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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 41 | October 1999


NLA and the library community

National Bibliographic Database survey findings

The Australian Library Collections Task Force has released the final report on a major study of the National Bibliographic Database (NBD).

The NBD, which is accessible through Kinetica and maintained by the National Library, contains records for material held by over 850 Australian Libraries. It is the largest database of its kind in Australia. The NBD is the major tool that underpins resource sharing in Australia.

Amongst other things, the study has collected information about the extent to which materials in Australian libraries are actually recorded on the NBD; the types of material most likely or unlikely to be recorded; the nature of any other records for unrecorded materials; the possible existence of special collections of material; and patterns of contribution or non contribution amongst library types.

Briefly, the results show that:

The full report on the study is available at: http://www.nla.gov.au/niac/collect/nbdsurvey.html

This report is expected to be of particular interest to library administrators, reference, technical services and inter library loans staff, as well as library users. Comments regarding the survey are particularly welcome, and should be directed to:

ALCTF Secretariat
Coordination Support Branch
National Library of Australia
Canberra ACT 2600
Email: pwilliams@nla.gov.au
Tel: Paula Williams (02) 6262 1481

The study is one of a series currently being undertaken by the Australian Library Collections Task Force to inform the further development of policies and strategies to enhance the extent to which scholarly material in the Humanities and Social Sciences can be accessed. Additional information about other activities of the Task Force is available at http://www.nla.gov.au/niac/auscoll

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