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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 45 | June 2000


Priorities for Australian printed materials

While the National Library relies heavily on the legal deposit provisions of the Copyright Act for much of its Australian printed materials collection, its collecting is supplemented by projects aimed at strengthening areas of weakness or under-representation in the collection.

During 2000–2001 the Library plans to continue to promote legal deposit—reminding publishers of their obligations to deposit published material with deposit libraries—and to work with other bodies such as the Australian ISBN Agency to achieve this objective.

The year 1999–2000 saw two very successful joint collecting exercises—one with the State Library of South Australia to acquire South Australian government materials, and the other with the Northern Territory Library Service for publications of the Territory. The National Library plans to continue these activities to reinvigorate government deposit with visits to Western Australia and Tasmania. It will also continue its strong claiming program started last year, and will be concentrating on the university and small publisher sectors. Some new initiatives for the year ahead are:

Australian serials
The Library will review the scope of its current collecting guidelines for Australian serials and find additional sources for identifying new titles to improve the coverage of its Australian serials collection. Because the Library is not a comprehensive collector of every Australian serial it will have to target specific organisations or titles.

Australiana published overseas
Identifying material published by Australians overseas has always been a challenge for the Library, and it is an area where the Library has identified a need to improve its holdings. National bibliographies, university web sites and other tools will help to identify works not held by the National Library.

Multicultural publications
A major project has begun to gather a stronger collection of publications in Australian community languages or produced by Australia’s ethnic organisations. (See story, pages 12/13) This project has been undertaken in partnership with a number of State libraries and involves a mail-out campaign to multicultural publishers, community organisations, institutions and special interest groups.

Australian printed music
For the past two years the Library has purchased extensively from the Australian Music Centre to fill gaps in the collection. Collecting of this material will continue and the Library will promote legal deposit through industry groups, publications, conferences and other gatherings.

Australian electronic publications
A plan to widen contacts with Australian publishers of tangible electronic publications is planned to build the Australian collection in this area.

Olympics 2000
Much material has already been amassed, but the coming year will see the climax of collecting. The Paralympics and associated events are also the focus of collecting.

Centenary of Federation
Collecting began last year and will continue. Contacts with key bodies and authorities will be maintained.

International Years
The Library will document the International Year for the Culture of Peace (2000) and the International Year of the Volunteer (2001) on a selective basis.

Peter Haddad

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