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 20002001 the Library plans to continue to promote legal depositreminding publishers of their obligations to deposit published material with deposit librariesand to work with other bodies such as the Australian ISBN Agency to achieve this objective.
The year 19992000 saw two very successful joint collecting exercisesone 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 Australias 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
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: gateways@nla.gov.au