National Library of Australia

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Agency overview
National Library of Australia

Formed	1960
Preceding Agency	Federal Parliamentary Library
Jurisdiction	Government of Australia
Employees	424 (May 2007)
Annual Budget	$77.35 million AUD (2007-08)
Agency Executive	Jan Fullerton, Director-General
Parent agency	Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts
Website
www.nla.gov.au

National Library of Australia as viewed from Lake Burley Griffin

The National Library of Australia is the country's largest reference library, responsible under the terms of the National Library Act for "maintaining and developing a national collection of library material, including a comprehensive collection of library material relating to Australia and the Australian people."

1 Collections
2 Reading rooms
3 Facilities
4 Picture Australia
5 Libraries Australia
6 PANDORA
7 Music Australia
8 Australia Dancing
9 National Directors
10 References
11 External links

[edit] Collections

The Library's collections of Australiana have developed into the nation's single most important resource of materials recording the Australian cultural heritage. The Library collects Australian materials of all kinds - not just works in print form - books, serials, newspapers, maps, music and ephemera - but also online publications and unpublished material such as manuscripts, pictures and oral histories. The Library has particular collection strengths in the performing arts, including dance.

The Library also has considerable collections of general overseas and rare book materials, as well as world-class Asian and Pacific collections which augment the Australiana collections.

The print collections are augmented by extensive microform holdings.

The Library maintains the National Reserve Braille Collection and owns the National Film & Video Lending Collection which is managed for the Library by National Film and Sound Archive .

In total, over 5 million items are held.

The Library has digitised over 105,000 items from its collection (the 100,000th being http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn3409117) and, where possible, delivers these directly across the Internet. The Library is a world leader in digital preservation techniques (see padi), and maintains an Internet-accessible archive of selected Australian websites called the Pandora Archive.

[edit] Reading rooms

The large National Library building is home to various reading rooms and collections. On the ground floor is the Main Reading Room - this is where the bulk of the Library's Internet access terminals are located, and where wifi access is available. Services are also delivered on-site from the Petherick Reading Room (for advanced readers) on the ground floor; the Newspaper & Microcopy and Map Reading Rooms on the lower-ground floor, Manuscripts and Pictures on level 2, and Asian Collections on level 3. Limited space is also available for readers at the Hume Annexe.

[edit] Facilities

The National Library of Australia hosts the Australian National Bibliographic Database (ANBD) and offers free access through the Libraries Australia Search service. The Library also provides Cataloguing-in-Publication (CiP) details, ISSNs and ISMNs for Australian publishers.

The National Library is also a popular venue for Canberra's climbing community — the unique use of roughly cut blocks in the outer northern wall presents a challenging bouldering problem.

[edit] Picture Australia

Picture Australia is an Internet based federated search service that allows you to access many significant online pictorial collections at the same time. Over 40 cultural agencies have made in excess of 1,000,000 images in their image collections accessible through Picture Australia.

When you do a search on Picture Australia, thumbnail images are retrieved from participating institutions on the fly and inserted into the search results[1].

Picture Australia began in 1998 as a pilot project called ImageSearch, involving the Australian War Memorial, the National Library of Australia, the State Library of New South Wales, State Library of Tasmania and State Library of Victoria.

Following the very strong support received in response to the prototype, it was decided to expand into a new service to include more libraries, galleries, museums, and archives. The service was launched on 4 September 2000 by the Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Mr Bruce Scott, in a ceremony at the National Library of Australia and saw significant growth in usage almost immediately[2]. The National Archives of Australia and the University of Queensland Library also joined the service in time for the launch.

Picture Australia won an Australian Financial Review 2000 Australian Internet Award in the Arts category on 28 November 2000.

In early 2006, in an effort to increase contemporary content, Picture Australia embarked on a pilot with flickr.com.^[1]. The program "People, Places and Events" was successful and a new project called "Ourtown" was established to gain access to images of Australian life and to source contemporary views of historic images in the collection.

[edit] Libraries Australia

Libraries Australia is a resource-sharing service coordinated by the National Library of Australia for Australian libraries and their users. It is used for reference, collection development, cataloguing and interlibrary lending. The heart of Libraries Australia is the Australian National Bibliographic Database (ANBD) which records the location details of over 42 million books, journals, newspapers, pictures, maps and more, which are held in over 800 Australian libraries, including academic, research, national, state, public and special libraries. There are now links to over 700,000 digitised collection items available from Libraries Australia.

You can access Libraries Australia from home, work, school, university or from any personal computer with an internet connection.

Libraries Australia is free, easy to use, and extremely flexible. It allows you to:

• Find information through a simple search
• Get instant access to many digitised items
• Borrow through your local library, or order from another library
• Locate contact details and library locations across Australia

[edit] PANDORA

PANDORA, Australia's Web Archive, is a growing collection of Australian online publications, established initially by the National Library of Australia in 1996, and now built in collaboration with nine other Australian libraries and cultural collecting organisations.

The name, PANDORA, is an acronym that encapsulates its mission: Preserving and Accessing Networked Documentary Resources of Australia.

The purpose of the PANDORA Archive is to collect and provide long-term access to selected online publications and web sites that are about Australia, are by an Australian author on a subject of social, political, cultural, religious, scientific or economic significance and relevance to Australia, or are by an Australian author of recognised authority and make a contribution to international knowledge.

[edit] Music Australia

Music Australia is an online service that showcases Australia’s musical culture across contemporary and historical periods, from the earliest published music to the latest hit. It is a free resource discovery service, hosted by the National Library of Australia that helps people to find, explore and locate all types, styles and genres of Australian music – whether created, performed or published in Australia or by Australians, or associated with Australia’s musical culture.

You can access and navigate a rich store of information on Australian music, musicians, organisations and services, all from a single access point. You can find music scores, sound recordings, websites, pictures and films, multimedia, kits and objects, and archival collections and other music-related material held by a large number of Australia's cultural institutions or described by specialist music services. Music Australia covers both heritage and contemporary music, and includes all formats, styles and genres.

[edit] Australia Dancing

The Australia Dancing portal, hosted by the National Library of Australia, provides users with access to both current and historical information about dance in Australia.

The primary zone, the directory of resources, describes dance research materials held by the National Library of Australia, the National Film and Sound Archive, and other selected institutions (e.g. the State Library of New South Wales). Some of this material is directly accessible in digital formats, such as digitised pictures. Some information is available as electronic finding aids, such as online descriptions of the contents of manuscript and ephemera collections. Progressively more material is being made available in these ways. ScreenSound Australia holdings are described according to their first preservation formats only, digital betacam videotape, 35 mm film, and so on. Other formats are usually available and users are encouraged to consult the National Film and Sound Archive online catalogue for further information.

The directory service is supplemented by other pages enabling discovery, location and access to information about dance in Australia through links to other relevant sites, and through current industry information provided by Ausdance and available on the Ausdance website.

Resource material listed in the directory is generally available for on-site research purposes, although some material may be subject to certain restrictions requested by donors. Public or commercial use of the material may be subject to further or different restrictions. Enquiries should be directed to the holding institution.

Australia Dancing is an initiative of the National Library of Australia in partnership with key collecting institutions and the peak industry and advocacy body for dance in Australia - Ausdance. In its initial stages it was generously funded by the Australia Council. Its aim is to make Australian dance materials accessible to local, national and international communities, and to build the Australian Dance Collection.