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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 43 | February 2000


State Library of South Australia joins PANDORA

Tony Leschen , Andrew Piper & Anne Daniels
Tony Leschen and Andrew Piper (State Library of South Australia) with
Anne Daniels (Senior Librarian, Australian Electronic Unit, NLA)

Readers of Gateways will be aware that the State of Victoria joined the PANDORA (Preserving and Accessing Networked Documentary Resources of Australia) Project in 1998, and is now responsible for more than 20 titles in the PANDORA Archive. In 1999 the State Library of South Australia agreed to become PANDORA’s second partner. Each State Library is responsible for online publications at the State and local level, while the National Library retains responsibility for publications with a national focus.

During November 1999, Tony Leschen and Andrew Piper from the State Library of South Australia spent a week in Canberra at the National Library learning the tasks and procedures involved in archiving Internet publications. They were trained by members of the Australian Electronic Unit and introduced to all aspects of the work, ranging from selection, cataloguing and publisher liaison to archiving, comparison of original and archived versions and the creation of PURLs (Persistent Uniform Resource Locators). They also spent some time with Information Technology staff who gave them an introduction to the more technical side of PANDORA.

Tony and Andrew were amazed by the complexity of the activities involved in archiving online publications. On returning home, their first task was to make recommendations on how PANDORA should be incorporated into the State Library’s existing structure. During the visit a good rapport was established between the staff from the two libraries. Sharing experiences and continued liaison will be an important feature of the new partnership over the coming years.

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

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