National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 58| August 2002


Keeping Government Publications Online

On 3 July the National Library, together with the National Archives of Australia and the National Office for the Information Economy, held a seminar designed to inform Commonwealth Government publishers about the need to ensure long-term access to their online publications. The seminar was very popular and was fully booked a week before the event, indicating an increasing awareness of the issues and risks among creators, publishers, web managers, media units and librarians in Commonwealth agencies.

The objectives of the seminar were to:

Jan Fullerton, Director-General of the National Library, opened the seminar, stressing the importance of working together to achieve common and complementary goals in the complex online environment, for the benefit of the Australian people, now and in the future. Brian Stewart, General Manager of the Information Framework Branch of the National Office for the Information Economy, outlined the changing information environment in which agencies are working and the implications of this for the management of government information.

Justin Hyland, Senior Lawyer, Australian Government Solicitor, pointed out that organisational approaches to the capture of records from the online environment have not been fully developed, with the consequent risk that both records of government activity and publications will be lost. He drew to the attention of the audience the legislative framework, principally the Archives Act, 1983, and the Electronic Transactions Act, 2000.

Margaret Phillips, Manager of Digital Archiving at the National Library, described the Library’s role in building the National Collection of Australian Online Publications (the PANDORA Archive) and enumerated the steps that agencies should take to cooperate with the Library in ensuring long-term access to Commonwealth publications.

Adrian Cunningham, Director of Government Recordkeeping at the National Archives of Australia, detailed the responsibilities of agencies for managing their records in the online environment, referred to policy and guidelines developed by Archives to assist agencies, and outlined the fundamentals of good web-based record keeping.

To end the seminar a panel session provided the opportunity for a lively discussion about the issues that agencies are encountering in managing online government information, and the audience was able to ask further questions of the speakers. It became clear that there is scope for additional seminars on related and more detailed topics. In the continually changing online environment, ongoing communication among all participants will be important to achieve the objective of keeping government information available to the Australian people.

Speakers’ presentations and other information associated with the seminar is available on the Library’s web site at www.nla.gov.au/initiatives/meetings/govpubonline/

In view of the popularity of the seminar, the Library has set up an online form through which expressions of interest in receiving information about future seminars can be lodged—www.nla.gov.au/noieseminar/form.html

For more information contact:
Margaret Phillips
Manager, Digital Archiving
Email: mphillip@nla.gov.au
Tel: (02) 6262 1140.

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