National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 64 | August 2003


Review of Collecting Australian Online Publications

PANDORA Archive website

The PANDORA Archive, at: pandora.nla.gov.au/partners.html

The National Library has now been selecting and archiving Australian online publications in PANDORA, Australia’s Web Archive, for over seven years. In view of the developments in online publishing during that time, and the advances that have been made in archiving, it was timely to review our general approach to building a collection of Australian online publications, and the selection guidelines.

When the terms of reference for the review were set, it was assumed that it would identify some new categories of online publications not previously included in the Archive, and that the Library would extend its collecting to include at least some of these categories. The review did indeed identify new types of online publications and looked again at some we had previously excluded. In principle, the Library wished to extend its archiving into these new categories.

The key finding of the review was that the limited staff resources available for this collecting activity cannot keep pace with the increasing volume of online publications. With considerable regret the Library recognises it is necessary to make a choice between collecting a broader range of publications superficially, or focusing on certain defined areas in some depth. The report of the review recommended the second option.

A copy of the report is available at: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/BSC49.doc.

As a result of the review, the Library will now focus collecting on six categories:

It is important to stress that this is a broad guide to the Library’s collecting approach. We would not want to exclude any site of high research value simply because it did not fit into one of the six priority categories. The Library will continue to collect outside the priority categories as staff resources permit—the selection guidelines have always been applied with a great deal of flexibility.

The National Library’s selection guidelines for PANDORA have now been revised in line with the recommendations of the review, and are available at: pandora.nla.gov.au/selectionguidelines.html.  Each of the eight other PANDORA partners has their own selection guidelines, which determine their contribution to the Archive. Links are found at: pandora.nla.gov.au/partners.html.

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

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