Centre which makes available, on demand, works by Australian composers who choose to be represented by the centre. Last year a special allocation of additional funds was made to ensure that contemporary Australian composers were adequately represented in the collection. During the year to come attention will be given to the ongoing purchase of a representative sample of current Australian musical compositions from the Australian Music Centre, and the filling of gaps in the Library’s existing holdings.

Euthanasia
The debate on euthanasia continues to receive a high public profile. In the past the Library has contacted the key lobby groups on both sides of the debate to ensure that all publications are collected. This will continue to be done at regular intervals and whenever the issue surfaces.

Popular culture: fanzines and comics
In recent years the Library has acquired significant retrospective collections of science fiction fanzines and comics, both of them being difficult genres to collect through the usual channels. As well, claiming from directories of fanzines and fringe publishing have assisted the Library in improving its coverage of current publishing. The collections will continue to be developed as the opportunity arises through retrospective offers or new sources of current information.

Republican debate and constitutional referendum
The Library will continue to monitor this debate by regularly contacting peak bodies, lobby groups and political parties.

New initiatives
During the coming year the National Library will give priority to initiatives designed to remedy perceived areas of weakness in the collection. These include:

Ethnic community publishing
Ethnic community publishing is a particularly elusive area and one where the Library has long perceived a deficiency in its collecting.

Embarking on a program to strengthen its holdings in this area will be a major and resource-intensive undertaking.

The project will be nationwide, and will attempt to contact ethnic publishers, organisations, institutions, community and special interest groups in a wide range of immigrant communities and covering a variety of languages. Newspapers, serials, monographs and other printed publications will be sought. Letters will be sent to a number of groups inquiring about publications. Specialist advice may be sought where the Library has established contacts.

Physical format electronic publishing
As well as improving the supply of materials by contacting regular publishers of this material, the Library is engaged in discussions with the National Film and Sound Archive to define respective collecting responsibilities for multimedia publications. During the next year the Library intends to improve the collection by widening its contacts with publishers and producers of multimedia works. It will also issue a statement aimed at ensuring the comprehensive acquisition of this material by collecting agencies.

Centenary of Federation
A project similar to that for the Bicentennial celebrations will be mounted. Contact will be made with the key bodies and authorities involved, particularly those funding community projects. The development and planning needs to be monitored to ensure that all Federation events are documented by the Library and all publications are acquired to ensure a comprehensive collection.

Year of the Older Person and Citizenship–the 50th anniversary
These two events require additional attention to ensure that they are documented on a selective basis by the Library through contact with key bodies and a sampling of community groups and activities.

Claiming of current serial issues
The claiming of current serial issues is an important task if the Library is not to experience broken holdings and difficulties in providing a good level of service to users. Resources have sometimes been lacking for this to be undertaken. In the next year it is planned to conduct a study on serial claiming with a view to suggesting ways in which the Library might achieve a better result in this important task.

All of these activities, as well as the continuing receipt of Australian printed material coming to the Library as a result of legal deposit will help to ensure that the Australian collections are as comprehensive as possible, and that they will continue to inform, interest and fascinate long into the future.

| Contents list for this issue of Gateways |

Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: lkirwan@nla.gov.au

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